My Image Evolution

Many years of evolutionary work have gone into my Artworks.

For 50 years I have worked through the evolution of a variety of mediums, equipment and technology. From a child in the 1960’s, with my ‘plastic toy’ Kodak camera impatiently waiting a month to see the results of my fuzzy Black and White photos, to today’s instant result devices.

As a kid I was also drawn to my father’s hobby as a Super 8 Film Home Movie Fanatic and I would assist him with filming, lighting and post production, splice, cut and editing.

I was most fascinated watching Dad create special effects for his movies as he painstakingly filmed for hours ‘frame by frame’ time-lapse footage of letters and objects moving across a background.

When the movies were finally developed and eventually delivered (Super 8 took 6 weeks!) we would watch the result of these letters somehow appearing to move magically into position across the screen and become actual words, titles and credits!!!

The old days of hobby photography and home movie making were far from economical. To shoot and develop just a 3 minute Super 8 movie in comparison today would costs hundreds of dollars. And that’s Super 8 with no sound!

By the early 80’s as the Super 8 era drew to a close, another good photographer mate had bought one of the first model Panasonic ‘portable’ videotape cameras. After the initial set-up costs the overall long-term process was becoming far more economical. Now we even virtually had instant playback! And so off we went filming our surfing and camping adventures.

However these videotape cameras were quite big and alone weighed a few kilos. PLUS they had to be  plugged into a video-cassette and supported battery source the size of a carry-on luggage suit case. If you were to board an aircraft today with this gear you would already be over the weight limit before you even packed a pair of socks and undies.

I continued shooting with a variety of film stills  and video cameras until eventually in 1999 reaching the digital age when I started my job as a Photographer with the iconic Australian publisher the ‘Trading Post’. While the company constantly updated their digital cameras it wasn’t until 2005 that I had enough faith in the developing technology to purchase my own digital SLR camera.

As an artists I seriously picked up the  brushes in the mid 90’s using watercolours on ceramic tiles. And so now armed with my own digital camera I commenced shooting my artworks. A couple of years later I started experimenting with Digital Imaging the artworks in Photoshop.

In today’s ‘instant’ hi-tech world there is still a lot of time consumed in the editing and development process, resizing and applying different formats for print or downloading to websites & social media etc. PLUS the continued learning curve associated with rapidly changing I.T. and technology in general.

The great thing about today’s technology is with Digital Imaging we can basically vary image sizes, shapes, colours, the print mediums and more to suit any persons individual taste or preferences.

In reality, when we add to this the time spent on the creative processes, then even in today’s world, quality works of art  are still not produced in an ‘instant’ and still take time to master.

SO YES: many years of evolution have formed and fashioned my artworks that you see today.

 

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