An Introductory body of work and investigation towards digital color photography portfolio series.
Volume One
Color | Image + Texture
I bought a digital SLR and with such purchase I began to think about photography not in terms of point and shoot but rather in relation to image, texture and symbol. Using Photoshop CS6 as a bridge between raw capture and creative Mise-En-Scene to manipulate the pixels. I began with the most basic element of all, what should the subject be.
This question led me with the desire to capture an optical counterpart or appearance of an object as it is produced by a lens or the passage of luminous rays through a small digital SLR camera. The idea of subject began as a question or motive as to what I should photograph, later it was transformed into the images before you. A vivid description of street noise obscure from pedestrian traffic. But much to my surprise, much more work needed to be done.
Editing, and organizing my raw capture in an effort to polish and streamline the best possible shoots. At this point, no transformation had yet occurred, all I had was hundreds of raw files waiting to be process, catalog and edit using Bridge CS4 and Lightroom 4. As these images represent a larger body of work for inclusion to my personal online portfolio (DSC.net) due in months ahead.
I became aware that in able to transform the work I needed a visual and tactile likeness of a surface as in a rough or grainy surface quality. Using digital manipulation, color adjusting, cropping and compositing I now had arrive at Image + Texture. The creative puzzle was almost complete except for the fact that I needed to solve one fundamental question:
What would be the relationship between pictographs, context and street graphics?
The answer lead to symbol as a form of fine art photography.
Symbolic Representation | Street Graphics
I never realize what I have until the work is at a point of maturity and collectiveness. The collection before us passed through what I would call subjective layers before it could be called Pictographic.
The subject was both the acquisition of the camera, the desire of researching a subject and finding one in street graphics.
The creative act of taking pictures lead to the record of pictorial raw files, manipulated by a digital process; giving rise to characteristics similar to that of a physical structure by way of material texture as in a prehistoric cave drawing. Standing at the top of this imaginary layer stack laid an anthology regarded as representing something else, a symbolic substance. I made you aware of their existence and placed a context grounded in reality for these images to coexist in the real world, a transformation occurred turning them into symbols.
An evolutionary journey leading me to discover image and texture in the act of photographing and manipulating digital pixels. The collection as a stand-alone symbolic gesture represents the act of creation. Its meaning can chiefly be found in the structure in which the work is comprise. The physical stuff, which is generally, distinguish from a sign. To symbolize is to take subject, context, image and texture into a virtual particle accelerator and smash them together. The resulting head on collision is a pictographic emblem displaying the fundamental process of photography.
That is to observe, capture, edit and showcase to the world.
Pictographic Galley Seriers (x8)
Next Steps
As I begin work on developing a comprehensive online portfolio in weeks ahead that will cover a body of work ranging between art, design, technology and fine art. I wanted to showcase these images in pithy detail as an exclusive for the art journal magazine.
I am hoping to have these images critique by a major contemporary fashion photographer Erik Heck. Whose masterful pictures have proven to be one of the most original and talented of his generation.
Arts Journal Zine 
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