The Stand Alones of 2014

Pastel Sky

Assembling paintings for my solo showing in Trinidad, Colorado this last July I had to step back and judge my own work on a new level - inclusiveness. The exhibit was about more than 45 paintings. It was about 45 paintings which belonged together.

With the 365 Day Photographic Challenge it is about picking one photo which merits being the best for that one day. And then in this process of doing a recap on the best of those 365 it was about putting seven or eight photographs together on a blog. Photographs which belonged together because of subject or as an example of getting lucky. The photographs in this blog are examples of the art I would have left behind when doing the solo show this summer. Great photos but they just do not belong with the others.

Pastel Sky is a great dawn photo but it is pastel. It stands out among all my other dawn pictures because it is a different color. The photograph below is a more "normal" dawn at my house. But when I first posted it a photography friend told me I should not over saturate. Made it look fake. I didn't play with the colors on either of these two photographs. If you hung them together on a wall everyone would assume one was a post processing lie. The exhibit would be about that and not the other work.

Red Sky at Dawn

With a large segment of my photographs I just adjust for brightness and shadow. Maybe tweak the contrast a bit. But I also really like going all out on post processing. Painting with digital filters and effects. Like the bowl of fruit in the sun below. The photograph was taken from the interior of the room and back toward the direct light streaming through the windows. What my first photography instructor (and maybe every one since) told me not to do.

Not having to pay for every shot in cost of film and processing frees up the creative side. When I got my first digital camera it took me a long time to get over the "worshiping the shot" mentality. I loved the light and colors on these orbs, and the original is not bad but by playing with enhancement of colors and highlights the tomatoes began to look like glass so I used an enamel filter. I guess it fits in the category of still life but this was not my year to do those. Lots of still life studies in the 2013 365 day challenge.

Fruit Bowl

The next three photographs would fit into a category called reflections, but while reflections remained a favorite in 2014 I also began to regard them as ordinary and so fewer made it to the post a day. The photograph below was of my new-to-me truck. There is something about its teal blue color and the tint of the windows which turns it into a mirror. This is not a photograph of my truck but of my back yard reflected on my truck.

Big Blue as Mirror

Just like this isn't a picture of a pink dress on display in a window but of Main Street Trinidad where this window is. It has won an award in an exhibition and two prints of it have sold. One on metal and another on metallic paper. It is available for sale on my artist's site of Fine Art America. Print number one is hanging in my studio in Black Lake, New Mexico.

Main Street Reflections

Of all the pond reflection pictures I took this year this one made the cut and it isn't even a great reflection but it is a marvelous photograph of the surface of a pond being rippled by a faint breeze. Okay, maybe you have to be a photographer to be thrilled by that.

Trees of Water

Photographers are also thrilled by old trucks. And New Mexico has a lot of old trucks. A lot of them still run but a lot have become lawn ornaments. The one below is at Eagle Nest Museum. I like this picture because like the first truck picture I ever took it is just part of the truck. It is truck as sculpture.

The Old International

If I went back several years there would be enough umbrella pictures for their own blog. Not sure why I like umbrellas, but this is the one for this year. Maybe it is another photographer thing again

Umbrella

The 365 Day challenge for 2015 has begun. Visit Binford-Bell Studio for daily posts.