Week Two of 2014 in Photos

Day Eight

Art is a journey. I have believed that for a long time, and that belief is why this blog is called Creative Journey. This week I have been traveling on that journey with both photography and painting. My painting is going through a metamorphosis and so is my photography.  And photography in general is evolving because of the dry darkroom possibilities with digital technology.

I have been going through my recent photographs selecting photos for a show called Insight where it only has to begin with a photograph. It is not about how good your photograph can be but how artistic the end result is. So it is not surprising for me that this week I was looking at four subjects, each in two different ways. Day eight was subject number one. I loved how this city wall looked like a canyon wall especially when colors were enhanced.

Day Nine

But to me it looks far more monumental in black and white. These two photos were taken one right after the other. In the film days you could say the occupied neighboring cells on the strip of film. I am a camera turner. Not unusual for me to stand in one spot and move the camera rather than me. The play of light and the oblique angles in this building attracted me. The question was first how best to capture them. And then once on the computer how best to translate those images.

Day 12 - Same building/other side

Another example of me standing in one place and just turning the camera or me or zoom lens is Day 12, and a photo which will be posted most likely in the coming week.

Day 15???

I treated both photos differently in the dry darkroom of my photo processing program and they look like two different buildings. BTW you can twist the images in your computer rather than your camera on location. I have played with these piano key windows quite a lot.

I have said before that every photographer needs to turn away from their subject and see what is behind them. With buildings you also need to walk totally around them. These windows were on the right side of the first two photos. And the ones below were on the left side or back of the building.

Day 11

I loved the play of shadows on the ramp and wall. I am posting the original of this photo right off the camera below. I am not done with this image. All good digital art must begin with a good basic image. You may note that other than changing it to black and white I digitally straightened the most dominate vertical line in the finished photo.  I have seen some really good photographs fail because it makes the viewer uneasy because of a lack of anchor. Oddly you can make viewer really off balance like the two window pictures but not just a little tipsy. I am playing with that in a sketch for a painting I am hoping to finish today: How far is too far?

The original of Day 11

One of my frequent fans on my Facebook fanpage thinks I have gone a bit too far with the photo below. She believes the viewer has to work too hard. And that is a definite legitimate concern.

Day 10

I liked this treatment because it becomes more about the drip lines down through the misted window than the image behind that window.  And I was drawn too that because the drip lines look like the trees the droplets of water conceal.

Day 14

In the image I posted today of the same subject from a more oblique view the photograph is more about what is behind the glass rather than the glass. Color helps but also making the horizontal lines in Day 10 more angled draws the viewer beyond the glass. Horizontal lines are static especially in the bottom third of the photograph.

I am sometimes amazed at how much of my four years of fine arts I remember. And it is one of the reasons I shy away from photography workshops. They seem all too much about F stops and all too little about art.

I didn't put Day 13 on this weekly blog because it was off the topic. Visit Binford-Bell Studio on Facebook to see it. Better yet, become a fan and see the photos as I post them daily.

Creative Process - Rio Grande Glory

Rio Grande Glory by J. Binford Bell

I began this 24 x 30 inch mixed media painting last summer. It was inspired by several photographic trips to the Rio Grande River which has become a national monument - Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. There are so many great photographs taken of this river because for a large segment a road runs beside it. I drive through Embudo Canyon a lot and my mind is full of even more images of the light on the sides and the rafts on the river.

A road runs beside it through Embudo Canyon

Doing a painting of this inspiring canyon and the river which formed it became an opportunity to blend the digital images with my mental images and apply the emotion I feel when I am there. As I looked through my photo files this morning to find the one image I had used to arrive at the drawing I realized there was not just one but several. I liked the light on the hills in the photo above and the plateaus in the photo below. 

Fly fisherman above Embudo Canyon

And I love the bends of the river with exposed islands from the low water this spring.

I began my painting in July. With low water and exposed rocks. And I finished it in the fall when the river was higher and the colors along the banks no longer green. For a couple months the painting sat in my studio stalled with just the sky and the water. I don't use a lot of green in my compositions. And yet those were the pictures I had to refer back to.

Two principle elements

 I was lucky enough to be able to return to the Rio Grande shores this fall and get some new inspiration. I toyed with adding the fall reflections to the river like in the photograph below but I think that is another painting. I wanted the river in my painting to be a reflection of the sky. But I now had the palate for my shore.

Colors of fall

I was able to begin working in earnest again and blocked out the major colors. I knew at this stage that once the watercolors were in place I would begin using the oil sticks to finish.

Basic colors laid in

 And after the shore was the sky. The subject is the river and sky and the oil sticks were a perfect enhancement of poured watercolor sky.

Almost complete

In the final details were segments of other photographs and other times between low water and high. Last trip I made to the Rio Grande the rocks were not visible. The crosses on the bluff are from further up river. And I took the road out that runs along the right side. Artistic license or blinders. When I look at the Rio Grand in Embudo Canyon I do not see the road. I find it rude that it shows up in photographs.

And I always put the ravens in the skies of my day time paintings. And since the death of a soul mate there has always been one raven alone. But a friend asked my recently if my painting has changed since I am no longer producing for fairs. And yes, it has. "How?", she asked. One obvious way is I never took months to finish a painting. There were deadlines to be met. Booth space to be filled.

Now I am painting subjects close to my heart. I hope I am putting more of my soul into each work.