Daniel Hill

THE ARTIST AS IMAGE MAKER In the end, it isn’t whether or not I used paint or clay, but the image that’s left. When it came to me that the effects I was doing with the photos I have been taking might be sellable on the Internet, I began to think of other avenues in which to profit from these images. I call them ‘Alternative Vistas’, because of the way I change the image once inside photoshop. The first images I began to work with were plants and weeds, photos that were as ordinary as the plants themselves. I would spot certain ones I thought were compositionally interesting as a group or form. I wasn’t concern too much about the color because it was summer/spring and they were all green. But color played a major factor when I began to manipulate them in photoshop. I started by inverting the image, which immediately changed the color composition. Next I applied the “Difference” effect, which reverted it back but only some (a very interesting visual already). From there I worked the image with whatever filters and effects I thought would make the image unique and visually captivating. I wanted something that looked as if it had been painted, in the traditional sense of a painted or drawn image, not too abstract, but still recognizable as a plant. Some came out looking like Chinese or Japanese color drawings, I liked that (I studied Far Eastern art in art school). Some took on a look of their own, plants, but plant you would never find on earth (thus ‘Alternative Vistas’) The final image (the one I was satisfied with, often yielded offspring of its’ own simply by repeating the process again, or doing something new until I had a small series of images, but mostly my aim is to produce one successful image. Not all the photos I take inspire me to reinvent them… most don’t… I decided that the only way to get truly successful images is to be highly selective… even with this high standard of choosing, some don’t make it, even after I’ve worked them for some time. VISIONS When I’m creating a visual work, it is always a vision of an “other world”. Even if it’s abstract. It should be more than a pretty design. It should be a window into an alternative world… a world only I can show.