Stretch A Little

Fine Art Photography is great place for long exposure. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about long exposure and it really adds new challenges to photographing a land or city scape. I love the look of moving clouds in landscape and the streaks of lights from cars in the cityscapes. This photo was taken at Bass Lake as an entry to the Bass Lake Photo contest. The water has taken a nice smoothness along with the movement of the clouds. We made the decision to go out that day due to fact it was stormy. I love stormy weather for black and whites. I didn’t place but Delores took first place in the Flora & Fauna category, see here.  I’ve never seen a duck with its head under water keeping an eye open.

Being creative isn’t always easy. Coming up with new ideas can be very challenging. But I think as a creative, one has to be patient with themselves. Spinning off from last week’s blog, “relax” and the ideas will come. There are techniques for brain storming and if I’m in a rush I’ll do that, but I like taking a natural approach to creativity. I feel that having the technical knowledge from capture to print allows a photographer to visualize more what’s possible in the end (print). By knowing the tools and what is capable, an artist has more options for expression. This can include everything from a camera, post-processing to the printer. At every stage there are different offerings for one’s creative view.

I know a lot of photographers that have other people involved at the different stages after capture. Then it becomes a collaborative creative process. There is nothing wrong with that. I believe as a photographer you don’t have to know everything about the capture to print process, but if you just doing the capture, the more you know, the better prepared the images will be for print. Photographers should be able communicate to the Print Master what they want out of the print.

Moving forward I’ll be doing more long exposures, I’m fascinated by the artistic value it brings to photography. Long exposure is something I want to add to my box of tools and techniques. I’ll have to continue to work on it and be willing to creatively stretch a little.

David is a NC based photographer. To see his online gallery click here.

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