FREE Photo_Art Guide - being real art

What is Photo Art is a question I get asked a lot as I title some of my work in this category. The answers you ll get vary wildly depending on your point of view. There s a hard core of people who turn their noses up at the idea of any photography being real art. In recent years of course the range of software associated with digital manipulation has become increasingly sophisticated and used by huge numbers of people. I m sure you ve heard more than one person say of a picture, ?Yea, nice, bet they just Photoshopped it.? This has only entrenched the Art Purists even further and they ll quickly tell you that the world and his brother/ sister now think they re photographers, and Gasp even worse, Artists.

Admittedly there is some pretty dreadful stuff out there as people try their luck with transforming ordinary photos into something that looks like it had been created using traditional art techniques like paint, coloured pencil, graphite, chalk, charcoal, crayon, marker, watercolour, and so on. You don t have to look too far into the Art World to find some fairly ghastly creations, but these don t detract from the masterpieces that bring pleasure to the world. What happens is inspiration. People go to art and photography classes not to become a grand masters, but because they wish to be creative and it doesn t matter a jot if they only produce something Homer Simpson would come up with after a truck load of beer.

Photography has changed to a greater extent than art because of technology, but you only have to flip through a National Geographic magazine to feel the power of great pictures. Search through the wonders of Ansel Adams creations and marvel at the genius of Henri Cartier Bresson, from the not so distant days of Life Magazine when it was coffee table king all across America. But there is a place for today s photographers like never before as we see with the rise of citizen journalism through innovative companies like Demotix , and very public displays of family albums all over the internet on social websites.

There is also a place for the non professional photographers who take pleasure in producing beautiful things, and to this end, the means to do this is there like never before. Adobe Photoshop is full of wonders but it s never going to make a great picture from a bad one. Photography still deserves study, even at an amateur level and there are loads of magazines out there to help those who want to be helped. I come from the old school where we discovered that the time spent in the darkroom was every bit as important as when we were out shooting pictures. We were also force fed the relationship between film speed, shutter speed and aperture until it became almost second nature to set up a non Auto camera in a matter of seconds in all kinds of lighting. I remember with great affection my first Nikon FM2, I bought in New York city in 1984, and the grand excitement of having a top shutter speed of a 4000th of a second.

But back to the future. There are some amazing highly talented photographers around today. Ever day I see images that just blow my socks off, and its great to see such an endless stream of Art as well as news and photojournalism. Photo Art lives. I ll let you into a little secret, my two best friends when it comes to digital manipulation are Topaz and LucisArt, and a good old standard standard 50mm Nikon 1.8 lens stuck on the front for powerful portraits.

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