Finding Yourself in Photography (by Marc Adamus)

Here I am writing for a blog.  Where does that word come from anyway….hmmmm… strange.  Right up there with ‘Google’, ‘Yahoo’….etc.  Who thinks up this stuff?  Four year-olds?   I don’t think of myself as a blogger… that’s the right word, isn’t it?  Still getting adjusted here.  In the last few years I’ve learned the likes of LOL, IMO, BTW and newspeak for photogs such as OOF and DOF.  I still have no idea what LAMO is, however.  Someone will tell me, and I might care….maybe.  You’d think I was 80 years old the way the age of wireless-everything, instant-or-else, multitask-till-you-drop has passed me by, but honestly, it all just seems so damn pointless to me.  I’ll be 30 here any day now and I’ve still never played video games.  Nope, if they hadn’t made me I’d have never gotten that first email account way back in 2004 either.  I get 150 of those f-ing things every day at this point, and people seem bothered when it takes me two days to get back to them…..if they’re one of the lucky ones, that is.

 

For all the technojunk I just don’t care to understand, and for all the odd ways it seems to make people behave, I’ve ultimately decided that one must invariably find a way to involve themselves in this so-called ‘information age’ in order to be moderately successful in almost any given field.  My field, is landscape photography.  I recognize that it’s probably my connection with nature that distances me from this mainstream society that seems to revolve around our own creations, but I’d like to keep it that way, thank you very much.  I have roots that I understand and if I left the wilderness behind my life would feel like part of some superficial construct.  My adventures in wilderness are the foundation of my life.  It is in the essence of these adventures, that I chose to try my hand at photography.  It is, however, in the essence of communicating my experiences in nature to the viewer of my photography that I choose to be an artist.

 

Chances are you haven’t seen a lot of photographs like mine, and that’s a good thing.  I want to tell you that the ability to develop a personal style that is both recognizable and evocative is one of the most important characteristics that any artist can possess.  I am eternally dissatisfied with the limitations of my camera when it comes to interpreting nature as I have come to know and appreciate it.  But that said, I can’t argue with the amazing ability this little piece of technology has (just when you thought I hated all technogizmos) to render the finite details I observed in a fraction of a second.  For that reason, I choose the camera as the tool I use to communicate my passion for nature and my adventures within its many realms.

 

Developing a personal style in photography is more limitless now than ever before.  The ways in which we can post-process a photograph and tailor it to our own vision of the scene we captured is a magnificent and wholly satisfying transformation of our art – one that had come to be unfortunately stereotyped as simple documentation.  I don’t understand how one could possibly be asked to conform to the simple limitations of the camera alone, when it is the evocation of our personal experience with the world we wish to share.  Obviously, not everyone sees things the same way, and there is no absolute definition of how, or what we saw to begin with.  To this point, I believe photography is about fusing the essential vision of the photographer with the landscape he or she is trying to render in a photograph.  A photograph should represent both the scene at hand, and the experience of being there.  This is where personal style is best realized and depicted. 

 

I would describe my personal style as bold, grandiose and epic with hints of mystery and darkness.  My work is usually very complex in composition but yet fluid, with many points of interest and a story to be told.  It is somewhat akin to a painterly interpretation of light but pushes the boundaries of traditional photography in the dynamic aspects of light control involved.  This style of imagery isn’t necessarily what I consciously choose, but simply what comes to me naturally as I explore all the possibilities nature has to offer.  The best art isn’t forced or premeditated – it comes from within.  It comes from experience, passion and a connection to your subject, whatever that is. 

 

Here are some examples of my photography and my thoughts.

 

 

 

 

Clouds streak over an ancient Bristlecone Corpse

 

Changing seasons in Oregon's Columbia Gorge

 

Grand views in Glacier Park at twilight.

 

Lenticular cloud formation over Oregon's Alvord Desert.

 

Long exposure at twilight on Washington's Olympic Coast.

 

 

 

 

 

~ by mountaintrailphoto on January 31, 2009.