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President's Exposure I don't know how many of you have seen this exhibition at Te Papa in Wellington but if you have you will know how interesting it is. Joanna and I went at Easter and were much impressed. I must confess that in the past I have never really 'got' art and painting and have always preferred the so called "reality" of photography, i.e. the pressed for time, quick fire, reactive style and have never really stopped to think about it. Until now. It is common in the field of art or sport to reach a performance plateau where you stagnate and feel you are not progressing and really need to break the mould. In my case, I find myself week in and week out taking the same type of image. Safe, conservative, occasionally special and sometimes (dare I say it?) boring and repetitive. To try and broaden my photographic horizons, I have recently started to read and think more deeply about inspiration, style, colour, composition and lighting - things old Monet and his mates knew a fair bit about. I spent a good hour studying one or two paintings and Monet's 'impressions' of sunset behind a haystack, a field of red poppies under the brilliant hazy blue of a French summer sky and the Seine at dawn are all infused with light, colour, contrast and luminescence and conform (mostly) to all those "rules" of composition that we know and love. What I also learned was that Monet would not do a quick fire, do it once and move on type of painting. Instead he would have an idea for a project, head out onto his lifestyle block or go down to the river and watch the light. Every time it changed he would whip out a new canvas and do it again and again and again. And then he would head back to his studio for a spot of post production work on the image. Sounds familiar? Monet could easily have been a photographer of the modern era. I took three "impressions" away with me:
See you around. |