Imagination

Everything in life, including that which is both visible and tangible, first lived in someone’s imagination. Not only the computer you’re sitting at, but the pen you write with, the chair you sit on, and the shoes on your feet were all once an imaginary vision in someone’s brain.

We all have are own ideas on how imagination works. Those ideas are only limited by……well how our own personal imagination works. Imagination controls our imagination.

I’ve made it no secret, that when it comes to photographic abstracts, I prefer photographer/artists who possess the clear and personal vision that it takes to see a real world subject or scene, and then reduce it to shape, color, contrasts, shadows or movement, by the use of focal lengths, depth of field, shutter speed and composition. In other words, the image is created on location, through reality and our imagination. That does not mean that I do not think computer assisted abstractions have a valid place in the art world. Of course imagination is unique to the person who holds it. Literal images come from the deep resources of our minds just as much as the surreal ones do.

Most winning images are pre-visualized. There is nothing more satisfying than bringing to fruition, an image that has been long imagined. Those serendipitous moments, when you fall upon that perfect set of circumstances and create a winning image, are to be treasured, but in the end, (I believe) there is more satisfaction to be realized in fulfilling what your mind’s eye has already seen.

Whether you create your images on location, or at home with your computer, and whether they are literal in their viewpoint, or as surreal as your wildest dreams, they begin with a vivid imagination.

I do not know whether the photographers below began with a vision from childhood, or combined what they saw while in the field, and added what was in their mind’s eye at that moment, or completed their vision at home during the editing process. I do know that it took imagination from each of these brilliant photographers to create the pictures you see below.

A few of my own. Some of these images were a reaction to what was in front of me, and some were envisioned long before I picked up the camera. One way or another, they were all a part of my imagination. I have purposely not included any true abstracts.