Copyright @ 2005
Artistic Visualization
As an artist my way of visually interacting with the world has changed; not for better or worse but differently
As my movements both literally and figuratively have become slower, calmer, the way I see, hear, smell, and feel has evolved
Yet still I retain my thematic roots
Now instead of running through a park day or night, I now walk, sit, watch, and wait to see how the lights both artificial and natural cast out rays and create shadows these great projectors of contrasting tones, of lightness and darkness.
Yet still I observe and participate in a continually thematic fashion, which has been a reoccurring theme in all my life’s work
Constantly I struggle with contrast and colour, colour and contrast attempting to capture and create just the right helping of sharpness or ambiguity to project the proper rendering of what and how I perceived a scene or cloud at a given moment in time, and present it in a way that conveys the wonder of the moment, that place, and that time
So I try to capture the periphery of what my eyes, my senses, my imagination, and memory can discern when looking into the fog at say where El Capitan should be if not obscured by the fog; knowing that just beyond, just out there is more
So I attempt to capture the moment when that more is just beyond my visual periphery
That spot where ones not quite clear if their imagining, sensing, or remembering just where El Capitan begins and the darkness ends
Where lights and darks mingle thus creating visual ambiguity, this razors edge of visual ineptness
Like hiking a familiar trail at night, sensing more through familiarity and memory, never quiet sure but somewhat familiar of where to step
Until a lightning bug creates an ephemeral somewhat ethereal illumination of the foreground, of the trail ahead just enough for one to access old memories to visualize that section of trail and once again
Then one begins to stride with confidence knowing for those next few steps exactly where to place ones boots and poles
Then after the light dissipates once again one feels a little less sure, and ones gait becomes somewhat shorter, stuttered, and a little more hesitant, until the cloud cover lessens and the moon diffuses through just enough to give one some vague visual outline of the forest floor so as to make out just enough of the trees lining the path to stop one for a moment thinking one’s eyes might adjust to make out just a little bit more
This moment of perceived or anticipated increase in visual acuity is what I attempt to capture through the right combination of exposure, fstop, and shutter speed. Having tuned my camera as a musician would her instrument to capture just the right visual note that most but not all would visually listen to and hopefully hear in the same visual tone as I had that night out on the Pacific Crest Trail waiting for my breathing to settle and find that moment just between breaths to,
CLICK!