Last night we got the BLOG up and running, customized to some extent and connected to the main Nordstrom Fine Art Landscape Photography website.  Also got the first article published.  Today I figure out how to add photographs to the article.

I spent every night this past week working on Virgin River and the Watchman, a photograph that I shot in Zion National Park last month.  I’d work on in till nearly midnight and be pretty excited.  I’d place a print on the dining room table and the next morning I wouldn’t like it.  But I only made one change yesterday.  Haven’t looked at it again this morning but it’s probably pretty close.  Of course, that’s what I’ve been saying for a week now.  But this time I think it really is.

At shows I’m frequently asked the following questions:  “Do you use filters?”  “Do you enhance these photographs?”  “Are these colors real?”

The answer is simply, “Of course.”  But I often want to respond, “If these were paintings would you be asking me whether the colors are real?  Or would there be an assumption that as a painter I interpreted the scene before me and selected the colors that contributed to my artistic vision?”  This leads to another question.  “As an artist, is a photographer any less free to express her feeling by whatever means the medium allows,  Is a photographer expected to hold to a different standard than a painter, sculptor, poet, novelist or composer?”  So, “Of course” is the simple answer but there is oh so much more behind it.

A follow up comment I often make is something to the effect that there are many, many hours that go into each photograph to get it to express my artistic vision.  Sometimes there are as many as 30 or 40 hours often spread out over a period of months or even years.  If we snapped a picture and took it down to Costco for a print would it be fair to call it fine art?  Or, if it took a photographer any less time to created a fine art print that it did a painter to create a painting, would it be fair to call that fine art?

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