Visual Art Photography Archives

Roxanne Bouche Overton : Liminal Time

This year has to be about abstract photography and photo expressionism. The world is becoming too damaged to just capture images with clean lines and clear perspectives. I want to become engulfed in a liminal universe and draw inspiration from other visual artists working in the same space. One such photographer I admire is Roxanne Bouche Overton.

Photographing Liminal Space

Roxanne Bouche Overton is intrigued by the photography of liminal space and time.

A liminal space is a place between two other places or two states of being. Liminal spaces are often empty and can create unease or uncertainty.

Liminal photography can be used to capture the feeling of being in a dream or the feeling of being lost. It can also be used to capture the feeling of being in a place that is both familiar and unfamiliar.

All of my life I’ve been chasing what I see out of the corner of my eye; those elusive visions, slightly blurred and a bit magical. But when I turn and focus on them, they disappear into ordinary. I wanted to learn how to capture that state of blur. It’s what caught my eye in the first place – I think it’s worth chasing.

When I am out shooting I am looking for those liminal spaces – the transitions between then and now – the transitions of between the blur of my peripheral vision as it moves to sharpness. We must be aware if we to engage our imaginations and collect these moments

Roxanne Bouche Overton

ICM

Roxanne is a master of Intentional Camera Movement (ICM). Just to recap intentional camera movement (ICM) photography is a technique where you move the camera as the image is taken. This can be done by panning, tilting, or shaking the camera. The goal is to create an image with a sense of movement and blur.

Rozanne,s work however takes ICM to a different level, forget blurry ICM shots of tree trunks. Roxanne works with landscape and urban spaces, often including lone figures in vibrant surroundings.

Roxanne’s Photography

Learning from great photographers is one of the joys of photography. Why, when you see some images are you inspired enough to find out how and why the photographer captured that moment?

Especially when that moment is not representational, but more abstract and more about the emotion than the seeing. This is what has drawn me to the work of Roxanne Bouche Overton. Her photography has an eerie quality. Her ICM images are not what you have seen before, but what you might have seen, what you cannot quite remember seeing, what you thought you saw, or what you felt you saw but didn’t.

It is extraordinary how Roxanne’s work demonstrates how a camera can capture the elusive.

A Curation of Roxanne’s Work

I have curated some of her work here and there is so much more on her Instagram account.

Her website gives details of publications and workshops.

Her books are available on Amazon:

I have also found this clip which is interesting in giving an insight into her work and how she achieves her results

Photo London Review 2022

by John Gough

If your inspiration is flagging I suggest a visit to Photo London. The event which is held over four days at Somerset House in London, is back after a break of two years due to Covid.

Visiting Photo London you get the chance to visit around one hundred exhibitors. These are commercial galleries worldwide that specialise in the sale of photographic art. As you walk from one gallery exhibit to the next, you are blown away by the imagination and craft created by some of the world’s top creative professional photographers.

My interest this year was nature and abstract art. Here is some of the photographic work that caught my attention.

Katherin Linkersdorff

Katherin has developed a process which robs flowers of their pigment. She treats the flowers for several months and then photographs them. She’s inspired by the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It creates a beautiful ethereal effect.

Explore her work here and on her website.

Santeri Tuori

A Finnish fine art photographer who photographs skies, and nature. What caught my eye were his images of water lilies.

There is a lovely selection of his work on the Purdy Hicks website

Eeva Karhu

Eeva’s work is abstract, often the amalgamation of many images captured while she walks often down the same path outside her door in her native Helsinki.

There is a selection of her work on the Purdy Hicks website

This video explains the process behind her photography

Edouard Taufebach and Bastien Pourtout

These photographers create a panorama of repeated patterns.

The recurrence of the similar shapes and elements with the minimalistic colour leads the viewers to gauge the incongruity within an appearance of a congruent field of the photograph. The dissimilarity creates a subtle flow of rhythm synonymous with the circuits of movement in nature. These are the images constructed by the France-based photographer-duo Edouard Taufenbach and Bastien Pourtout, as they like to say, “In the exchange and confrontation of two points of view. This creates a multiple and subjective image of reality.”

