Recurring Visual Exploration

Santa Fe Baldy IIA leitmotif is a recurrent theme throughout a composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation. More often used to describe a repeated musical or literary strain of thinking, I want to apply it to a visual theme. I am currently in the throes of creating and assembling a series of visual studies of the same visual composition whose variables have been reduced to the available light and camera stroke utilized in blending their elements.

2 SangreChristo IIThe recurring motif remains the same: a nearly 12,000′ ridge of Sangre de Cristo mountain tops, just north of Santa Fe, clustered around Santa Fe Baldy, New Mexico’s 4th highest peak as it is immersed in high weather and bathed in high light. Beyond my usual visual creation process — choosing a particular landscape motif — and ‘working it’ for an hour or so to comprise a ‘single shooting series’, in this case I return repeatedly – ten times over nearly a year — to the same capture location from which I continue ‘re-working’ this same motif.  Blending my camera stroke on this far wider array of the motif’s visual elements – weather and light — has allowed me to greatly expand my explorations.

2 Santa Fe Baldy IIFinding the flow, and repeatedly connecting with its motion, requires fully engaging all my senses. How each motif relates becomes its own puzzle. How they might interrelate yields a leitmotif.

1 Comment

  1. Very Amazing work!! How do you define your camera strokes. They sound quite creative and alluring!! Do you give workshops? Thanks! [email protected]

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