Art Photography
Updated: Feb 20, 2021
Photography can be created in many ways. Traditional landscapes taken in beautiful places often with a tripod; portraiture, taken in studios or outdoors, often with enhanced lighting; action and sports photography, with fast speeds and long lenses; street photography, with discrete cameras; macro photography (at the close up detail level) and drone photography (at the elevated overview level); astro (night sky) photography and many, many more ...
I have been trying a variety of these types of photography, sometimes limited by the equipment that is available at the time. I really enjoy landscapes and details, although I don't have a classical macro lens, I still like to observe the small things in my surroundings.
Lately I have been learning a little about art photography and have tried my hand at ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) and using photo editing software to create art photography too. This has opened up a new area to play in and has encouraged my experimentation and creativity.
Here are some examples of the more arty and creative ideas I have been playing with.
Splash
This image is based on a photograph of trees in winter with some swooping clouds above them. I copied and flipped this image and then combined the two. The sky area seemed too plain so I layered in another winter tree image then played around with masks and shapes and here is the result!
Daisies
With this image I had a go at scanography, using a photocopier to create unusual portraits of flowers. These have been layered with textured background images and inverted copies of the daisy images.
Seed Head Explosion
I used a variety of techniques to produce this artwork. The main part of the image is a photo of a large allium seed head that I dried from my garden. This image was reflected and then I added a background layer filled with an image of a frozen pond which I then blurred using an adjustment layer. Next I added additional linear colour-filled masks for the squares and blobs scattered through the image.
Blue Splash
This image was created using software on my iPhone, again blending two images with a masked layer. It was an early version of Splash at the top of the post.
River Dane Winter
This image is a multiple exposure of an ICM image of the River Dane in the background and an image of winter trees in front. I tried different blend modes when I merged these images to get the resulting colours. I also used parts of another image of flocks of birds that I took in autumn.
This 'playing' with layers and masks, colours and blend modes can be done in Photoshop or Affinity Photo, I have also been using a new AI photo editing program called Facet which is my favourite so far.
I hope this inspires you to have a play too, let's create some exciting art photography during lockdown!