Silence Of The Palace Guard

No new techniques at play in this one; nothing especially fancy. Just a good photographic capture at the perfect time of day, cropped to a 1x2 scale. Enhancements to exposure, lighting, saturation and hue, plus filtering for edging and texture to create a dreamscape. I’d call it ‘old school’, except that much of what I’ve done with this work would have constituted new techniques several years ago. New or old is irrelevant. Every work defines its own reality.

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If it’s not recognizable, this is a view of the top of the City Museum in St. Louis, captured from the rooftop of the building next door, The Last Hotel, looking north.

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I did some work for family this past weekend that has me considering my purpose with this medium I call photo art; specifically, both what I’m trying to do and what I’m trying to NOT do. What I DO do, as I’ve stated so many times, is try to reveal the art in everyday things, captured deep within the pixels of digital photography. To accomplish this, the final work must ‘feel’ natural, not forced, not faked, not like I’ve simply taken a picture and applied a watercolor filter. It has to invoke its own vision, a reality that exists in its own universe as an extension of the artist’s imagination.

My nephew, who loves his cars, took a couple pictures and asked if I could do my artsy thing with them. Generally, I shy away from this – I like to control an image from the capture forward if I’m going to claim it as my own work. But he’s family and I love him, and I thought I’d give it a shot – plus, I love automotive art and would like to get better at it, so if nothing else it would serve as a good artsy exercise. While I was doing it, I kept thinking, “It can’t look fake!” It can’t look like I simply took his picture and slopped something over the top of it. It’s got to, as noted above, reflect an artistic vision extending from my own imagination – more difficult to achieve since I hadn’t captured the photograph. But, as it happened, it WAS a good exercise, and I THINK he’s going to be happy with what I’ve come up with; I sure hope so. Art appreciation is subjective. But so is reality …