• Infrared Landscapes
• Very Wide (or Very Tall) Panorama Landscapes
• Flip ‘n Fold, Geometric, and Organic Shapes (Think Rorschach)
The first section will showcase Tim’s large format infrared landscapes. Tim writes the following about his infrared work: “ I was first introduced to infrared photography about 35 years ago in a college photography class. We had an assignment to shoot a roll of 35mm B&W infrared film with a homemade filter, process and proof the film, and print an 8x10.
I was thrilled and amazed to watch my fellow students create fantastic and striking images from the mundane subjects within walking distance of the classroom door. These otherworldly images remained in the back of my mind and I made a promise to myself to someday create a portfolio using this Infrared technique. Recently I was re-introduced to infrared photography via the digital SLR method. A customer of my fine art printing business, brought me images to print that were created with his standard Nikon digital SLR camera that had been set up for infrared. This inspired me to finally get started. I researched digital infrared on the Internet and discovered that I already had a super Hi-Res digital IR camera. The same 4x5 camera that I use to photograph paintings for the Giclee printing process (called a Betterlight Scanning Back) turns out to be extremely sensitive to Infrared wavelengths. It was an obvious choice; all I had to buy was a filter and I was ready to go. When I began shooting infrared it became immediately obvious, if I wanted to create beautiful images, I needed to learn to see in infrared.
Blue sky becomes very dark to black, reflections in water become black, most fabrics photograph white or very light gray, people have milky white skin, green leaves and foliage become white, and the tone qualities of other objects also change, some a little and some a lot. IR photography cuts through haze, making distant objects seem closer and sharper. Sometimes the image looks like it is half negative, 1/4 normal, and 1/4 solarized. I like to photograph familiar subjects in IR, presenting them in a new way. When I imagine the
image composed in IR tonalities, my composition changes to fit a new strange universe of IR light. New elements are dominant. That other-worldly tonality is always there but it is not always obvious that it was created with the IR process. Sometimes it just looks weird (I like weird). There is a certain amount of shock value to infrared photos. The more familiar the scene type is, the more shock value it seems to have.
You’ve got to wrap your brain around the fact that familiar objects and shapes are as expected but some of the tonalities are bizarre and other-worldly. This makes showing my IR images more enjoyable as people of all levels of artistic education seem to spend a lot more time looking at or studying the IR images. I like to think that I am challenging people to see familiar subjects in a new and interesting way.
The second body of work Mr. Fleming will show is a selection of Very Wide (or Very Tall) Panorama photographs. Tim uses sophisticated digital imaging programs to stitch multiple photos together to create big, beautiful superwide format landscapes. Some of the images are supertall as they are vertically composed. Several media choices are used in the printing of Tim’s panoramas. There is a sweeping panorama of a mountain range taken using the Infrared process and printed in fine art B&W materials and several are printed in color on canvas and then stretched like paintings. Tim says of his panoramas “I love to use the panorama process. It lets me create huge and wide images (or tall) that I have dreamed about for years and now I can finally get them up on the walls just like I imagined them. The length of the images seems to pull you in, almost as if you become part of the image as it saturates a field of view.”
The third body of work, Flip ‘n Fold, Geometric and Organic shapes (Think Rorschach), is a selection of images that have been cut in half and folded over, or flipped. Most of the images were abstract to begin with and then, with this process, they are pushed beyond abstract. The intersection of the two images (or four or even six) tricks the mind into seeing things that are not really there. Everyone sees something different. Tim Says about his Flip ‘n Fold images: “I first tried this process in 1974 where I flipped the negative in the enlarger and carefully matched it up with the normal photo. It was a picture of a Farris wheel at night and it is called Farris Wheel Fantasia. Now I have Adobe Photoshop and the computer to do the hard work. These images call out to be named but the problem is that everybody thinks of a different name. The way they are seen is more about the viewer than the photographer. Look at one of these images once and you will define it; look at it again in a different state of mind and you might see something totally different. Some have a positive negative push pull like an M.C. Escher painting. I hope they challenge your views about perspective and the way you decide what an image is.”