Friday, January 06, 2012

Hellebore, digitally altered photograph

Around here, Hellebore or Christmas Rose (not a rose!) is one of the earliest spring flowers.   e had a kind of Spring-like day today.

This is from another year, the flower that is.  I just made the painting on artrage--it is a digitally altered photograph--I took the photograph and altered it on artrage.

Hellebore, by Mary Stebbins Taitt
digitally altered photograph
altered in Artrage
This was an experiment and is NOT the way I normally work.  However, I consider this an "art" piece for the following reasons:


  • I took the photo, an artistic composition decision
  • I altered the photo with additional choices about lighting and so on in Photoshop raw
  • I "painted" the photo in artrage
  • I further manipulated it in Photoshops again after the fact.
Photography purists don't like manipulated photos and art purists don't like manipulated photos.  Perhaps there should be a category for them, because I think this is a piece of art.


Here is the original unmanipulated raw photograph.  I have friends who always like the original photos better than any "art" I make from them and that is their prerogative.  Yes, I recentered the art piece.  If You click on either of them, you can view them side by side.  I don't normally do this remember--it was an experiment, one of a number of such, for fun.  I feel as if I am sounding defensive, and I am feeling that way because so many people attack this kind of work.  In my opinion, they do not appreciate the kinds of artistic decisions that go into it.  You can choose to like or dislike it--what matters most to me is that I LIKE IT and I enjoyed doing it.

I am also not sure this is done.  It needs more work. Whether or not I will choose to do that remains to be seen.

3 comments:

Laura Tattoo said...

so beautiful, my new background! as always, your blog astounds. so glad to see you are doing so much wonderful new work, mary. always love you. xoxoxoox

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

Thanks so much Laura, hope you are feeling better!!!! XOXOX

Lowell said...

There is no such thing as an unmanipulated photo! Every digital camera makes adjustments to every picture as the picture is taken - including color, sharpness, contrast, etc.

Do these people think film photography was unmanipulated? I and other darkroom specialists spents untold hours in the darkroom, manipulating the film and the prints to get the cropping right, the colors how we wanted them, sharpening, redoing the contrast, etc.

And if you took your film to Walgreens or another drugstore, their machines did all that automatically so your so-called "unmanipulated" photos had been "manhandled" from the time you took the picture.

Do these folks think that Ansel Adam's photos came right out of his camera that way! Heh, heh. He once said if he got 12 good prints a year he was doing good...he, too, spent hours manipulating his photographs to get them the way he wanted.

Photography is an art form; it captures a second in time that is gone forever and it is a second that only the photographer sees - it isn't reality. Other photographers snapping that same scene would have quite different photographs. None of them is "real" because reality is a construct of each photographer's eye.

All of this is to say manipulate the hell out of your photos - do whatever you want with them...you are a multi-talented artist and people who insist on "original unmanipulated raw photograph(s)" don't have a clue what they're talking about...there is NO such thing!

Have a wonderful weekend!