PhotoProject :: towards an arty deconstruction

I have ben experimenting with the idea of deconstructing photos into something built up like an artist might construct a painting and how artists tackle colour is in general quiet different to the way a camera records it. The artist uses tone to establish a realistic 3D representation on the canvas, well that’s the way most artist have tackled it from the renaissances onwards. They first develop a monochrome underpaintings, not unlike a black and white photos, and then added colours in glazes and washes. The camera collects the intensity of the light and its wavelength at the same time, further it is the reflected light from the subject, not the colour of the object itself. Moreover artists have developed a lot of tricks with colour harmony, warm versus cool colours, shadow tints and how they can and can’t be mixed to make sure the results more pleasing to the eye. Reflected light knows nothing of these intricacies, and just delivers colour casts and all (which is why white balance is so important) Frequently traditional paintings will actually only have a few colours, but skillfully mixed and tinted. So I have been experimenting in ways to reduce the number of colour, perhaps at the same time enrich them to create a pleasing image. In the image above, which is based on a very simple shot of the nearby park, on the right. I used some filtering and post processing in Photoshop Elements, first I did a couple of colour (hue) shifts just in the shadow tones, one shift from the deep greens to yellow greens and the other from a darker shadow tone to a mauve/purple. I then used the plastic wrap artist filter to highlight the texture (give the surface a reflected 3d look).

Ok, Is it art? …or even close.