— Something I especially love about photo artistry is just how much beauty you can pull from the simplest, most ordinary things.
Each month, within the pages of our magazine Living the Photo Artistic Life you’ll discover a host of stunning images derived from photographs that were originally (at best) commonplace, even dismissible.
But the tag line of the magazine says it all. Serious photo artistry is about “pushing photography further.”
And to be sure, the artists in our advanced “AWAKE” group know how to push their photos further.
What I find exciting about this is that it shows that you don’t necessarily need a stunning model photo or an elaborate photo shoot or an award-winning landscape to create something absolutely jaw-dropping.
Even in many of our advanced pro tutorials, where we look at every single layer and technique employed in creating some of the most amazingly elaborate works of photo art, what we find again and again is that the images that went into the creation are in themselves nothing all that special.
What’s special is the way the images are rendered and the creativity that went into assembling them.
In images like those you see here (each by one of our “AWAKE” artists), what stands out to me is just how simple and unassuming the original photos clearly were.
But we hardly notice that for all the drama and excitement the artists were able to bring to the compositions they’ve gone on to craft from such humble raw materials.
Of course, artistic compositions like these require capable technique.
They require patient work (often combined with considerable experimentation).
But most of all, this kind of mastery requires an artistic eye trained to see it in the first place — the ability to look beneath the surface of what most others would more often than not casually dismiss and somehow, by some act of imaginative insight, find within it something fantastic.
Something to astonish us.
Something utterly beautiful — beautiful to its core.
And once seen, coaxed out from its hiding place and rendered for all the world to relish and enjoy.
For that’s really what these artists are doing. They’re seeing something … and lingering with it long enough to find out its mysteries.
And through their artistry and the exercise of their craft, how much more miraculous the world becomes when we are then given the opportunity of seeing it through their eyes.
Then, the simplest of things astonish us.
For in being touched by an artist, the simplest of things unfold and reveal their magic.
– Sebastian