The Art of Architectural Photography: Beautiful Palette Colors- Blacks

Colors have allure and vibrancy.  Colors dance off the photograph as they create the dynamic tensions or dreamy flow within selected palettes.  However, trying to create with some colors is a Herculean task for me.  I always found reds to be especially difficult to work with, or certain blues.  These powerful eye-catching colors can take over the composition and render a photograph disjointed or exclusionary.  Titian, the great painting master, used reds in an unparalleled way and allowed his entire compositions equal footing with the force of the Cardinal's robes.  Monet used many blues in his Impressionist paintings and very successfully incorporated other colors that are afforded their own distinction.  I am enamored with all colors, each for its own attributes.

Blacks are compelling in their variety, dynamism, depth, richness, delicacy and beauty as colors.  Within the blacks palette, there are soft, hard, strong, light, luminous, shadowy and a host of other color characteristics.  Throughout my career as a photographer I have studied the richness and artistry of the various tones of blacks, marvelous additions to any photograph/artwork. And, especially working in Black and White architectural photography, I need to compose with the Blacks areas of the compositions in order to give prominence and form to the darks as well as the lights.  However, using a blacks palette for abstract photography is quite another story as the forms are created not by subject but by my own composition.

In working with my current theme of abstract photography, I have been fascinated with focusing on monochromatic color as a structural guide for composition.  Blues, greens, sands have all been utilized as unique hues, but with enormous range of spectrum within their own color grouping. My first book was of abstracts within the whites palette.  This palette was chosen arbitrarily so that I could envision how abstracts of different styles might have a connection through values of tone and hue. Whites, because they can be indistinguishable from each other and actually "lose" form and content, proved to be a benchmark in my experimentation with a series connected through a single palette but with all of its various iterations.  Working in this monochrome palette, I found that I could accomplish many of my goals and thus, I proceeded to blues, which were another challenge. Once I had a collection of abstract photography in various blues palette I sought out another color of great beauty yet, like whites, challenging in its properties: blacks.

Blacks, like most colors, have limitless variations within their "category" of color; however, these can easily dominate an abstract and/or create challenges when I am attempting to bring forth forms because of the way in which the darks blend into each other.  Further, adding too much light takes away from the notion of an abstract dominated by the palette of blacks.

Composing with the wide array of blacks colors, I have come to a greater understanding of the relationships of dark tones and how they interact within a specific composition of an abstract.  I think that abstracts are a little like jazz in the sense that I can riff off components in the composition as they "happen" rather than focusing on a particular subject or form.  The Blacks especially allowed for this as I was compelled to create and bring forth forms and line without compromising the overall elements of using darkest and lighter darks.  Working with and studying the Blacks palette greatly added to my knowledge of all photography and will certainly further my ability to create realism as well as abstract photography and art in the future. 

The Art of Architectural Photography: On Creating

It is the passion of every artist to create.  Many artists also exist to realize their creations.  For others it is the journey.  Personally, the journey or the process of creating works of art is the allure of art, its absorption, immersion and gratification for me.  I am most satisfied with a work I am creating just before its completion.  Not to say that my photographs do not live up to my expectations: often they do.  But it is not the end result that keeps me completely engrossed in photography: it is the process of finding the subject; photographing the subject from as many angles as possible; the post production of retouching, composing and "getting it right" that has made and still makes my journey so wonderful.  And many times, I am thinking of my next images as I complete the several I am bringing to fruition.

All that said, there are dreams that elude artists as well as those that come to be.  A dream that many artists experience is to create something totally unique.  An out-of-the-box or completely exclusive work or genre that only pertains to themselves and their art.  Many search for this elusive prize.  Numerous master artists have never archived this particular accomplishment of creating something, a style unlike any other: all their own.  To be sure, artists may never even consider creating a novel approach or technique or result that they deem important or even related to making their art.  I, however, have long fantasized about going where no one has gone; perhaps being the first.  To that end, I have studied art and in my travels, I have first and foremost relished seeing the art of others in places that define their art, yet are universal.  For example, when I traveled to Spain for Sorolla and Sweden for Zorn, I finally could (almost) conceptualize how light is expressed: the brilliantly hot light of the southern Mediterranean and cool, softer light of the North.  And my resent trip to India gave me some understanding of Eastern forms and compositions at times little utilized in the West: great, pointed arches; fanciful fretwork and other aesthetic elements.

Attempting to incorporate the new to expand upon my photography has been a marvelous journey in itself.  The meshing of my experiences with my own perspective has given me the will to dig deeper and continue to evolve as a photographer.  Initially, my love of black and white and sepia architectural photography developed into other areas of photography and subject.  And while I continue to explore the new, I cherish my past interactions with my camera and post-production.  Thus, my new focus on abstract photography has grown out of many sources.  I returned to abstraction, which I (and many others in the art world) studied in college and graduate school in the  1960s and 1970s. Of course then we looked towards the earlier abstracts of say Kandinsky, Miro and even back to cave drawings, which sometimes took on abstracted qualities.  Only currently, I come to the genre of abstraction with fresh eyes.

My recently self-published little book of abstracts also contains a secret, for often abstracts have many hidden meanings.  The book is a compilation of years of seeking composition, line, texture, form and the other principles of photography and art.  It is part of a journey that will be expressed in a number of books.  Take a look if you'd like to travel with me. 

Folio of abstract photographs created in a whites palette. Each abstract photograph has special associations with imagery, identity and imagination, thus inspiring connections.
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