‘A Feeling of Impressionism’
The varied and excellent programme of speakers that Rona Bassett booked for BWPS this year continued on Thursday with the Photographic Art of Steven Le Prevost.
Steve is an internationally acclaimed photographic artist who specialises in creating artworks that portray mood, atmosphere and emotion. His interest in photography and composition started with a holiday to Lanzarote (of all places!), where he realised that he would get excited by creating a pleasing composition by working out what elements to include or exclude in an image.
He went on to enrol at night school and learnt how to add texture to an image in the Darkroom and how to make a soft-focus image by changing focus mid-exposure. These became the basis for what he does today – albeit digitally with handmade textures and Photoshop.
Steve talked us through how he builds up his images using textures and blend modes, colour and composition, making a composite from the foreground, middle distance and sky photos. Three or four photos might make a composite with many, many textures overplayed on each and over the whole to blend and create an impression of a scene.
He consciously tries to break the rules with characters going out of the frame and softening edges of subjects that will have been sharp on taking – even using the warp tool to ‘bend’ the roof of buildings or the lay of a landscape! His aim when creating a picture will be to blur the edges of photography, remove clinical sharpness and create mood and atmosphere.
After a period of feeling less than creative, Steve has been trying out new techniques with images with no manipulation, including some beautiful examples of layers of silk. He is now pushing his creativity further with more surreal images with lots of colour and ‘bendy pics” – intriguing! Look out for ‘Christmas Eve, Oswald doing last-minute shopping’; it will make you smile!
