FINE ART
Imagine being a professional chef and eating a meal, being able to “taste” the recipe, the ingredients and techniques behind it and therefore being able to recreate it just from tasting. Imagine being a musician and hearing a classical piece and immediately being able to tell apart all the different instruments, notes and chords played, and therefore being able to play it just from hearing. Now, imagine being a photographer and being able to see all technicalities behind an image within a split second of seeing it, from on-set lighting to enhancements and alterations made in post production.
It kind of sounds like you have reached a plateau or an exhaustion point of your potential, right? Like the art you’ve been trying to create became something one-dimensional with no more “beauty of the unknown” left to it?
If you’ve given me a technical compliment on my photography, you know that I often brush those of quite casually. I’ve done photography and retouching for more than a decade, of course I’m good at the technical side. I better be, it’s my job, I wouldn’t have made it this long in an industry if I wouldn’t be spot on about it by now.
The photography that actually inspires me nowadays is the one I look at and I don’t see those technicalities (immediately). Instead I feel, even stare, loose myself in it for a little (or longer) moment. That’s what fine art is for me, a place where the overall image overrules my judgement on technicalities or my questioning of how something is made. There is a softness or calmness to those images, that just soak you in for a moment. Those are the images I’m proud of. I’m not saying they’re better than my other creations, that they have more value or have a deeper meaning, but I know they are the ones that have the potential to make not just someone else, but also me pause and really look at them, not quite knowing why.
