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Equivalents I - Pennzoil Place Houston I© Julia Anna Gospodarou

Home » Blog » Tutorials Fine Art Black and White Photography » WHY THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN PHOTOGRAPHY TAKES TIME – THE CREATION OF EQUIVALENTS I – Pennzoil Pl., Houston, TX

March 2, 2015 by Julia Anna Gospodarou

WHY THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN PHOTOGRAPHY TAKES TIME – THE CREATION OF EQUIVALENTS I – Pennzoil Pl., Houston, TX

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Equivalents I - Pennzoil Place Houston I © Julia Anna Gospodarou - creative process in photography

Equivalents I – Pennzoil Place Houston I © Julia Anna Gospodarou

The creative process in photography – How important this process is?

Equivalents I (Pennzoil Place, Houston TX – Arch. Phillip Johnson) is the start of a new black and white fine art series and maybe a new direction in my work, a direction not so minimalist as before, with more complex subjects and relations among them. As always, my creative process in photography is based on my interpretation of the world, my images are born from my experiences and what I do is to tell my stories through them. I tell my stories through black, white and shades of gray, through lines and shapes. Every tone in my images means something, every line, every accent, contrast or the lack of it.

HOMAGE TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

This is why I call this series Equivalents and I mean it as an homage to Alfred Stieglitz, the one who used this word for the first time in the beginning of 20th Century to create the first abstract photography series, when he shot more than 200 photographs of clouds, deprived of any other context, aiming with this series to capture only the feeling in his images and to find a channel of communication with the viewer beyond known shapes or subjects. The fact that I’m photographing clouds too when I shoot long exposures may be just coincidental, but maybe not. maybe clouds are indeed a good tool to communicate with the viewer through their symbolism. For me, they are one of the aspects of my creative process in photography.
Here is a short but very interesting video that talks about this series and why Stieglitz was photographing clouds.

UPDATE: In case the video below is not working try this Wayback Machine alternative link.

Stieglitz is one of the most important photographers, artists and thinkers of 20th Century. He was not only a photographer, but also a theoretician and one of the souls of NYC’s and the entire US photography life at the beginning of the century, his influences going way beyond the US and spreading out in the whole world.

Through the Photo-Secession Group he founded and the magazine they were issuing, called Camera Work, also through his gallery where he exhibited young fine art photographers (that’s where the work of Ansel Adams was exhibited for the first time), he fought to make photography accepted as a fine art medium and he managed to change the way people view photography, from a mean of documenting the world to a mean of interpreting the world.

One of the tools he used to do that was to photograph clouds as a way of showing that the subject is of little importance in fine art photography, that what is important and what creates art is the vision of the artist interpreting the subject.

MY GOAL IN PHOTOGRAPHY

This is what I strive for too, in my photography work and my writings, in my work with my workshop and mentoring students and also through this blog and other channels I have to communicate with people: to make photography accepted as more than photography in the traditional sense of the word, as (en)Visionography – the art of expressing our internal world through the images we create and the result of our personal creative process.

This is the aim of art and its sole purpose, to serve the artist as a tool for expressing his beliefs and feelings related to the world he perceives.
You can read much more about my philosophy, and also how I put it in practice, how I create the images I create, in my 424-page book From Basics to Fine Art – Black and White Photography, and in my video tutorial and eBook Long Exposure, Architecture, Fine Art Photography – Creating (en)Visionography .
Alternatively, you can come to one of my workshops where you hear everything about it in person and see a demo of my entire creative and processing workflow.

THE IMAGE – VISION AND MAKING OF EQUIVALENTS I

This image was shot in Huston and it shows one of the icons of the city and of modern architecture in general, Philip Johnson’s Pennzoil building. It was taken quite some time ago, but only now it was ready to be interpreted and processed.

WHY THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN PHOTOGRAPHY TAKES TIME

I sometimes need a long time to start working on a certain image, even if I may know from the beginning that I will work on it. This happens because creating fine art photography means expressing yourself and sometimes you need to wait for the right experiences and the right state of mind or to have a certain interpretation of the world, in order to create a certain image and make it represent the essence of both the subject and of the artist’s mind and soul.


Art is not a question of quantity, is not a question of speed, of producing work in an intense rhythm. It is a question of creating with authenticity and as a result of an internal need to express an idea or feeling.


