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ART & Creative Photography

By May 21, 2016May 8th, 2021Tips & Tricks

Date: 18-Apr-2016

As a member of Creative Nature Photography (widely known as CNP) forum, I have recently got an opportunity to attend CNP meet held at Dandeli from 15-17th Apr 2016. It was a great opportunity for me to meet photographers who think creatively (not like minded!) and use various techniques in “creating” images. It was also good to know the efforts they put and challenges they face through various sessions and discussions held during the meet.

Since a long time I was thinking of writing an article on ART & Creative Photography, not in terms of true photography as I am not a photographer by any parameter but as a common man.

I thought this is a good time to write as I have just returned from a meet dedicated on this and spent 3 days photographing various subjects during this time (what I mean by photographing is “Clicking the shutter” without any pre-visualization as this was my first visit to this place). Interestingly most of the members who were part of this meet would definitely term/recollect me as “Person with a camera everywhere”.

I will start now on the “subject” (oh even in photography too the terminology is same!) without any further delay.
Kindly note that this is all according to “ME” (Please see my conclusion at the end of this post).

I want to broadly classify which “I” can think of in “this context & specific to subjects of Nature” as below.

  1. Natural History
  2. Creative Photography
  3. Photography as ART
  4. Creative ART

1. Natural History

Natural History is about “Discuss more and Think less”

Natural History is more about discussions like knowledge on subject, behavior, places and seasons etc. and thinking is not much required in photographing as they were very well classified over years like action, portraits, behavioral etc. Photography techniques in this area very much evolved over decades and can be followed simply by anyone (ex. Rule of thirds composition, capturing subject with a clean Background in good light or with habitat etc).

Few images I have shot during my 3 days at CNP meet in this context:

2. Creative Photography

Creative Photography is about “Discuss less and Think more”

We can’t discuss too much about creativity, subjects do not matter for a discussion too.
So one has to think a lot on “how he/she can be creative” in showcasing their creativity.
The catch here is that we can discuss about creative images which were “made” in various platforms but we cannot guess what a future creative image would look like!
That’s the reason the creative images are always exciting.
These images sometimes need a good title inline with the image or little explanation.

Few images I have shot during my 3 days at CNP meet in this context:

  • Elements of Life – Flower as the evidence of life, Earth, Water, Air (evidence here in the form of ripples of water in this image) & Light (the light reflections through water on the earth below) as the elements without which there is no life
  • New Student

3. Photography as ART

Interestingly ART falls under “Discuss more and Think more”

ART evolved over thousands of years, where we have millions of records either on rocks, tools people used, paper after invention or even on canvases of animals!
Hence there is lot more to discuss and lot more to think to get the same expressions using a camera.
Sometimes either a clear title or few words of description helps in understanding the image better.

Few images I have shot during my 3 days at CNP meet in this context:

4. Creative ART

For sure for me this falls under “Just Think”

Just like the Modern ART, sometimes this needs more explanation from the creator (oh artist too!).
This is as challenging as Creative Photography and slightly more to retain the aesthetic feel.
Creative images need not be artistic like the above image in Creative Photography section Elements Of Life is not Artistic.

Few images I have shot during my 3 days at CNP meet in this context:

Diya is a source of light.

I have used Moon for fire to showcase the source of light (the creative part of the image) and used leaves (one of the themes I was working on those three days as one of my subjects) to create the holder of the light but also in an artistic way (the artistic part). Lightning the leaves in that fashion was extremely tricky using camera inbuilt flash without any additional equipment.

Now it’s the time to see one single subject in all the four perspectives as mentioned above to get what exactly I am trying to convey:
These were taken at the resort’s boating/rafting area.

  1. Tree scape – Photography as ART
  2. Tree scape – Creative Photography
  3. Tree scape, Tree scape – Creative ART

One thing I would like to point out here is how a very simple basic photo as shown in Natural History can be transformed in a different way completely depends upon the photographer skills and creativity.

Few other images I have captured during these 3 days at CNP Meet can be seen below.
Before viewing the images, please note:

  1. Every image posted here is a single exposure (one image file, no composites, no stitching etc were done), originally shot in RAW image format.
  2. No special effects are added in post processing for any image, images were captured using various techniques in field.
  3. Standard post processing is performed and majority of the images (eg. image Life Line) are Full Frame without any Cropping .
  4. Minimal dodging is done on 3 images and one dirt element is cloned out in “Floating Flower” image.
  5. Silver EFEX Pro software was used for converting photos to B&W.
  6. All images were shot “HANDHELD” including images shot in the night.
  7. The techniques I have used in these images very well exist even before I was born 🙂
  8. All images were taken with a Nikon D90 DSLR camera with a Sigma Sports 150-600mm lens

Images from this TRIP of all sorts

To conclude, Creative & Art photography has no bounds.
ANY EXPRESSION in A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE THAN ROUTINE is CREATIVE!

Hope my thoughts and images give some pointers in these areas.

Have a great time.
Sravan

 

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