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Author Topic: Painters first?  (Read 5980 times)

Rob C

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Painters first?
« on: July 25, 2017, 07:43:55 am »

Is there anyone else in this august journal who began photographic life from the base of a love affair with painting?

Rob

pcgpcg

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2017, 09:30:36 am »

Yes. Probably quite a few.
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David Sutton

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2017, 06:23:03 pm »

Maybe not first but there are probably many who have painting mixed in there somewhere.
With the arrival of digital some of us got back into photography because we couldn't stand having to have a work ready each week for the painting class.
David
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RSL

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #3 on: July 25, 2017, 07:48:24 pm »

Sure, Rob, though I never really made serious attempts at painting. On the other hand I did woodcuts and I made pencil drawings. I could do faces pretty well with a pencil. Maybe that's why I'm fascinated by street.
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GrahamBy

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2017, 04:14:26 am »

Funny you should ask... of course I painted at school, just as a I wrote earnest young man's poetry, but I would have said "nothing as a grown-up".

Then I remembered that I still have one of my paintings hanging at home. It's sort of geometric abstraction, did it around 1991, and I'm so use to it I think of it more as furnishing than art.  But I'd miss it if it was gone.
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32BT

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #5 on: July 26, 2017, 04:38:23 am »

[ X ] this thread is useless without picts  :P
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~ O ~
If you can stomach it: pictures

stamper

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2017, 05:29:09 am »

You mean, these little people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts

Rob C

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2017, 07:05:49 am »

[ X ] this thread is useless without picts  :P

Yes, That would help to explain why some turned to snaps, but it might only serve to illustrate that they had made a mistake by moving...

In my case, I realised just in time that paint was a bit too beyond my visual ability to make anything worth the effort it took to find feet of clay.

Rob C

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #8 on: July 26, 2017, 08:32:04 am »

Hi Rob,

For me drawing and painting has been part of my life always... My father had some art school time after the second world war. He introduced me to the basics of drawing and color at the early age of five. He later gave me my first camera, a zeiss rangefinder when I was ten. So the brush and camera have been with me for quite a while. I went on to art school and studied painting and illustration, with my camera fixed to my head. The seeing informs all. I chose painting to make my way, it has the ability to be more personal. The marks, the nuance of touch are paramount for me. The camera in a wonderful companion.

Peter


That makes you a truly fortunate person.

I was unable to do the art school trip becaue of school politics, but I suspect that I'd have ultimately arrived at the same conclusion: drawing and painting were always going to be second-best abilites for me, though to this day, I do think (when I'm honest enough with myself) that the hand-arts would have felt more worthy.

Perhaps that's part of the reason that I feel wet darkroom ability to be a more visceral, a more genuine form of expression than is sitting in front of a monitor tweaking and tweaking and... it's all so mechanical and without any prior experience of doing it the hand way, perhaps one never develops a sense of enough being enough.

Some painters obviously use photography as record or reference, but photography can be a lot more than that, as your own posted shots over the years have shown. I also think (without proof) that people devoid of painting/drawing skills are more obsessed with pixel peeping. If so, then I think it's because they don't quite get the idea of expression being the numero uno target, not technical perfection, whatever that is. But hey, it shifts cameras off shelves as much as it stops others from wasting their money on upgrades that don't matter!

Rob

Rob C

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #9 on: July 26, 2017, 08:40:05 am »

Sure, Rob, though I never really made serious attempts at painting. On the other hand I did woodcuts and I made pencil drawings. I could do faces pretty well with a pencil. Maybe that's why I'm fascinated by street.

You may well be right.

Though both are branches of photography, I think I enjoy looking at street for much the same reasons I do enjoy looking at fashion images: the human content. I find people the most interesting things on Earth. Whilst I wouldn't want to meet most of them, I do like to sit and gaze and try to imagine what was going through their minds as they saw the photographer clicking.

Elliott's pooches, could they but speak, might have had a lot to say!

;-)

Rob

Rob C

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #10 on: July 26, 2017, 08:47:53 am »

Maybe not first but there are probably many who have painting mixed in there somewhere.
With the arrival of digital some of us got back into photography because we couldn't stand having to have a work ready each week for the painting class.
David

And there the rub: external pressures!

Remove those, once you know at least the theory of how to do something, and as with photography, my hunch would be to plow a lonely groove if you want to find yourself. It might be madness, but I can't help the suspicion that "working" in groups kills personality. Perhaps the founding fathers of Magnum had a good theory behind making new people wait so long before accepting them...

