Primal Thought

Featured Artist Ted Byrne

Last month I trashed a box filled with rusting cans of Diafine and Dektol along with boxes of poly-contrast paper and an old safe holding ancient Agfa fine art paper. A bouquet of Rodinal and fixer wafted from the lot. If that’s all Greek then you have no memory of the wars waged over condenser versus diffusion printing, or how some people smeared petroleum jelly on lens filters to create soft focus before the shutter was snapped – or used stockings to do a lot of the same thing in the darkroom. All us wedding photographers had kaleidoscope and star-screen filters to create bridal clichés that sold fast. Unsharp masking was the tedious post-processing tool of those of us working journalism and sports photography. Don’t get me started on burning, dodging or solarization for portraits and art work.

Some forty years ago I was a professional photographer and it taught me how tough a job that was. So I went to economics school and photography has merely become my lifelong obsession. Yes I have won awards, had shows, and appeared in print and collections. I also understand the media from the other side both as a broadcaster, manager, writer, and an editor of a series of successful trend-bucking business magazines.

There is nothing ‘natural’ about a pixel. A talented friend says she rarely uses PhotoShop filters since they seem designed to save bad photos. Ironically she shoots with a digital camera, through a wide angle macro lens and adjusts the dynamic range of all of her images in LightRoom. She’s also been known to spray misty dew on her meticulously arranged and lit still life floral compositions. She refuses to be tyrannized by any aspect ratio and crops at whim.

I can’t recall a time when there wasn’t some group anxious to drum experimenters out of photography but the debate when it comes to photographic art is over. Pixels exist to be molested. Sure there’s still a lot to be discovered in the classical forms of photography but those who declare that only classical-looking images are photographs suffer from nostalgia dysfunction.

Post processing is not photography’s exit door it’s a pathway to another enormous room. All of these images are photographic in all of their parts. I don’t draw, paint, or sculpt but I do enhance (NOT manipulate…) pixels.

There has never been a more exciting time for an artist to have photographic skill – this is the golden age. Look at my recent Race Against Racism Posters and many of the virgin images from my flashcards or visit my portfolio where the shutter release is the beginning of artistic creation, not its end.

Everything we are doing is the first time that pre and post processing opportunities like this have existed for photographers. Everyone coming later will learn from us. And my clothes no longer stink of Rodinal and fixer. Wow!

June Masthead Artist – Visualmetaphor

Thanks to Visualmetaphor for the Earthmonster Illustrated masthead for the month of June!

I am a person of few words, with a lot to say. My art reflects who I am as a person, who I was, and who I long to be, as well as every other part of my life in between those three aspects.

I am a completely self taught artist =)
I love portraiture… and editing of photos… and anything that involves something quirky or displaying emotion. I love black and white photos, they always bring out the lines and forms of objects… and I often tend to focus on parts of the body… and nature for some reason…

Please leave me comments… whether they be constructive critisim or just anything! I get incredibly excited when I see that I have comments! =D

I use my art to explain things that words can’t. A picture often speaks a thousand words. How many words can your picture speak?

I draw a picture with my words,
In black and grey and white…
And every colour in between…
To brighten up my life…

-Visualmetaphor