I am a visual artist who works with paint, mixed media, photography and digital film. I am also a qualified Art and Photography Teacher. At one point in the dim and distant past I also worked in photographic retail and often used my single lens reflex (SLR) film camera on holiday and for social occasions. (The SLR is a camera which lets you change the lenses, and also gives you more control creatively).
However, I did not explore photography further as a more experimental, creative interest; film and printing seemed too expensive for experimenting with, and I had no darkroom for colour work. So, when Digital Photography took off about the same time as I started my Masters Degree in Fine Art in 2005, I got myself a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) and started to play with it using digital photography as a creative, fine art medium. Going digital meant I could experiment more, and delete images that did not work, cost free.
Initially I was rather overwhelmed by all the very knowledgeable, technical talk in photographic magazines, books and the internet. I am not a scientist - I am an artist, and I wanted to do something creative with photography - and enjoy it! I realised understanding was the key. I looked at box cameras and pinhole cameras. A box camera is essentially a black, light-tight box. When light is let in through a hole in the front of the camera, that light is recorded on a light-sensitive film or a digital sensor at the back of the inside of the camera. Modern cameras, however fancy or technical, are still just a light box, with more bells and whistles on them than the original box cameras. We need not be afraid of them - we need to see them as creative tools to play with.
While we need sufficient technical understanding, we also need to learn to use this understanding to explore and develop creative possibilities. 'Photography' means 'drawing or painting with light'. Light is the raw material when using a camera, just as coloured pigment is the raw material when painting. Once I saw light as another type of paint, I took off. Becoming more sensitive to the infinite fluctuations of light and shadow in our environment, I began to record the dancing light-show of nature.
I discovered Art Photography. Photography has come a long way since the nineteenth century, and is now accepted as an art form in its own right by the art world. Artists use Photography to develop projects exploring a theme or idea. This might involve recording what is out there in the world, as in street photography, fly-on-the-wall photography, nature photography and so on. Or it might involve something more set up, yet exploring a theme. Whatever way they work, artists usually have a project, in which they explore an idea or theme of personal interest.
We can take creative photos using just a pinhole camera, but will have to get them processed chemically, as a pinhole camera is not digital unless we adapt it ourselves. Compact point-and-shoot digital cameras offer a degree of creativity, such as very close up (macro) settings, or zoom, but they can get frustrating as the camera is more automatic (ie less controllable by us) than DSLR cameras. With a DSLR camera you can use different lenses and have manual control over a whole range of creative settings. Yes, you do need to learn how to use these, and this opens a Pandora's box of creative possibilities!
The techniques we use with our camera, such as lighting, framing the shot, angles, what is or is not in focus, freezing and blurring motion, are all creative tools when taking a photo. It's as much about us learning to look and see (as in art) our subject or theme as about how clever our camera is.
We can also play with the photos we have taken in order to make an image which emphasises or develops something in the taken image, such as making a red look even redder, or deepening the blue of a sky. Even purists in traditional film photography would tweak photos quite dramatically in the darkroom to give them impact, so we are following a time-honoured tradition.
There are now a number of 'digital darkrooms' for the computer, the most well known of which is Adobe Photoshop. High-end versions of this program (the CS range) are for people working in fine art, web design, graphic design and similar industries. It is an industry standard partly because the manufacturer, Adobe, has created a whole suite of compatible programs which you can use together. For example a web designer could edit her photos in Photoshop and then easily transfer them to Adobe Dreamweaver, a website design program, without any glitches. Many of us do not need the high-end Photoshop CS series. Elements will do just fine, especially if it is Photoshop Elements 7 or Photoshop Elements 8.
You can edit in simpler programs such as Picasa, but one can quickly reach the limits of creative possibilities with these programs, while Photoshop offers far more options. In Photoshop, we can improve composition by cropping our photos, or making the relationships between light and shade more interesting. We can change colours, create black and white images, add special effects and work in layers, meaning we can combine two or more images to create photomontages, and also add text. That's only the start...! Interestingly, many of the tools in Photoshop and other image-editing programs have tools derived from traditional darkrooms like 'dodge' (lighten an area) 'burn' (darken an area). Usually once a student has learned some Photoshop tools, they can see the benefits of using this program, either to just lightly tweak and optimise photos, or to go further and use as another creative art medium in conjunction with photography.
If you are more interested in doing art, do consider photography to complement your art and help you develop your artistic ideas. Many people make paintings by copying photos. Often these photos are too complicated and need simplifying in order to focus on what you really want to say. Or the colours are too blue or washed out because of the lighting or low quality paper. Or you may want to combine several photos in one image but not know how. Or you may want to explore using photos with other art media in a collage, or making an artist book. All these things can be done in a photo-editing program - you can use the program to develop your visual ideas as part of your exploration and planning for your painting or mixed media art work. Also you can use your edited images with a data projector to project images for tracing onto paper or canvas.
I have just touched on some of the creative options possible with Digital Photography and Photoshop. If you feel inspired, or just curious, maybe your next step could be to look for a class or tutor. I usually find it is better to work one-to-one with photography students, as everyone has different abilities, interests, levels of knowledge and experience with photography. I aim to help my students get creative right away, in the first lesson.
You may want to take better photos of your family or holiday, or you may want to get into a particular theme or do an A-Level in Photography or want to use photography as a form of meditation; or not even be sure what you want to do, but be open-minded. Whatever the motivation, joining a class or getting tuition should bring enjoyment as well as progress.
Zangmo Alexander MA Fine Art PGCE lives in Norfolk and teaches one-to-one photography, along with classes, workshops and one-to-one tuition in art. - www.denisealexander.co.uk
Tel 01379 687360 alexanderzangmo@googlemail.com
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