It has been a while since my last post. I wanted to share a few images I have recently created, and a few thoughts on them. There are a few specific processes I have used in these images as well as the others I have in the following Picasa album, entitled Digital Art 2009.
http://picasaweb.google.com/markrohlf/DigitalArt2009#
I wanted to include the Railroad Crossing image in my comments, as it was the creation of this image that began a trend which led to the creation of the other images in this album.
I guess I should just begin by telling you how this image came to be. The story is really not that exciting. I was browsing around with my images, and happened upon this one. The original was nothing more than just a straight black and white shot. I was living in Abilene at the time, and was staying the weekend in my small studio. I was bored, so I took the camera for a stroll. Snapped it, and carried on with life. I tucked the image away on my hard drive and forgot about it. Two years later I happened upon the image again, and began to wonder if there was something I could do to make this image more exciting. So I began applying different effects in Photoshop. Most of the trials did not do much for me. I started applying different colors to the image, and the image began to take shape. Finally, I found an effect that twisted the image, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was absolutely amazed at what I had discovered.
I am now beginning to wind down this particular style of expression with my photographs, but wanted to share just one more with you. In this photograph - Solarized Power 102 - I utilized a few of the same techniques to arrive at the final image, and again, I was very pleased with the final result. But I just want to mention, that these final results came after trying many other techniques that failed to achieve the desired result. Neither of these images were pre-visualized. They were results of experiments in digital art.
I believe these images fit into the category of Photographic Expressionism.
Expressionism in art is the notion that the artist takes a scene found in nature, interprets and re-creates the scene to express an emotion. I have found this to be true with the images I have created here.
