Fluid Time II © Julia Anna Gospodarou

Art and bravery. Why you need bravery in art? Answering to this question through presenting the image Fluid Time II –  Utopian Connections –  an (en)Visionographic Chicago Story

One Prudence Plaza, Chicago – Architects Naess & Murphy

…the only purpose of art is to make you dream, to make you travel. Don’t let them tell you anything else. If they do, they just don’t understand…

Second chapter in my Chicago series and the story goes on. You can read the stories behind all my photos on this site if you subscribe to it. You can receive all my posts, tutorials and exciting news the moment I post them. Next coming: something I was promising for a long time, my creative and processing method. I’m working on it at the moment and you’ll be the first to get it if you subscribe.

Fluid Time series vision and artistic concept

My goal with the Fluid Time series is to use architecture as a tool to help me go beyond what can be seen, to help me enter a parallel reality that may not be visible with naked eye but that always exists there if you know how to look at things. In a way I’m trying to write a story. If I was a writer I would have made this into a novel, but since I’m better at expressing myself visually, I’m telling my stories with images. That’s part of why I work in series, it’s my way of telling stories. That’s why you’ll always find in my images more than just a beautiful photo.

I’m not interested in photography as mere image but in what you can say by using an image, what you can say about you as artist. I’m interested in photography with a vision, in (en)Visionography™ , in putting your own self in each image you make, not only putting your subject there, as beautiful as it may be. Beauty is anyway relative. My subject will be beautiful because I had this specific vision of it.

What you will see in this series is how I see Chicago. You won’t see Chicago, but the way I see it, my vision of it, which is different and is unique, as vision is for each of us.

Vision is our own reality, our parallel reality and that’s what I’m trying to show and explore with this series.

Hence the use of the tilt-shift blur, which is the symbol of subconscious, of that place where the vision is being born and that defines us as artists.

Art and Bravery. Why?

I’ve said somewhere in my Guide to Vision and in my artistic statement that one needs to be brave to make art. I totally stand by this and this is what I do in my work, either consciously or subconsciously: be brave enough to tell my stories.

Why does one need bravery to create?

Because making art means putting yourself in the objects you create, the whole you, your naked soul, covered just in a thin layer that will be the physical shell of the object you create, your soul out there in the open for the world to see it. It takes a lot of courage to do this and it’s not for the faint of heart.

You can see this clearly in the work of the great artists, you can see their naked soul and this is what infuses life to the objects they create: either they are paintings, sculpture, architectural objects or photographs. This is what brings emotion in the viewer and make him feel that tingle in the spine when he watches a real work of art…

This is what I aim to achieve with my photography.

Technical Data

Technique:

T/S LE = Tilt + Shift + Long Exposure

Camera settings:

Exposure: 121.0 sec. @ f/9, ISO 100, 24mm

Equipment

Camera:  Canon 5D MK3

Lens:  TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II

Tilt-shift lens settings – 8.5 degrees oblique tilt at 45 degrees rotation, 12mm shift (rise)

Filters: 10+3 stops Formatt Hitech Filters ProStop IRND

Black and white processing – Photography Drawing (PhtD)

– LR5, PS CC , Topaz B&W Effects  (B&W Effects extensive review) + Topaz DeNoise + Topaz Detail + DxO View Point

Topaz DeNoise as the best noise removal tool

One thing I have to say is that I’m more and more delighted by the Topaz plugins and by how much help they are. The range of things you can do with the Topaz plugin exceeds by far whatever you can do with any other plugin collection and the quality of the result is exceptional. My latest favorite is Topaz DeNoise which did a fantastic job in the image that I’m working on at the moment and I will publish soon. Check out all the plugins here on Topaz Labs website   and if you like them get a 15% discount with code “juliaannagospodarou”

The “tilt-shift  blur  long exposure processing”

What you can see in this image is the same more or less technique as in the first image of the series – The “tilt-shift  blur  long exposure processing” so to say – this time applied in a less conventional perspective and with some more experience in processing tilt-shift blurred images which is a bit like walking on moving sands. But it is extremely rewarding when you get it right. To read more about this technique have a look at the Working with Long Exposure and the Tilt-Shift Lens – The creation of Fluid Time I  and  Architecture as Parallel Reality – An Analysis of Fluid Time I . At the same time you will get an idea about what I want to achieve with this series.

Topaz Labs 15% Discount for my students and followers

Topaz Labs  was so kind to not only feature my work so many times and participate in my workshops, but they also gave me a discount code for my students and followers who are reading this blog and want to use the best software available in their post-processing work. You can use my special code “juliaannagospodarou”  to get  15% discount for any of the Topaz plugins, separately or the whole collection. You can use the code by ordering at this link. Enjoy!

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

You can find more tutorials on 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 till 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 is an internationally acclaimed photographer, author and educator, teaching workshops and lecturing around the world. Founder of (en)Visionography™ and Photography Drawing™, co-author of the best-selling book From Basics to Fine Art, with high distinctions in the most important photography competitions worldwide, published internationally in numerous books and magazines, Julia is passionate about art and striving to spread it into the world.