Welcome….
I used to have a traditional artist online gallery type website but the internet and I have both moved on. The time had come for something a little less restrictive and a lot more interactive. There is no shop on this site as I really want this one to be more a part of the creative process itself and not just a glorified photo album. Of course if you like anything here please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll forward a price list. Most of my paintings are between $70 and $400 – without shipping and photography prices depends a lot upon intended usage.
I am into just about all forms of visual art with a preference for abstraction over realism – A musical note has no linguistic meaning beyond itself so why should a blob of paint on a canvas be subject to different rules?
Here you will find:
Writings about modern art in general and modern contemporary painting in particular
Images and videos of my own take on post impressionism and expressionism style art
Lots of visual art photography and abstract art photography.
Please feel free to make suggestions or comment on anything that you find here. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Posted by
steve -
September 3, 2010 at 3:16 PM
This is something a little different in the lighting food photography department. It is a photograph of a piece of carrot cake but shot in top of our oven. The oven is one of those with the burners under a translucent black material, presumable some type of fire resistant plastic. The background is an aluminum splash panel that was attached to the wall to make cleaning easier. Read more…
This is an honest attempt to answer the question What is Minimalism. As with most questions in art there is no easy answer and any two art historians are likely to give widely differing answers. Anyway, here is my shot at it.
Read more...
The rise of minimalist cooking is changing the art of food photography. The following is a look at some of the techniques adopted by photographers to capture the simplicity and the spirit of this modern cuisine. Whether it is because of the recession or a genuine desire to downsize and simplify, minimalist cooking has become extremely popular. Everything from expensive and hard to acquire ingredients to rarely used, specialized utensils and equipment have been pared back to the bare minimum. Less is definitely more. Many photographers have noticed this change, either consciously or intuitively and are evolving and adapting their techniques to suit. The old sumptuous saturated glistening overfilled image just doesn’t seem to be a good match for this new approach to cooking and food in general. Read more…
This small but perfectly formed ebooklet represents my wife’s first foray into the world of publishing. Until recently she owned her own small commercial bakery but had to give it up for health reasons. Publishing was a logical progression as she is a more than fair writer – the success of her non-cooking blog, Minimalist Woman is testament to this fact. minimalist woman, minimalist cook – you’ve probably spotted the theme that is going on here.
While Meg, my wife, did the hard work of actually compiling and testing the recipes I got to do the fun stuff such as the photography and the layout work. I was never really much into food photography before we embarked on this project but as time goes on I’m getting to enjoy it more and more. It is probably the least abstract and easily judged type of photography there is. If the image makes someone hungry it works and if it makes them queasy it fails. Simple.
My serious photography does tend towards the sparse and this really seems to go well with the who minimalism thing that Meg is all about. This is a happy coincidence, it was never really discussed and she certainly didn’t try to direct me when shooting. Our system was basically,
Meg: “Steve I need a photograph of this”
Me: “Ummm OK”
sometimes less really is more.
The ebooklet is a sample of the work that will appear in the first full size version which is scheduled for completion towards the end of August. It contains seven very easy recipes (simplicity is the theme) such as basic roast chicken, ditto beef, several salads including tuna, chicken and a wonderful bean one along with the best chile I’ve ever tasted.
Anyway, it is free and can be downloaded from here.
Whether you are into food photography or really good basic food it is worth checking out. I fully admit to being biased but I am really excited by this project and especially the work that Meg is doing.
Here is something a bit different – cubes of water melon being squirted with water – not as technically difficult as it looks. There was a reasonable level of ambient light so I just set the shutter speed to maximum flash sync, manually focused to a point just in front of where I intended to squirt, set the self timer and started squirting.
There are, in effect three light sources at work, flash on the left as you look at the picture, a lot of ambient from behind and a little from the right.
If you look at the feint trails with the on the left of the image as you look at you can see that the water drops appear a little in from the right. The trails are the highlights on the drops and the brightness of the trail shows when the flash went off in relation to the entire release time. The rest of the trail is the non flash shutter open time and more interestingly, gives an idea of the ambient light level.
Having a plastic working surface is really handy (this is a gray plastic fold out decorating table. The amount of water is deceptive – there is actually very little, about a teaspoonful in the whole shot and about a tablespoonful including what is out of frame so no studio flood to mop up.