The photomontage The Blue of the Sky, for which the duo won the Swiss Life 4 Hands 2020 Prize, represents the sky dotted with the swallows.

This is a video in which Edouard Taufebach explains their three year project to create a collage of Marlene Dietrich images.

Learn more about their work on their website

Jennifer Latour

I apologise in advance but this is an idea I have to borrow from Vancouver based photographer Jennifer Latour. Bound Species is a portfolio of work which splices different plant species together.

In the series, her plant creations transport us to the vibrant technicolor of a warm spring day. “It was brought together from my love for design, my work in effects, and my photography,” she explains to IGNANT. “I splice different plants and flora together to create their own unique breed of species”. Combined with frosted natural scenes, peculiar cemetery trees, and anonymous portraits drenched in sunshine, Latour’s poetic and tender imagery elicits feelings of positivity and calm. Despite referencing a common object in art history, Latour’s spliced creations are surprising in their balance of color, minimalism, and innocence, transmitting visual pleasure and contentment in the viewer.
IGNANT

I have collected some of her work here and there is more work for sale on Artsy

New Artists

Photo London is so worth visiting because it introduced me to these new artists. This is photography I have never seen before and probably would never see.

These are not the sort of images that appear every week in Amateur Photographer.

My Wildflower Images at an Exhibition

by John Gough

A couple of my wildflower images are on display at an exhibition at the Willow Tree in Walthamstow, London.

Details of the exhibition are:

Kindred

We delve deep into Biophilic design and explore our innate connection (kinship) to the natural world. We celebrate the magic of this home on the edge of the Wetlands, with the River Lea and Epping Forest on our doorstep.

The artists featured in the collection find an abundance of inspiration within their environment. They are artists who pay attention to the delicate patterns on leaves and the way sunlight dances upon water. These are artworks for adventurers, stargazers, escapists, foragers and birdwatchers. For the explorers who love the wind in their hair and the crunch of leaves underfoot. Artworks to bring the urban wilderness of Walthamstow into our homes and onto our walls.

Purchase

My wildflower artwork can be purchased at Artsnug

Hyper Collage Photography

by John Gough

Ysabel Le May Hyper Collage Photography

Hyper collage photography has developed out of collage, which has long been a technique used in both art and photography. Man Ray was an early exponent of photography collage in the 1930s. Jump forward, and we are all aware of the images created using Photoshop layers to build composites. Often to create fantasy effects. Andrea Hargreaves is one of my favourite artists using this technique.

….but what is collage? The Museum of Modern Art defines a collage as: a “technique and resulting work of art in which fragments of paper and other materials are arranged and glued to a supporting surface”.

Hyper collage photography is a technique that combines multiple images that are manipulated using Photoshop. For example, Jim Kazanjian uses the technique to combine photographs of different architectural features to create fantastical buildings and landscapes.

However, what has grabbed my attention. Are photographers that are using natural phenomena to create fine art hyper collage images.

Fine Art Hyper Collage Photography

Ysabel Le May

I first came across Ysabel le May at the Saatchi Art. Where her work sells for upwards of $4000.

She is based in Texas and her art has been exhibited all over the world.

Ysabel Le May can be summed up simply: W.O.W. It stands for ‘Wonderful Other Worlds’, which she creates through the process of hypercollage.
Saatchi Art

She photographs the natural world and uses collage to piece the images together to create a fantastical depiction of nature. She calls her images baroque tableaux.

The video above demonstrates the process she uses.

Lisa Frank

Lisa Frank is an American artist who describes her work as looking to communicate those momentary flashes of connectedness with nature.

She creates tapestries and still life composites using natural materials.

It is my purpose to draw the viewer into a local world as it hasn’t been seen before.
Lisa Frank

You can follow her process here.

Cas Slagboon

Cas Slagboom is a Dutch artist. Again he uses natural objects but often combined with human figures to create a fantasy feel.