This is why art will show exactly the personality of an artist if we know how to read it. Artists who are preoccupied by the detail by the accuracy in expressing an idea and in creating the material form of this idea, which is the image, in fine art photography, will need a longer time to craft their images in order to express their ideas. If you belong to this category, don’t be afraid if you don’t produce a lot, just be interested in the quality, the honesty and authenticity of your work. This is what will make a real work of art, this is what will outlive you and will keep your ideas and soul alive forever.

This image was not an easy image to process, as all the images that have a lot of detail and where you need to create a hierarchy in the importance of the elements you show, so they culminate with the most important point in the image: your subject. I needed many hours of tweaking and changing the balance between contrasts and tones till I brought everything together and the images spoke to me with the voice I intended it to have: the voice of my VISION.

It is an image that also needs some time to be read, as it needed time to be created. You will see in some areas very subtle difference in tones and probably with the compression of the internet you will lose a lot of its subtlety. But I can tell you: it is there.


This is part of my visual language and one of my mantras, also one of the best pieces of advice I could give to a fine art black and white photographer: to create the most subtle difference in tones, many times imperceptible if you don’t look carefully at the large size of the image.


This is one of the images that really needs to be seen printed in large so to notice every detail. The same stands for my next image that I will publish soon: Equivalences II – shot in London.

You can see these subtle changes the image underwent during my processing in this video where I show the Before, After and in-between states of my image and how it evolved from the RAW state to the final image.

You can read this article I wrote if you want to consult a more in-depth tutorial about the creation of a fine art architectural photograph.

IMAGE MAKING OF – VIDEO

 


Vimeo version of the video is available too.

I think this is going to be a longer project for me, as I have many ideas to explore, not only architecture but other subjects too, maybe even people.
In parallel, I will continue to work on my tilt-shift blur long exposure series Fluid Time and I have some other ideas waiting in line to find the time to put them in practice.

TECHNICAL DATA

TECHNIQUE

Long Exposure image.
– Camera settings:
252.0 sec. , 10mm @ f/7.1, ISO 100

If you want to learn more about long exposure photography you can read my Long Exposure Photography Extensive Tutorial that is a complete guide to this fascinating technique

EQUIPMENT

CAMERA: Nikon D7000
LENS: Nikon 10.0-24.0mm f/3.5-4.5
ND FILTERS:
– 10+6 stops Formatt Hitech  ProStop IRND Filters

Black and white processing – Photography Drawing (PhtD)

– LR5, PS CC, Topaz B&W Effects  (Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2 Full Review) +Topaz DeNoise + Topaz Detail + DxO View Point

FURTHER STUDY RESOURCES – FINE ART BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY, ARCHITECTURE, LONG EXPOSURE

You can find more resources about fine art black and white photography, (en)Visionography, long exposure photography and architectural photography in my extensive collection of photography tutorials. To receive my future tutorials directly via email you can subscribe to my website.

More about how to create fine art photography, from vision to processing and the final image you can read in my book From Basics to Fine Art – Black and White Photography, with co-author Joel Tjintjelaar and in my video tutorial Long Exposure, Architecture, Fine Art Photography - Creating (en)Visionography a hands-on tutorial accompanied by an eBook presenting my processing workflow, or attend one of my workshops.

Julia Anna Gospodarou - (en)Visionographer

Julia Anna Gospodarou Fine Art black and white photographer Julia Anna Gospodarou is an internationally acclaimed photographer, architect with a Master degree, author and highly sought-after educator, teaching workshops and lecturing around the world. Founder of (en)Visionography™ and creator of Photography Drawing™, author of the best-selling book From Basics to Fine Art - Black and White Photography , with high distinctions in the most important photography competitions worldwide (International Photography Awards IPA Photographer of the Year, World Photography Awards SWPA and Hasselblad Masters finalist, as well as 80+ more awards), widely published internationally in books and magazines, Julia is passionate about the art in photography and striving to spread it into the world.
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I have the honor to be part of the jury in the VIPA 2021 Visions International Photo Awards that has just been launched.

I am warmly inviting you all to submit your images to the contest and I wish you good luck to win one or more of the awards. 

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Delighted to have won the Best of Nation Award for Delighted to have won the Best of Nation Award for Greece and be a Top 10 finalist in Commercial Category at WPC World Photographic Cup 2021.

