nature

Alright, I'm in the mood to write again.

Lately I've been taking my photography in a completely different direction. Well, art nudes still predominate, but the mindset is different. I'm back to shooting mostly digital, with occasional brief side forays into film. I'm ending up with the finished product in color more often than not, which for me is a major shift. And finally, I've been getting out into the natural world more often, and that's led me into a fresh concept.

In the past I'd emphasized the post-industrial landscape in my backgrounds. Crumbling concrete, the works of humanity usually in disrepair, a commentary on the absurdity of materialism. It was also a challenge to conventional art photography, all the silly rules and the pseudo-pristine landscape which usually, when viewed through the eyes of an ecologist, wasn't really so pristine. Really, trying to pretend an image with invasive Eurasian buckthorn growing next to the model is "natural" will only fool some of the people some of the time.

But I'm feeling a little more optimistic these days, and I'm also willing to be a little more subtle in my imagery. That's led me back to the natural landscape. It's usually not completely pristine, but I'm able to get about as close as it's possible to get these days.

For a while I've been looking for a way to work in nature and still make a statement. Last spring I found a way to do that, coincident with a planned shoot with an experienced dancer. I'll come back to that, to the concept and that earlier shoot that triggered it. But first, I've had a recent run of interesting shoots, all in the past month or so, and I'll write about those first... and of course, share a few of the images.