For me, photography is more than capturing the perfect moment. Every time I try to capture my astonishment with a single photo, I am disappointed. This was not what I want to see and feel. It is larger, more complex, more diffuse. I have to bring all those fragments together. In compositions in which they together tell a story that transcends my understanding. So, that every time I look at it, I can be surprised again.
Cas Slagboon

All the photographic technology we have to capture our world in images may give us idea that we really see it. ………I use modern technology to find a language that exceeds the photographic moment, so there is sufficient room for the complexity of what we call reality.
Cas Slagboon

Summary

I included the two quotes from Cas Slagboon because they sum up my own feelings. That it is difficult to capture the reality of the moment with just one photograph. I have been experimenting with the Pep Ventosa style of photography and mixing abstract and reality to capture what we really see and feel.

Hyper collage photography is just one more technique on that journey.

Alice Through the Trees

by everywhereman

This is my image of the month for November. Once again it is a Pep Ventosa and figure composite.

I have been musing that this yearning for impressionism is a reaction to COVID and lockdown. We are not living full lives anymore. So many people are desperately lonely. We live our lives in a state of proxy. We want clarity but cannot see through the confusion. We are lost.

The Man in Black

by John Gough

This is my October 2020 image of the month. I have been developing my Pep Ventosa style, by adding some static items to the swirl of confusion created by the multiple images.

I am fascinated by the way the technique creates a view closer to how we see. Or at least how I think we see!

Yellow Lily

by John Gough

This is my image of the month for September 2020. A message in a bottle. I am currently experimenting with a bolder oil painting style to try and achieve an image which is an oil and light hybrid.

Autumn Multiple Exposures

by John Gough

Lately because of the COVID restrictions I have had less opportunity for street photography. I don’t want to travel on a train to London, and I have decided that pubs and restaurants are off limits for me at the moment.

So I have been looking for different outlets for my photography. My first love, landscape photography is restricted because long road trips and overnight stays are out. So it is difficult to visit the Lake District and Scotland.

So I am going to go a bit abstract.

An Impression of Autumn

It is just coming into Autumn. The most beautiful time of year IMHO. The next six weeks or so are going to be just so amazing. What I want to do is photograph the leaves and the trees and the sky and capture the mood. The feeling of darkening days, and ripe fruit. Hunkering in, log fires, smoky chimney pots, mellow mists and the foreboding of winter. I want to create an impression of the Autumn I see.

As Joel Meyerowitz says:

‘Once you have a camera in your hand you have a license to see.’

Abstract allows a creative control. Some would say too much. However, the end result is unique to you. It may be crass, but it is your kind of crass. A camera can give you the license to see, but abstraction gives you the freedom to feel and express emotion.

Multiple Exposures

One of the most accessible ways of going abstract is to find the multiple exposure function on your camera. With this, you can create stunning abstracts in camera.

There are numerous videos that go into the technicals of ‘how to’ like this one.

You take several different images. These multiple exposures are then stored in the camera and merged to create a final image. Sounds complicated and technical, but it is not that difficult. Just have a go and experiment. Take 2, 3 or more images stacked on top of one another. See what works and carry on.

The most difficult part is finding Multiple Exposure on your camera’s menu!

The example above was taken in my local park. There are three exposures. Lengthening shadows on a white wall, autumn leaves and pine needles.

I think I will print my Autumn Abstracts. Stick them on a wall and then the next six weeks will be with me all winter

To see what you can achieve with this technique. Look no further than the work of Valda Bailey If you really want to get into Multiple Exposures then the Bailey Chinnery workshops are well worthwhile.

Now let’s get out there and enjoy the Autumn.

Pep Ventosa Technique

by John Gough

Pep Ventosa is a Catalan photographer who is known for his technique of creating impressionistic looking photography by taking multiple images of a subject and blending them together.

His series ‘In the Round’ featured trees which have become the lynchpin of his work. His photography, however, is now more diverse and includes urban landscapes, streetcars and street lamps.

When talking about his work he describes how:

The process mimics how we actually see: the eyes are constantly focusing on the specific details and elements of what’s in front of them and the brain then processes that visual information making the reconstruction so we perceive the world around us.

I have curated a selection of his images here.