Rob

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #11 on: August 12, 2017, 07:02:49 pm »

Is there anyone else in this august journal who began photographic life from the base of a love affair with painting?

Rob

Oddly enough I went in the opposite direction. After digital inkjet printing of photos for years, I started printing on canvas, then I played with images using Corel Painter to print on canvas...and hated the results. So I started painting on top of canvas prints with acrylic paints. Which also wasn't great.
Five years later I've gotten competent at painting landscapes en plein air (from life, on-site) and find it really complements photography. Painting is vastly more labor intensive, requiring ~2 hours of intense concentration to knock out a 14 x 18" oil painting on a canvas panel, racing against changing light. Photography is a lot more immediate and catches that brief instant that grabs your eye. Painting is more about the impact of the place on your emotions and how you render that by hand in paint.
Morning light on road by Geoffrey Wittig, on Flickr
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mediumcool

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #12 on: December 16, 2017, 09:56:52 am »

Is there anyone else in this august journal who began photographic life from the base of a love affair with painting?

Rob

No.
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Rob C

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #13 on: December 16, 2017, 12:57:41 pm »

Oddly enough I went in the opposite direction. After digital inkjet printing of photos for years, I started printing on canvas, then I played with images using Corel Painter to print on canvas...and hated the results. So I started painting on top of canvas prints with acrylic paints. Which also wasn't great.
Five years later I've gotten competent at painting landscapes en plein air (from life, on-site) and find it really complements photography. Painting is vastly more labor intensive, requiring ~2 hours of intense concentration to knock out a 14 x 18" oil painting on a canvas panel, racing against changing light. Photography is a lot more immediate and catches that brief instant that grabs your eye. Painting is more about the impact of the place on your emotions and how you render that by hand in paint.
Morning light on road by Geoffrey Wittig, on Flickr

Just found this: like the picture very much, and wonder if it was based on a photograph rather than done directly from nature - the perspective looks very photographic.

Rob

tom b

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #14 on: January 05, 2018, 02:08:11 am »

My degree major was in design in the 70's. The obvious thing is you can't take a photo of something that does't exist. You can however take a photo of a prototype that you have created including the steps involved.

So I was taught product drawing and photography. (CGI has superseded both in this field). The opening of the Australian Centre for Photography just up the street in Paddington influenced my love of photography.

I later took up a drawing and painting class which resulted in twenty years of painting, drawing and photography. For me they compliment each other.

Obviously HCB is the poster boy in the painter to photographer scheme of things.

(As an aside what is happening with the Australian Centre for Photography)?

Cheers,

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Tom Brown

Arturo

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #15 on: January 06, 2018, 03:21:52 pm »

Hello, friends,

Long time listener - first time caller yadda yadda.  Yes, Rob, I went from painting to photography.  Many years ago I took a photo option in the second semester of my first year at Art School.  I had a Canon TX and we were reversing Panatomic X, as I recall. No printing in that course; we only made B&W transparencies. 

As first year students our access to the Photo Department facilities at the school was quite limited.  I'd shot some Tri-X, sneaked in and processed it one afternoon after the Lab Tech had gone home.  The fourth year student monitor kindly gave me the opportunity to use an enlarger and some chemistry in the lab.  I remember the first time I watched a print starting to come up in the tray.  It was, as you know, magic and it set a hook deep in my psyche that I still haven't been able to shake. LOL  I still paint and I think it informs my photography just as the photography informs my painting.

Flaco
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"Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic." Edward Weston

Rob C

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #16 on: January 06, 2018, 05:40:00 pm »

Welcome to the asylum, Arturo, and yes, that first wet processing thrill is the hook: either you enjoy the sweet pain from it or run like hell! I stayed.

Rob

P.S. Regarding Weston, it makes sense: at that maximum distance you probably couldn't even see a pepper.

framah

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #17 on: January 11, 2018, 06:51:54 pm »

I asked a painter friend of mine to teach me how to paint in water colors last year.

We tried 3 times.

She told me to stick to my camera!! :o
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MichaelEzra

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #18 on: March 01, 2018, 07:11:42 pm »

Yep. Painting was first. My 1-st surrealistic painting (I was 19, didn't know Dali, etc. but just met an incredible mentor who was a surrealistic painter)

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BobDavid

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Re: Painters first?
« Reply #19 on: March 02, 2018, 10:14:46 pm »

Yep. Painting was first. My 1-st surrealistic painting (I was 19, didn't know Dali, etc. but just met an incredible mentor who was a surrealistic painter)



...nothing to scoff at.
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