Art or Snapshot?

Devotions

I have found a group of photographers to explore the realm of the possible with. I am going to call it digital art. But given the things I used to do in a black and white darkroom during college I think it is still totally permissible to call it photography.

Devotions above is the current state of play with a photograph I originally took as merely a snapshot in Mesa Tower at Desert Overlook on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I say snapshot because I was in a recording mode with my digital camera. I had taken this ten day vacation with my sister to be inspired to paint again, and to get some wonderful photographs that were not on film, and spend some time with my sister.

We are both photographers be it as a hobby or an art form that we are pursuing. As such there were times we set up tripods with a specific purpose in mind like sunrise in the Grand Canyon that morning. And times when you just point at an interesting juxtaposition of colors and shapes and snap.

The original photo

The lighting in the Mesa tower was challenging. My Nikon, on auto, was confused. A time existed, like with film, I would have tossed this particular photo but I loved the shapes so downloaded to my computer I ran it through my post processing program.

Heightened color

My first thought had been to just adjust for brightness and contrast and see what I got. But I couldn't stop just there. I had to push the saturation level and hues because if nothing else I wanted to use it for a painting idea. And I still might.

But I was inspired by those friends of mine to add some texture to the photograph. And that gave me the opening photo Devotion. It is an artistic statement within itself. Will I still do a painting of this subject? Yes, I might. But more as a concept and with addition or rearrangement of elements. Or I may have the photograph printed on canvas and sign it.