The Communal Hump

This capture illustrates the importance of edging, or more specifically, properly setting the subject itself off from the minutia surrounding it. In this case, the original capture caught the camels in essentially the same color and light as the background – they were lost with no definition in a busy swirl of brown. It’s been suggested that some of my works are indeed too busy, and this would effectively be the cause. In my case, failing to spot the essence of the photograph; seeing too many things I like in that minutia and trying to throw everything into the final work (I can argue that there are no absolutes, and that in fact on occasion a ‘busy’ work is better than a simplistic one). A good photographer would study the subject at length and look for exactly the right time and placement, perhaps catching the subject in brilliant lighting while the background is in shade, spending hours, or even days stalking the right moment. This is why I insist that I’m a photo artist, not a photographer. I don’t have hours or days; at most I might have a few minutes to line the shot up and capture it, and then using camera equipment that is decidedly less sensitive to light than the sophisticated lenses a professional photographer would bring to bear. In my case, I’m using Photoshop to select the subject and work with it differently than the background so that the subject stands out from it (it could be argued this work does not go far enough with that – it holds too close to realism and does not venture bravely into a more abstract composition – love to hear your thoughts on that). Then it’s a matter of additional work to tie both parts together into a single artistic vision. Indeed, there is an irony that I posses the time and ability to spend hours on the computer completing a work when the photographic capture is a quick point-the-camera-and-grab. But then, another element of photography is freezing fast moving moments. I’m simply using the computer as an interchangeable lens the camera cannot accommodate.