I haven’t entered in photography contests for the past years after I had the honor to win the Photographer of the Year award at IPA International Photography Awards in 2016, but this was different. It was teamwork, and we represented Greece with my fellow photographers at one of the most distinguished international competitions, which makes me even happier to have been awarded. 
We are still waiting for the team awards. Wish us luck so Greece wins. And keep an eye on this space to find out the final results. 

For now, you can enjoy the finalist images at this link https://www.worldphotographiccup.org/wpc_gallery/finalists-2021/

Go Greece! 

Nikos Siamos Akis Douzlatzis Anna Pantelia Prokopis Manousopoulos Babis Tsoukias John Makris Nik Pekridis 

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Fluid Time V – Aligning Paths The 5th image in m Fluid Time V – Aligning Paths
The 5th image in my Fluid Time series, shot in Chicago in 2013. 
You can find limited edition prints of this and more images at www.juliaannagospodarou.com 
I’m quite fond of this image, and I remember how much fun I had playing with the camera and the geometry to get a dynamic shot of the convergence of these 2 buildings. The image was shot with the 24 m TS lens of a Canon full frame. 
The particularity of this image is that I wanted to emphasize the composition's dynamism even more by using selective focus with the tilt function of the TS lens. One of the challenges was to place the area of focus in the right spot, given that focusing with the tilt function of TS lens is entirely different than the way we regularly focus. It took quite a bit of work and patience to get it right but it was worth it. 
This is one thing you need to have when working with the TS lens, patience. And the second is the desire to think out of the box and play with your gear. I just love doing that. 

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Fluid Time IV – Stopping Time This is the 4th im Fluid Time IV – Stopping Time
This is the 4th image in my 2013 Fluid Time series and it shows one of the iconic historical buildings in Chicago, the Wrigley Building. Finished in 1924 and built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, it was one of the first highrises built in the area. 
Here too, I used the tilt function of the tilt-shift lens, as in all the images in the series, and it was actually a quite challenging image to shoot because of the intensity of the effect I needed, which wasn’t easy to create. But the more challenging, the more I love it. Easy images are boring, isn’t it? As everything that is too easy. :) 
You can find limited edition prints of this and more images at www.juliaannagospodarou.com 

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Fluid Time III – Two Worlds The third image in m Fluid Time III – Two Worlds
The third image in my 2013 Fluid Time series. This is one of the most interesting buildings in Chicago, the Hancock Center. One of the things I love about this building, in terms of architectural design is that the structural frame of the building is placed exteriorly and not at the interior as usually, and it is visible on the façade. For those who are wondering, this x-braced reinforcement system allows for larger open spaces in the interior of the building which is why it is ideal for an office building like this, and it also allows for rising taller structures. When it was built, in 1965, the Hancock Center was meant to be the second taller building in the world. 
Like all the images in the series, here too, I used the tilt function of the tilt-shift lens, to focus on the relation between the 2 buildings – hence the title: Two Worlds. 
You can find limited edition prints of this and more images at www.juliaannagospodarou.com 

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Fluid Time II – Utopian Connections Second in my Fluid Time II – Utopian Connections
Second in my 2013 Fluid Time series, this image shows the Prudential Plaza Tower in Chicago, flanked by the Prudential Plaza One building and the Aon Center.
Here I used again the tilt function of the tilt-shift lens, as I did in all the images in this series, to isolate different planes of focus in order to create depth. 
There are three things that you can use to create depth: composition, selective depth of field, and selective work with light. All 3 of them are just as powerful if used right. 
I’m working right now on finalizing a video course about creating B&W photography where I will get into a lot of details about these aspects and many more. If you are interested, keep an eye on this space and I’ll be back with more about it very soon. 
You can find limited edition prints of this and more images at www.juliaannagospodarou.com 

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Fluid Time I – Parallel Realities One of my favo Fluid Time I – Parallel Realities
One of my favorite series, shot in 2013 in Chicago – one of my favorite cities. In this series, I worked with the tilt function of the tilt-shift lens to create selective focus, a technique that gained traction among fine art photographers after that. Which is one of the reasons why I consider this one of my most important series. I believe what we do becomes even more valuable if we can not only express ourselves through photography, but we can also inspire others. 
You can find limited edition prints of this and more images at www.juliaannagospodarou.com
Have a great weekend, everyone! 

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Happy New Year 2021! Wishing a wonderful new year Happy New Year 2021! 
Wishing a wonderful new year to everyone, filled with much love, peace, and inspiration. 
Yours truly.
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