When I do art festivals and street fairs, many people enter my booth and ask me if I’m the photographer.\u00a0 I answer, “Yes I am.”\u00a0 Very rarely does someone ask me if I’m the artist.<\/p>\n
It seems there is not a strong connection in many peoples’ minds between photography and art.\u00a0 That is further evidenced by another question I get a lot – “Do you manipulate that photographs?”\u00a0 My answer to that is, “Of course.”\u00a0 That’s the short answer.\u00a0 The longer answer is, “I approach photography from the mind set of a painter.\u00a0 I reserve for myself all the creative and artistic freedom a painter has.”\u00a0 To this they usually respond, “Oh, I get it.\u00a0 You’re an artist.”<\/p>\n
Art is many things but for me there are two facets that effect very strongly the way I approach photography and art.\u00a0 The first is, “Art is communication.”\u00a0 All artists have something to say.\u00a0 Otherwise we wouldn’t create works of art.\u00a0 Furthermore, art requires an audience.\u00a0 And the audience expects to be rewarded when they experience a work of art.\u00a0 In fact, if we experience a work of art that leaves us scratching our heads, we’re labial to say, “I don’t get it,” which tells us right there that we expect there is something to ‘get’ from art.<\/p>\n
The other facet of art that influences me a great deal is, “Art is interpretation.”\u00a0 Every one of us perceives the world in a unique way.\u00a0 Our perception of reality is molded by the sum total of our life experiences.\u00a0 Artists are no different.\u00a0 Each of us has our own unique way of viewing reality and the world.\u00a0 And we have our own unique voice.\u00a0 So a work of art is the artist’s unique perspective, unique take on reality.\u00a0 When you experience a work of art you experience the world as the artist sees it.\u00a0 And that’s what we love about art; it shows us aspects of reality that we may not have seen ourselves.<\/p>\n
So, do I manipulate my photographs?\u00a0 You bet I do.\u00a0 I want them to communicate my personal view of the world.\u00a0 Oh, by the way, I prefer to use the word ‘enhance.’<\/p>\n
Good light to you.<\/p>\n
You can see my view of the world at my website – http:\/\/RalphNordstromPhotography.com<\/a><\/p>\n (223)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Here’s a short excerpt of a talk I gave last Saturday night (6\/6\/09) at the reception for my one-man-show in South Pasadena, California.) When I do art festivals and street fairs, many people enter my booth and ask me if I’m the photographer.\u00a0 I answer, “Yes I am.”\u00a0 Very rarely does someone ask me … Continue reading “Art and Photography”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-6N","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4579,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions\/4579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Bristlecone](\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/bristlecone_moon_2008-200x300.jpg\" "\\"bristlecone_moon_2008\\"")
<\/a>