Amy's Thought's On All Things About Becoming A Professional Emerging Artist

Recently, I was reading an article in a popular artist magazine from Winter 2020/2021.  I noticed that the paintings represented seemed dark to me.  Many more dark values than light.  When thinking about it, and the correlation with depression, I looked at the date, and said....ahhhhh.  Anthropologists will one day learn so much about us as artists and how we coped during COVID social distancing while we endeavored to remain positive and continuing to create or moving our artwork forward into greater depth of skill.

Then I thought about photography class... I thought about how I took photographs of miniscule items in nature and blew them up to oversized items, to the point that they looked like lovely organic abstracts.  It was the professional camera that allowed me to do this.  The camera phone didn't make the grade for depth of detail and light.

It was an Aha moment, as an artist, and as someone who needs light to be happy.  I've been cheating myself in my career, when I only took my camera phone into the field.  As well as sometimes opting for my camera phone, (because I bought the one with the GOOD CAMERA, and MULTIPLE CAMERAS) when taking my photos of my finished artwork and submitting to shows, contests, critiques.  STOP doing that AMY, I practically screamed in my head, as I also gave grace to myself.  "Canyon Campgrounds", my entry was self-sabbatoged.

I jumped up and put a newly recharged battery in my Nikon D60.  I took my newly rejected Oil Painting that I had entered into The OPA Western Regional, outside for some natural light.  Now, let me tell you first, that I have already updated that painting with the knowledge I have gained since the date I had submitted it to The Western Regional, in the first place.  I did that the same day.  It then cured, with the help of the Sun.  It is now in the OPA Summer On-Line Showcase.  

I however, had taken the photo with that nce CAMERA PHONE.  I now, held my breath as I took the photo is RAW with my Nikon D60.

I compared them.  YIKES!  The lumonosity does not come through in the camera phone version.  The Professional picture in RAW is much lighter with more variation in values because...well quite simply RAW captures more detail.  Detail that many in today's society don't think is important.  However, to us, as artists it will make a difference.

Now the OPA Summer On-Line Showcase is closed for entries, so I won't replace the image, nor show it here.  However, I'm going to use this article as my Newsletter as well, along with a couple photos of the same image, one taken with the phone camera and one with the Nikon D60 using RAW data, so collectors can see the difference.

This is also why so many of us artists suffered in 2020, from lack of in person events.  The computer doesn't translate color as well as the human eye.  When we view an image in person versus a photo, the in person is always better, if left "untouched" in the edit system, which is what I do.  One way of filling in that gap for us, is the professional camera, using RAW data.  It is in this way, that we as artists can at least begin with a greater amount of detail in our image, giving the computer a better chance at translating that image as close as possible to the actual painting.

Lesson learned.