When I first started Reflected Spectrum, everyone asked what my specialty was going to be. Would I choose wedding photography, family portrait photography, or seniors? Or perhaps I would be a fine art photographer, or maybe a commercial photographer! Truthfully, I couldn’t answer them. Photography has been my passion for so many years, I’ve done a little of everything and loved it all. The more I thought about this question, the more I realized I had no intention of choosing one path of photography over the others. I believe they’re all connected, and that being a better landscape photographer will make me a better wedding photographer, and that learning to catch the candid moments of a wedding as they rapidly unfold gives me a valuable skill when capturing portraits of lively young children. So, I continue to photograph any subject who gives me that privilege. Lately I’ve been focusing mostly on nature photography as we say goodbye to winter. Winter landscapes feature strong outlines of bare tree branches, which can be graceful, spooky, and beautiful all at once. These are some of my most recent pieces.
Totem
This interpretation of a winter tree was created by making a triple exposure in-camera. In photoshop, I created a copy of the image and mirrored it to create the symmetrical representation I was looking for. If you look closely, you may recognize many different shapes in the patterns here. I won’t spoil it for you by pointing out what I saw.
Tangled
This image was created for an assignment called “Repetition”. Rather than looking for objects that were already repeated, I created my own sense of repetition through the use of multiple exposures in-camera.
Ominous Beauty
This one was taken with my newly converted IR (infrared) camera. The infrared light records differently in the camera than visible light. For this image, I loved the graceful, yet ominous tones infrared light brought to the sky and leaves.
Reaching
This is another IR photograph, taken with a Lensbaby. The Lensbaby gives this image a dreamlike quality, while the infrared light brings a deep blue to the water beneath the tree.
Awakening From a Dream
This image was taken with my infrared camera as well as my Lensbaby. The qualities of the IR light aren’t as pronounced in this black and white image as they are in color images, but it did help to soften the tones and shadows here to help achieve the surreal quality I wanted.
