"Bast" 2006

This image has been exhibited only once. It's unlike most of my work yet such an unusual shadow was worth capturing.

"Bast" was shown as part of a group exhibit. When it was delivered to the gallery the only person who was there at the time loved it ("the best photo here!"), and that was the only opinion about it I've ever heard.

What do you think?

Photographic art: Light

We artists who work with graphic arts have a challenge: the range of light intensities we can depict is far less than the range we see with our eyes. This means we look for ways to create the illusion of a light range we don't have. How do we show beautiful natural-looking light? Jan Vermeer and Ansel Adams figured this out, as have others. We can do our best, too.

Judging and jurying art

Decades ago I entered five contests or exhibits which gave awards and there were two winners. Although the piece which received the biggest award was less creative than much of my work I was happy to get the prize itself. The other winning piece was good but not great. One of the losers should have lost but the other two were really good so after that - no more competitive exhibits for me! Lately I've loosened up a bit and submitted work to a few juried exhibits - even served twice as a judge.

Last year juror opinions were as bipolar as ever. Progression - shown here - was rated 10 out of 10 by one juror and 3 out of 10 by another.

The juror who gave it a 3 saw it as worse than average. I see beauty in it myself but he might be right. The juror who gave it a 10 is my friend for life.

Maybe someday it will be understandable why intelligent, capable jurors reach such different opinions. Maybe not. I hope that my evaluations were fair when I served as a judge. Maybe not.

Urban #5

 

This building at Clinton Avenue and Main Street in downtown Rochester NY looks like an abstraction of Devil's Tower in Wyoming. You may have seen the real Devil's Tower in the 1977 film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." In this print I've abstracted the abstraction and only the most basic forms of the original are left.