Developing my Style

 

I think the hardest thing about being a photographer is developing a style that is unique to you.  I know what I like to take photos of, so that was easy to define.  The way I present my photos as a finished print has taken a few steps along the path to finding a way to insert myself into the photo.  

 

I started off by printing photos directly to the artist canvas board.  This limited the maximum print size to 16"x20" and I was finding it hard to acquire the boards at the sizes and quantities that I needed.  From there I moved to a gallery wrap canvas and I include one with every wedding I shoot.  Gallery wrap is where the image wraps around the edges of the frame.  My shooting style does not always allow extra image to wrap around so I found myself having to photoshop the images larger to allow the wrap.

 

One evening I was feeling the need to create something and it was too dark and stormy to venture out with my camera, so I sat down at my Epson photo printer and printed one of my photos and then made a frame out of some foam core.  The white of the foam core just looked too sterile to me, so I picked up my paint brush and painted it.  I loved the way it looked so I spent the next few weeks printing and painting.  There was 2 problems with this.  Although I loved the finished look, the photos were limited to a maximum size of 8"x10" and the foam core warps.

 

A short while later I decided I was goind to create a few photo wraps so I printed a couple of my prints at a larger size.  And here again was the "not enough image to wrap" problem, so out came the paint brushes with the intention to wrap the painted portion around the frame.  I like the border too much to wrap, so it became part of the print itself.