Artist Statement

My goal is to create Fine Art Photographs that convey a sense of beauty and enhance the décor of your home or office.  For me the process must be both artistically inspired and technically excellent. An image can be technically correct, however, if it lacks an artistic touch the result is cold and uninviting; while art without good technique prevents the viewer from truly enjoying the work. A work of art is the creative result of a person as opposed to the result of a machine. For this reason, a photograph printed straight from an original capture can feel unsatisfying. Such an image is simply the output of the programming used by the camera to manipulate an image.

As a photographer, I choose the type of light, composition, lens, equipment and other technical aspects I use to capture an image. Even so, I have very little control over the artistic aspects of my work during the image capture process.

During the creative process I infuse my vision with the image to bring out the feelings I desire to evoke. I start by taking a raw image file and globally correcting the color balance and contrast of the image. Then I move to more specific areas of the image as I focus on bringing out the exact tonalities according to my memories of the original scene.

At times I compose a single image by collaging multiple images together. This might be done to create a panoramic image by expanding the field of view beyond what a single image could capture.  At other times it might be to expand the dynamic range of the image to capture better shadow or highlight detail. My vision is to create an inspirational image, not necessarily the actual image that one could capture using a single photograph.

Gene Swensen
Austin, Texas