Gallery Art

  In a galley setting there is always a discussion with the artist about his work. Lift your glass of wine, single malt, micro brew, here goes…
   Having trained as a technical illustrator during the art school years, I saw photography as my abstract medium. A visual platform upon which shape, light and color could be examined for its own sake, as opposed to a representational portrayal of instantaneous journalistic storytelling.
   In moving into automotive photography a few decades ago I saw the potential of bringing the two worlds together: portraying the near abstract compositions of shape, light and color, while clearly, if subtly, representing the design, craftsmanship, engineering and performance inherent in the subject.
   There is also a third element here, specific to automotive photography. Having spent a professional life in the photo studio, art directing product photography, my photographic style clearly states that it is only beneath natural light that the automobile truly reveals itself.
   Why have I gone into photographic philosophy here? To discuss the photographic product on offer for these images. I have been in photographic art reproduction since photo enlargements from 35mm E6 slides required an inter-negative. The hyphen is used here for reading clarity. So yes, I've spent my time in the darkroom, and been on the cutting edge of photo reproduction as it has advanced, in fits and starts, into the digital age. As such I have chosen for this first series of reproductions to produce them all on aluminum sheet. This very modern exhibit material lends itself nicely to the subject.
Now this said, if you would prefer a matte finish, lithograph image for framing, or the pebbled metallic reproduction stock, we can discuss these choices, as every purchase begins with an email for phone call prior to purchase.

I write 'first series' here as I have turned down orders while we were buried in development of our new pre-press and on-press protocols for the publications. Now that these processes are firmly in place for Automobilist Century and the Alfa & Ferrari book, we are turning our attention to the very limited custom production of the gallery display art here.

Here we have the link to the film gallery.

   The significance of the film gallery is this, prior to photography going digital, film had reached an absolute apex of image capture quality. Now when I say film, I mean film emulsion. For the art of photography was the ability of the photographer to shoot to the capability and character of the film's emulsion. The black and white shots that need to be taken with ultra sensitive Tri-X film, or the slower to expose Plus-X. As examples.
   As the above abstract composition comment implies, my world was the color films, the Kodacolor, the Ektachrome, each with their very different color capture spectrums and ASA exposures.
   For each composition was imagined then rendered by the photographer through knowledge of film emulsion. This is a discipline the digital photographer will never know.
   For the following gallery the film used, since the 1990s, has been Fujifilm's Velvia 50. Having always gone for the intense chromatic imagery, this film was a normal outgrowth of that journey. This is a very high saturation film, and a very high contrast film. As such it is a very tricky film. It can fall into nothingness, with immediacy, on either end of aperture or speed. As such it requires the focus and method of numerous exposures to realize one good shot. So each photograph displayed here is the result of between six and ten exposures. Those marine layer mornings at Pebble, and pale foggy's at Laguna Seca can be tricky.