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CONTENTS

1. Creative Vision in the Digital Era
2. Exhibition of New Prints

Hi everyone,

While I wait for the snow to come off the mountain trails, I am taking the opportunity to talk about shifting the paradigm of photographic artistry.

Also in this Newsletter I am announcing the date for the opening of a new exhibit here at the gallery.

Enjoy the Newsletter, and pass it on to interested friends. Remember, our goal here at the Gallery is to share the creative process, and promote the arts; thus strengthening our artistic community. Thank you.

1. Creative Vision in the Digital Era

The Past Seven Years

Photography for me during the past seven years has changed dramatically. Firstly, I photographed my recent book The Bowron Lakes: A Lifetime Journey entirely with film, but when I went to publish, I found the printers in the midst of digitizing their printing processes. The state of transition in their ever-changing requirements caused me to postpone publication – for five years as it turned out.

Next, with globalization and a number of other factors, came the collapse of the stock photography business. With that came my decision to diversify. In 2002 Rita and I built a straw bale Gallery from which to sell my fine art photographic prints and books.

On top of all this, my four-year Grasslands Book Project required that I too move to digital capture. Talk about upheaval! Meanwhile, throughout this time I was still trying to make a living as a nature photographer and publisher. Times were tough and uncertain!

Did You Manipulate that in Photoshop?

In the creation of my early books I was happy to show beautiful “Kodak” landscapes or postcard scenics. But in my Bowron Lake book I wanted to search deeper into that familiar landscape and show images that were not so obvious. I began to use creative vision to push the limits of film. In the image below, for example, I created an impressionistic interpretation of a portage trail. This quickly became a best-selling print in the gallery but it was also the brunt of many questions by suspicious viewers. "Did you manipulate that image in Photoshop," they would ask. At first I felt defensive and that my integrity as a photographer was being questioned. Now, of course, I welcome the question.

Forest Trail
© Chris Harris; Canon EOS-3 film camera

Creative Vision

Forest Trail was created as a result of creative vision. Being intimately familiar with the landscape I was photographing, I formed that image in my mind while sitting by the fireplace in mid-winter. I made detailed notes of exactly how I was going to make the image when I was in the field. The next spring, while guiding a tour, I stopped my group and pointed out the photographic potential of this beautiful S-curving trail through the forest. Having studied my notes in the tent the previous evening, I made this image within a minute – before any of my clients even had their cameras out!

Image Manipulation

Photographic manipulation means ‘alter or adjust data to suit one’s purposes’. In the case above, that purpose was to create the image I had visualized. I manipulated reality by making a total of 16 exposures in my camera. But what if I had made a single image in-camera and then 15 more in my computer and blended them together to make this image? Is that manipulation any different? For me, because I sell it in my gallery as a photographic print, not a computer generated one, I feel good about having made it in my camera.

Bluff Lake Road
© Chris Harris; Canon EOS-3 film camera

For the image Bluff Lake Road, my creative vision came to me while looking through the viewfinder – not at home by the fire. The road represented a beautiful S-curve through the autumn colours, but the S-curve was ill defined because of the leaves being scattered all over the road. Had I been a painter, I would have painted the leaves where I wanted them to achieve my vision but, as a photographer, I went to the nearest farm and borrowed a rake and garbage bag. I raked the road clean and gathered more leaves in the forest to scatter over the road’s shoulder – thus accentuating the S-curve and creating what I felt was a more powerful image. Manipulated? Yes, indeed.

The reality, of course, is that photographs have been manipulated for as long as film has been around. We remove dead branches, add moons to landscapes with double exposures, saturate colours with polarizing filters, and change perspectives with a wide variety of lenses; in darkrooms, B&W photographers have been dodging and burning and fiddling with contrast for decades. It’s always been that way. Dry darkrooms with software have changed nothing.

What About Painters?

Still Life by the Sea
© Jane O’Malley, 2005

In my family background of both photographers and painters, we often discussed art from both perspectives. That is why I often think from a painter’s perspective in the field.

If you change the word ‘photographer’ to ‘painter’ and/or ‘image’ to ‘painting’ in this article, the negative connotations of the word “manipulation’ disappear. It’s then all about creativity which is positive. When you look at a painting such as my sister’s Still Life by the Sea, reality once again has been manipulated or altered through her creative vision. So the question remains – would you ask Jane in her gallery if her painting was manipulated, as people ask me in my gallery if Forest Trail was manipulated?

As artists, why is it that photographers are expected to make imagery in documentary terms while painters are completely free to interpret their subject matter through creative vision? Surely, both should be free to be true creative artists – a thought worth pondering!

The Photographer's Integrity

A few years ago, a very well known American photographer distorted a natural history image for the cover of his book and did not disclose his technique. Photoshop experts figured it out and, before long, every photo magazine carried the news to the world. It was a lesson for every photographer in the new era of digital photography. Similarly, a wildlife painter would not paint six grizzly cubs with its mother. A distortion of the truth pertaining to natural history is of no value to anyone. Every artist needs to be honest and integral to both themselves and the public.

The Future

I am happiest when I’m in the field, aware of all my senses, and expressing myself creatively. Solving computer problems and continually learning new software updates to express myself is definitely not my first love! Probably, in 50 years when digital photography has matured a little, I as a photographer will be able to completely concentrate on my creative visualizations in the landscape – trouble is – I won’t be around then!

2. Exhibition of New Prints

We have selected a new exhibit of prints to open with a celebration on June 6th.

We will release a special Newsletter to announce the opening, so if you live in the area, or have friends visiting, we hope you will all join us.