For this week’s Lens Artists Challenge, Sofia asks us to share “Lucky Shots” – She writes, “Photography is made of luck. In my case, I’d say 90%, either at the moment of capture or while editing.”
Some years ago, I took a class in “Advanced Digital Photography” (at the Silvermine School of Art). Among other things, we explored the connections and inspirations behind various photographers’ styles and themes. At about this time, I discovered the NIK tools, which had just been released. Playing around with Nik’s Color Efex, I discovered the solarization effects and the polaroid transfer, both of which were digital emulations of long-established analog photo editing effects. It was a fascinating discovery. Playing around with those tools, I came up with some interesting images.
This discovery fascinated me, and I made more images. They were especially interesting because all were based on photographs of the natural world – trees, woods, flowers, natural scenes.
About the same time, I discovered the writing of Viktor Shklovsky, a 20th Century writer of the Russian Formalist School. Shklovsky developed the concept of “defamiliarization” (ostranenie). Shklovsky wrote that the purpose of art is to defamiliarize, i.e. to render familiar things as unfamiliar in order to stimulate new and deeper ways of seeing. I thought, “Good grief! This is just what I’m doing with these new pictures.” I was taking scenes from nature and defamiliarizing them, editing them so as to bring out previously overlooked colors, patterns, shapes, etc, in order to “see” nature more deeply.
I’ve since developed many more images with this approach, which I’ve found intensely satisfying. All of them have been the products of these entirely serendipitous discoveries: Of Shklovsky, of this whole approach to editing pictures.
Thanks to Sofia for a stimulating and interesting challenge. Next week is John’s turn to lead us, Saturday 18th April. If you want to know more about the Lens-Artists Challenge, please click here
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