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I work with photography and the computer. I have always needed to use photography in my professional life -- to record sites for future design and planning and to record my sculptures and landscapes -- and thus, have always had a working knowledge of the camera. My interest was only sufficient to fill my practical need, until I became dissatisfied with the limitations inherent in photographing my landscape designs. I was working on a fairly large park in Pennsylvania and wanted to capture the sweeps of my landforms. I experimented with panoramic photography. No single film frame can capture a broad scene without the distortions of the wide-angle lens. I learned how to take a series of pictures which would then be stitched together in the computer to form a single, very wide image. I took to photography much more keenly and started to build trips and vacations around finding panoramic vistas. This volume of print images is the result of this.
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Apart from the basic act of stitching the photographs, each component image has to be adjusted so that the resulting image shows an even exposure
and color balance throughout. If this is not done, the image has a patchwork quality. I had to learn the basics of digital image manipulation
just to achieve a decent, straightforward panorama. In learning this foundation of
technique, there is a wonderful scope for play, for taking the color balance controls, for example, to extremes. There is also a great temptation to be self-indulgent. Just because you can make granny's face green, doesn't mean
you should! But I played -- and I learned. I learned to the extent that I no longer needed just to be amazed at what I could do, but to the point that the
computer became a natural means of expressing what I needed to convey about the world I see.
For the most part, the software I use is Adobe Photoshop (see notes below.) Apart from the basic tools to balance the color and tonal values of the image, the program can impose filters on an image and can compose the image with layers. A filter is a process that is applied to the
image to extract certain information. In film photography you may place a color correction filter on the lens so that the camera extracts an image made up of only a certain section of the spectrum or one that shifts or enhances
one portion of it. In the digital world, filters may be as simple as that, but the notion of extracting information from a scene, the image captured in the initial photograph, can be extended to extracting a
great variety of information. For example, the edges of shapes in the image can be emphasized and extracted, or just the green components of the edges of the shapes. Some filters simplify the scene so that,
for instance, all shapes smaller than 3 pixels in width are eliminated; some distort the scene as if you had placed a patterned glass screen in front of the
lens. The program comes with built-in filters and you can purchase third party plug-in filters to extend the range.
Filters are often overly simple and overly used. What really makes them a
sensitive and powerful tool for the artist is the ability to combine them with image layers. In simple terms, you could run 15 filters over an image and
each resulting version of the original could have its own layer. Those 15 layers would be combined to produce a finished picture that might, for
example, have green edges snaking around a diamond faceted version of the scene that emphasizes the red end of the spectrum. But the layers have even more power. You do not combine them solely by changing their
transparency. You can overlay in such a way that the second layer lightens the first, or darkens it, or shows the difference between the two -- in all, you
can combine layers in 22 diferent ways. Many of my prints are the result of over 30 different operations. Sometimes I develop a version of the image
and then a second and a third, each the result of several operations. These composited versions are then combined for the final image.
In the photography press, there is debate about truth and the ethics of digital manipulation. This is certainly an issue in photo-journalism, but the changes I
make are similar to the interpretations or renderings of the reality of a scene as painters (and, indeed, photographers) have always persued. However, I
do very little changing of details. I am not emulating painting in that sense. Almost all the changes I make are made globally.
The metaphor for me is that I am not changing the appearance of the
scene I photographed. I am changing my eyes. I am changing the way I look at the scene -- it is I who is changing.
Notes: I do not use Adobe Photoshop exclusively. For example, I also use a wonderful and very much cheaper program, called Picture Window. The
plug-ins I favor are by Flaming Pear, Andromeda, Amphisoft, and Buzz Pro. For Panorama stitching I use PanaVue Image Assembler and The Panorama Factory.
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