Gordon Aspland - "The Art of Value Added"

11 November 2009

Many traditional photographers like to see a sharply focused image with good definition. When Gordon Aspland of Newton Abbot visited Dawlish and Teignmouth Camera Club last Wednesday however, he expressed the view that a photographer should add some of their own artistic style to an image, in the same way that artists and writers do.

Gordon’s preference is to visit a location and take photos where instinct tells him there should be a good picture. After loading the images into his computer, he looks at the pictures in detail and finds an interesting picture with in the original image. Much to the chagrin of the traditionalist, he then introduces various blurring and movement effects in the secondary image before enhancing colours and edges to produce a stylistic and art based picture.

Gordon illustrated his talk by showing a number of prints followed by some audio visual projections which showed the processes he used from the original image to the finished picture. Many in the audience appreciated his final projection where he had taken cut flowers and dried and pressed them. He had then mounted them in photographic slide holders which he had scanned into the computer to produce some very different and inspiring images that he set to music.