For the last twenty-plus years or so, I’ve taught ancient Greek and Roman history at a university in Denver. From that long perspective, there’s not much new under the sun. But I also take photographs—-and I’m as passionate about those as I am the ancient Romans. My company, Wild Basin Photography and Gallery, is located in the North Boulder Art District. My portfolio is filled with images of Boulder, Colorado, and the Rocky Mountain West. But it also includes images from Rome, Florence and Northern New Mexico (Santa Fe, Abiquiu, and Ghost Ranch—-Georgia O’Keefe’s landscape).
For me, the best thing about photography is being out taking photographs. You are immediately surrounded by a pulsing, 360-degree-multi-sensory environment. The art of photography is reducing this mind’s- eye sensory experience into an aesthetically pleasing, two-dimensional image by blending technology with deliberate, intentional, and personal artistic seeing.
So on many levels, the process of making photographs is more complicated than it appears. The beauty and/or interest of a scene pulls the photographer in; but memorable photographs come from within the photographer—quite literally from the inside out as a kind of self-portraiture. This transcends the personal style a photographer may have and becomes the first level of “meaning” a photograph may have.
In this presentation, we will look at a series of images and raise some of the many issues related to this artistic and personal side of the photographic process.
Lastly, the next best thing to taking photographs is to talk about them. This should be an interesting evening and I invite you to join the discussion!
