Digital Artistry
Digital photography needn't be confined to just plain photographs. Using software, there are many artistic effects you can apply to any picture and the results can be surprising. The following picture was originally a photograph (on the left) but it won a prize in a competition as a 'watercolour' painting (on the right). It was really intended to demonstrate some of the merits of Serif PhotoPlus and it earned me a Serif graphics pad plus a good deal on some excellent software. It's much easier than it looks as long as you remember not to go too far with the effect. Printed on stippled watercolour it looks authentic!
With modern inkjet print media you can capture almost any effect including watercolour, oils on canvas, pencil or even crayon. Such items make superb gifts and suitably presented they can be almost indistinguishable from an original work. Scanning an original will of course lose some of the original quality and tone but even that can almost be restored with judicial use of appropriate software and the finished product can be most satisfying.
Redemption for Bad Photos!
There's no excuse for bad photography but sometimes a bad photo can be transformed into a nice work of art and I find this technique very satisfying. I recently took a photo in poor light and the result was mediocre to say the least - camera shake. However I liked the subject material and decided to try to redeem it with some arty effects. See what you think...
This
picture would have provided a lovely view of cattle drinking from the
river with their reflections giving effect. Unfortunately the
light was poor and I was balanced somewhat precariously on the riverbank
to get a clear shot and I fear camera movement spoilt the shot.
However the subject is recognisable and knowing how indistinct many
paintings are at close quarters, I decided to make something of it and
converted it to a watercolour painting.
Most good graphics software will let you do this, and much more, so don't dump all your mediocre shots just yet - if they had any promise to begin with, you might salvage something by converting them to works of art and it use some of the many possibilities available with your graphics software.
Monsal Dale, October 2007
Photography and Art
However you view it, making pictures from light does appeal to our human propensity for abstract thought. We see something and we like to capture it for future reference, or merely as a record. Some prefer to use paint whilst others simply draw it in ink or pencil. Photography appears to capture images in detail and realistically reproduce them but we all know that three dimensions don't fit in two... What digital photography can do amazingly well is capture the image, then using digital techniques, convert it to something closely resembling a work of art. Perhaps it's just a step away from using photographs to paint from but however you view it, for those of us who practice it, it is no less art...