Art + Emotions = Amazingness

Feeling Art

Have you ever looked at a piece of art and felt some kind of emotion from it? If you have, you probably ended up feeling like the quality of the art was good. This emotion that you feel is what the artist is trying to portray, and if they successfully make you feel something when you look at their art, then they have accomplished their goal. As a photographer, I see a lot of other photographers work, and there have been many images that have blown my mind. I really felt something when I looked at them, and I think that's partially why people enjoy art. The emotions that they elicit from it connects with them in some way. For the artist to really get emotion to come across in their work, I think they really have to be feeling something themselves when they're producing it. Without this feeling, I think there is a good chance that the piece will not reach its full potential even though it may be good without the emotion.  

Technically Creating Artistic Emotion

A lot of times when I take "artsy" photos I have an idea in mind that will make the come to life and show what I really saw when I was taking the picture. The image above is an example of one of those instances. The photo on the left is what the photo looked like when I took it, and the one on the right is what I "saw" when I shot the photo. In the photo on the right, you'll notice that it has more light coming in from the top right of the image than the original. This effect was created in Photoshop, but it only works well because light was already coming in from that area in the original photo. That is something I observed when I was taking the photo. I knew I would want to add in light to bring in the effect I had in real life. I also made the image contrasty for two reasons, first, it is my style to create images with contrast and second, because contrast and second, because contrast and second, because it adds more drama to the photo complementing the light that is existing/added. Along with this, I added some vibrancy to finish bringing the image to life. 

Being Emotionally Connected To The Art - The Photographer's Perspective

Creating visually interesting and emotionally moving images is a very big part of being a photographer. The main key to successfully going this is to feel something for the piece you're working on. The image above, I loved it when I shot the photo. I knew what I wanted to do with it and what I wanted people to feel when they saw it. The warm sunlight was like fresh air, and almost created that feeling of something new and exciting. I felt that way looking at it in person. When I got the image loaded onto my computer and in my editing program though, I wasn't so excited about it. I actually edited the image 4-5 times trying to get the same emotion that I felt while taking it back out of it at the end. All these attempts and I wasn't successful with recreating what I felt. I ended up setting this photo aside for a long while. I just sat there on my hard drive staring at me whenever I opened the folder it was in. One day I was looking back through images and since I had time I decided to give this photo another shot. On this particular day, I was feeling optimistic, happy, loved, etc. All the good things someone could feel, and I just decided to play with the photo in Photoshop to see if I could by accident recreate the feeling I was going for and what I felt at the time I was editing it. After the photo had sat on my hard drive for about 4 months I successfully created the image I had in my mind the whole time. Looking at the comparison above, you see there isn't a whole lot I did to the photo. However, what I did to it brought out everything I was feeling at the time the photo was shot and what I felt while editing.

When you complete something and it comes out just as you imagined, then you feel pretty great about it. Not only that, but you want to show everyone and see how they feel about the image too. It just took me being in the right mood and feeling the right thing at the time to finally complete this image. While it's not some incredible masterpiece, it is one of my favorites because of the emotion I get when I see it.