The Pep Ventosa Technique

Pep Ventosa uses hundreds of images to create an artwork. Is it art or is it photography? He purposefully blurs the boundaries. Look at his series ‘New Faces from the Past’

Trying to replicate the technique is not easy. As my attempt above illustrates. It is not just a process of walking around a tree, taking photographs and putting them into layers in Photoshop.

A good place to start is with the glorious Glenys Garnett

Tips to Creating a Masterpiece

The subject has to be interesting enough to be deconstructed
Maintain a reference point on the subject for all the images. For example, I used the tree trunk in the image above. A 3×3 grid in the camera viewfinder is useful.
A wide angle lens is best to allow you to get closer to the subject.
I took twenty images in the image above.
Take jpgs rather than RAW to make it easier to manipulate later. Or do as I did convert them to jpg in Lightroom. Create a similar look and feel for each image and then export to Photoshop.
To transfer from Lightroom to Photoshop in one step. Select the images to be transferred in Lightroom: Photo>Edit In>Open as Layers in Photoshop.
In the layer stack in Photoshop I used a Normal blending mode with an opacity of 20%. The blending modes and opacity, however, depend on the effect that YOU want to produce.
Try keeping the camera fixed and moving the subject see below.

Your Own Style

What is exciting about using the Pep Ventosa technique is that so much is down to trial and error, which means that your images will develop into your own style.

Free Textures: 5 Best Sites

by John Gough

Poppies (with free textures) / John Gough / Canon EOS R

Where can you find free textures, to use with Photoshop to add interest to your images?

Adding textures can lift your image from a straightforward photograph into the realm of digital artwork. If you have never tried it before then a good place to start is this YouTube video from Photoshop Cafe.

When it comes to finding textures there are three options: make your own. Purchase textures, I have bought textures from Sue Woollard, because they particularly suit flower photography. Or download textures that you don’t have to pay for.

Over the years, I have come to rely on these five sites to download textures for free.

Freestocktextures.com

Huge range of textures at this site. These are free to use commercially. There is a limit of 5 downloads a day, which increases to 50 downloads a day if you create an account. Which again is free. freestocktextures.com

Unsplash.com

Unsplash is a site where photographers can upload photographs which in turn can be downloaded for free. There is a massive range of images on this site, which are free to be used commercially. This site is a photographer’s exchange so why not submit pictures as well as download. Go to the site and search for textures there are hundreds to choose from. unsplash.com

Pexels.com

Pexels is another community site. You can. You don’t have to. Upload images and you are free to download images. The images can be used commercially. You can credit the photographer, but it is not necessary. There are many different texture categories. pexels.com

Texturify.com

This is as its name implies is a site dedicated to textures and they are all free. The site was created for CGI designers who require different backgrounds for animations, films and games etc. However, it is a great resource for photographers. So on this site, there are less abstract textures and more actual photographs of metal, wood, brick and concrete etc. The images are free to use even commercially. texturify.com

Flickr

Flickr was one of the first photography hosting sites. This has now grown into a vast photography community with millions of accounts and billions of photos. As a result, the site can be an excellent source of imagery. Photographers have posted thousands of textures which are fully downloadable. Search for textures, and use the dropdown on the top left to refine by the type of licence. There are over 300K images with no known copyright restrictions. flickr.com

There are lots of other ‘free’ looking sites out there, but they often come with a sting in the tail, to part you from your money

Free Textures: Tips

Textures in Photoshop

There are textures available to use in Photoshop, but they are difficult to find. Go to Window>Extensions>Adobe Paper Texture Pro

Changing Texture Colour

Keep the texture but change the colour. It is often useful to be able to take creative control of the colour. Here is how in Photoshop.

Open the texture image.
Turn the image to monochrome: Image>Adjustments>Black and White>OK.
Adjust to reveal the texture: Image>Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast – bring the brightness up and take the contrast down >OK
Change colour: Image>Adjustments>Hue and Saturation>tick Colorize – change the colour using the sliders >OK

My Library in Photoshop

To store textures in Photoshop try using Libraries. Window>Libraries.