Finding Your Creative Style - Shelley Vandegrift
Finding Your Creative Style and Expressing It in Your Images
Discovering one’s artistic style in post-processing involves a captivating journey of experimentation and exploration within the digital darkroom. It’s about discovering a personal aesthetic - whether it’s a preference for vibrant and bold colors, a penchant for moody and atmospheric tones, or an inclination towards minimalist or intricate editing. We will start this session focusing on exercises to help you identify your own style and create a framework for applying it to your images.
Our journey of self-exploration will then move to reviewing various techniques for using the palette of photography, color and light, to transform a simple image into an expression of your style. We will explore approaches for controlling light to guide the viewer’s gaze, shifting the attributes of color or applying toning to elevate the visual narrative, and manipulating sharpness and blur to to add mood or evoke emotion.
Optional hand out: https://www.camversation.co.uk/product-page/hand-out-1-finding-your-creative-style-expressing-it-shelley-vandegrift
About Shelley:
As a child learning the magic of image creation in her father’s darkroom, Shelley Vandegrift fell in love with photography. As an adult, that love grew with the arrival of digital imaging, which married her twin loves: photography and technology. Teaching artistic post-processing techniques and skills and infrared photography has taken center stage in Shelley’s life. With her knowledge of a wide-range of computer technologies and her knack for teaching the complex in a simple, straightforward manner, Shelley now guides other photographers in achieving their artistic vision through workshops and one-to-one mentoring.
Shelley co-authored Infrared Photography: Digital Techniques for Artistic Images published by Amherst Publishing in 2020 with her artistic mentor, friend, and teaching partner Laurie Klein. She is the developer of presets designed specifically for infrared photographs. Her award-winning fine art photography has been featured in B&W Magazine, the Commons Gallery, A. Smith Gallery, Lucas Gallery, the Lationo Cultural Center of Dallas, Dallas City Hall, Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary, and the Art Traveler’s Collection at Dallas’ Love Field Airport.
Shelley is a frequent guest instructor for Santa Fe Workshops and Laurie Klein Workshops. She is also a guest presenter for camera clubs and major software companies such as Skylum and DxO