Photography Is An Art.

Photography is an art. Plain and simple but such a powerful statement.

Art is subjective. It's open to interpretation by everyone who experiences it. Not one person will interpret it the same way as another. What you see as a fantastic photograph others may and will see as unattractive.

When it comes to my photography, my art, I'm my worst critic but what is making it worse is listening to what everyone else thinks I should be doing with my art. I've been giving this much thought lately as some of my worst critics are very close to me. The worst thing I think I can do is give too much merit to the opinions of people who don't even know the first thing about my vision and what I'm trying to express.

I like a certain look on the portraits I take. I like them in tight and personal with a bit of a brighter look. Some folks, members of my own family even, don't like that at all. Some prefer the Walmart or Sears look. This used to really bother me. I'd get very defensive and sometimes quite mad. After some though though, I realize it's alright. Everyone is more than entitled to their opinion. But that's all it is, an opinion. I will no longer allow the narrow views of others to steal my drive and make me feel bad about how I like things to look. From now on, I photograph for me first. If others like my style then I will gladly photograph for them. If they don't like my style, there are plenty of other photographers out there.

So now that I'm more worried about what I think of my photography, I'd like to share a few of my favorites in this post and tell a little about them. In future posts I will explain what it is about the image that I like and maybe a little about how I went about it capturing the image.

My Sweet Pea. I flat out love this image. I love her expression. I love the blur I added after the fact to focus your attention on her face. I even love the slightly magenta tone to the image. I feel love from this image. And here's the best part, I didn't spend half an hour with my lighting gear getting this shot just right and then hours in photoshop to make it just so....I took this with the instagram app on my iPhone 4. Yup, my iPhone.

My Parents - A Portrait. This one is very special to me I guess because it's my parents. I love them so I love photos of them.LOL. A bit one sided but there it is. I like the lighting I used here. One 48" umbrella and a large reflector for fill. I like the black background. I like that both of them wore dark pants even though I asked them not to. They didn't know why. I love the sharpness of this image even though I used a $700.00 lens instead of a $2100.00 lens. The gear heads will love that last statement!

Grandma Deep In Thought. This is one of my favorite photos of my Grandma. I happened to take it and it makes me smile. She was a sweet, sweet lady and I miss her greatly. I love her expression and how she is looking away from me at something that has captured her attention. I love the detail in her face and sweater. I love the blown out background in the window. What was out there didn't matter anyway.

So enough of portraits let's see some odd stuff. I love this fuel cap on a tidy tank at work one frosty morning this past winter. The light was early morning perfection. The texture of the frost just leaps off the image at you. The color is perfectly saturated.

Storm On Fork Lake. Ok, everyone who has seen this image loves it. So why did I include it in this ranting post? They love it until I tell them it's an HDR then half of them say "well, it didn't really look like that did it?". To that I say who cares? It is my favorite image from 2011 and I've sold it several times over already. Oh, and yes, this is exactly what it looked like to see it in person. I did not embellish it at all. Just brought out some detail that the camera could not see in one exposure that my eyes could.

So there you have it. I'm more interested in what I think of my photography now as it is my photography and my means of expressing myself. It's not that I don't want to hear what others think of my work, I just won't put all my self esteem on those opinions ever again.

Thank you for reading my rant. I feel much better now. I truly hope you enjoy my work.

Chris.