Seasonal review of 10,000 hours deliberate practice mastering photography Summer 2023. To see the above photos in more details, click on the image above, to read about them click below, and in either case please follow me on the social media links to the right.
Top Image
“Hidden Self-Portrait”
This is certainly the most striking image I’ve created in a while. The general comment from my fellow photographers is that it is “admired for its technical achievement, but I wouldn’t want it on my wall!”
Other Images
“Afghan Woman”
Inspired by Steve McCurry’s “Afghan Girl”, this was shot at the Ragged Victorians event at the Chiltern Open Air Museum. The muted green/ magenta palette, with the background thrown way out of focus, contrasts with the piercing blue eyes which dominate the image.
“Migrant Mother”
Another “homage to …” image shot at the Ragged Victorians event. This one nods to Dorothea Lange’s US depression era photograph.
“Two Candles (After Gerhard Richter)”
A very simple photograph shot in my kitchen. Technically, I was pleased with the dynamic range around the wicks of the candles, which are the point of focus in the image
Candles evoke religious and spiritual associations
“Movement in the Turbine Hall”
A composite of 5 images shot at the Tate Modern over a period of less than a minutes. It took over 20 hours to process this image.
 | “High Key Turbine Hall” Deliberately over-exposed and straight from camera creating an interesting minimalist image Detail below: “Impressionism at the Tate”  |
“Entering the Summer Exhibition”
Shot in the foyer of the Royal Academy, steps leading to the Summer Exhibition. I was attracted by the lights in the steps and the tile patterns.
“Awkward Silence”
Candid from the Stoke Poges Photographic Club’s visit to the Rebellion Brewery.
New Artists
My interest is developing in neo-expressionism as an art movement; primarily a combination of figurative and abstract painting. At the time of writing this art movement has a very poor write-up in Wikipedia, which bizarrely describes it as a sexist and retrograde movement of the mid 1980’s that collapsed as a result of over commercialism.
A Euro-centric account of neo-expressionism, i.e., European figurative painters influenced by Abstract Expressionism, is provided by “The Art Story“
This quarter, I was introduced through John Seed, the art historian and YouTuber to the Bay Areas Figurative painters. Most notably David Park, and also Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn. Early neo-expressionists, possibly the first, to combine the figurative style from Europe as practiced by Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, et al., with abstract expressionism, which was the dominant art form on the East Coast and USA as a whole. At the time it was considered a brave move for an American artist to move away from pure abstraction to create objective work.
Later neo-expressionists include: Philip Guston, Julian Schnabel & Jean-Michel Basquiat (USA); Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke & Gerhard Richter (Germany); Jenny Saville, Cecily Brown and Paula Rego (UK) [Rego: Portugal/ UK – Slade School, etc.]. I have applauded these artists in this journal for some time. The movement is by no means over.
Distinctions
The revised potential landscape A Panel, above, was deemed by Paul Mitchell to be more balanced with the issues of inappropriate processing having been largely addressed. Resubmission booked for October; let’s see…
Notes:
Recent blog posts: