"Fine Art" Photography - what is it?

December 11, 2014  •  Leave a Comment

 

Quiet a few things have happened this week. First, Peter Lik sold a "Fine Art" photograph of Arizona Canyon for $6.5M. The most expensive photograph ever. This pretty much flooded my Facebook stream with a whole host of opinions on the worthiness of the photo and the broader debate on whether Photography could really be classed as an "art" let alone "fine art". The Guardian's Jonathan Jones wrote what I can only describe as a load of cr@p in an online article in response, debating the issue. His opening gambit was "Photography is not an art. It is a technology" - I only continued reading to have a good laugh. 

You see I am not a fine art photographer by any stretch of the imagination. But I would never be so arrogant to hold the opinion that photography can not be designated as "art". For people like Jonathan Jones I would answer "go and look at what people like Erik Johansson is doing, and then tell me Photography is not art". Erik is a fine example of an artist, who uses technology as his tools; his colour pallet, his canvas and his paint brush. He imagines first, he creates second. That's art for me. Not necessarily photography. Erik has blurred the boundaries and I am glad someone has. 

But the purpose of this blog is not to get into such a contentious and time old debate. I couldn't do it justice...

Back to my Facebook stream...a field guide posted a very effective big cat monochrome image this week that stood out and hit me. Love it or loath it, you couldn't deny that it jumped out at you and made you look...

Then I saw another wildlife photographer use the same post processing technique on a zebra image very effectively posted to Africa Geographic. Again, it was a high impact image that drew me in. Very effective and very beautiful. 

I have no idea what you call the technique. But I decided to go and have a play.

The image I've posted is the result. It doesn't work on every image. You have to have a very clean composition to be able to do this in Lightroom alone (yes I am still loathed to become a Photoshop manipulator!)...

So what was the point?

I wanted to create.

I have seen other photographers effectively use post processing to take their photography into the "fine art" direction. I repeat, I don't class myself as a "fine art" photographer. My style is very much "shoot what you see"...I feel strongly about that, and I want my personal style to continue to develop in that direction. But this doesn't mean I shouldn't try other creative techniques.

In fact by going through this post processing exercise I realise what types of photographs and compositions would be most effective for this conversion. And that in itself is another tick in the "knowledge" box.

I would say that these types of conversions are the wildlife equivalent of marmite. They are polarising and not to everyone's taste...

But don't let anyone tell you that Photography cannot be art.

What do you think?

cheers 

Jon

 


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