Black and white art

I came across this video by Kevin Holliday about the link of graphic design to photography and the creation of art by vision not capturing. Quite impressive images, too.

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Interesting, some really bold choices, he takes his images quite far away from simple snapshots :smiley:

I think It’s a good example to show how processing can be (is?) important in the creative process…

On the work itself, sure many nice things shown, some a little bit artificial for my taste.

I found some images quite impressive others look a little “overdone” to me. It’s always personal choice how far you want to go but art needs definitely more than just capturing. You need a vision to produce art, ot maybe you could just called it a creative idea :innocent:.

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Thanks a lot for that link!

I think Kevin touches upon some very important aspects of photography that often is not mentioned in many courses, workshops etc. But of course this can be seen as a fallout from the division that he emphasizes and presents as the basic choice between capturing reality and present it as such (Documentary photography), or creating something more than a photograph (Create imagery).

His approach to light and how to capture and process images that ends up conveying a totally different light than at capture, was such a strong message conveyed. I think there are few video lectures that I’ve seen that impacted me as much as this one did.

(The main issue for me may be that his approach leads to even more time in front of the PC doing the developing part of the image, that he rated at 60 % of time spent on the image – while I want my photography to take me more out into nature …)

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His images show just how far you can go too far… a useful counterpart to the selfiefacebook photo !!
Images that, in a few years or decades, will be seen only as a testimony to the mannerism of our times?

But in my opinion it’s always a good idea, before pressing the button, to think about the printed image that will result rather than what’s in front of the lens, and therefore to have an idea of the processing that will be applied to the photo.

His own answer in an interview to the question: “Where do you think long exposure photography is going? Has it become a cliché?”

Kevin: To some extent I do believe that long exposure photography has become a bit of a cliché. However, I also believe that this trend will subside simply because the masses don’t have the patience for the time it takes for ONE capture. It will be those that are like me and use long exposure to fulfill a VISION that will continue on with it. If a vision is driving one to do something, they will do all it takes to achieve that vision. This is exactly where I land, and I believe that many of my long exposure peers do as well… "

Just having a vision is meaningless. It has to be a good vision. From the video it seems he’s just trying to make impactful imagery but has nothing to convey with his impact. Everything has a vibe but there’s no evidence he’s interrogating what vibe he’s producing.

His end results are pretty but empty, nearing kitch. There’s no rule imho that you have to make “real” images but a real image always has something. A made image loose the aspect of recording something and have to make up for by adding layers that make it something. That’s real hard, so most fail.

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I didn’t finish the video I must confess (not really my kind of thing) but he’s certainly good at his thing. The style reminds me of some Nick Zochios’ work - Nick Zochios | Flickr

I ran into his images on one of the Nikon user groups on FB. Again, I don’t really like it, but respect it.
:slight_smile: