Why “Kept Light?”
Photography is the remains of light entering the lens and hitting the light-sensitive surface. I visualize this as follows: by photographing something, I “keep some light”; my photography is the result of the light kept in the camera; thus the name of the site and the blog, Kept Light.
I am a professor emeritus of marketing at Providence College, having retired in July 2012 after 36 years at PC since 1976. Teaching has been a great experience professionally and affected my photography, and how I share what little I know with others. That, in turn, has helped me to learn more about photography, my photography, the art of photography.
I am a photographer and prefer not to be pigeon-holed into a category based on some of my work. I have been to different places and documented the faces and places I have seen, photographed the objects that surrounded me. These do not make me a landscape or a documentary photographer, but just an interested photographer. I do not have formal training in photography or art, and am fully self-taught through practice, experimentation, failures, and lots of reading and looking at photographs. I enjoy reading about photography as much as practicing it and try to write about photography to sharpen my understanding of it. In the Blog section of this site, you will find posts on various topics related to photography. I hope that you take a look at them and share your thoughts either as comments at the end of the post or via e-mail.
In the early 90s, I started to move in the direction of digital photography and never looked back. Although I have done much darkroom work, the digital domain with its unique benefits has been a fertile ground. I taught myself the tools of this new world, mainly Photoshop and later Lightroom to be very comfortable in them. I have also shared what I have learned with others in presentations, workshops, and individual interaction. You will find on this site summaries of my presentations on a variety of topics.
I also believe that every medium has its advantages and shortcomings and am willing to live within those limits instead of imitating other forms of art, mainly painting. So, to me, it is not a compliment when someone says that my work “looks like a painting” or “how painterly” my photographs are.
In a finished photograph, I try to present what I saw rather than what the camera recorded. Some call this “manipulation,” and I have written about the nonsensical nature of this argument since all photographs are manipulated, bar none. I want my prints to convey my creative vision, which the camera lacks, and my visual system which is orders of magnitude better than any camera can be today. So, I am not a purist who believes “once the shutter is released the photograph is done,” whatever that may mean. In fact, once the shutter is released the work has just begun. Despite the fact that I keep a very open mind about making all necessary adjustments to my photographs to convey what I saw, I strive to produce work that is free from processing artifacts and that look “effortlessly done.” My photography is not about the techniques and tools I use, and the result should not become a badge for having learned how to use a new technique. The technique should be subservient to the vision, not the other way around.
I have exhibited my photographs in different venues, on a variety of subjects. Additionally, I have issued limited edition folios, many open edition ones, published photo books, and magazines that feature collections of my work.
I was genuinely thrilled to have my Dance of the Orchids series of photographs of dried orchid blossoms inspire a new ballet, Orchis. My orchid flower pictures were on a huge, 15′ x 20′ screen for close to 30 minutes running from a show I created for this purpose during the beautiful dance and fantastic music. The combination of photography, choreography, music, and costumes created a truly unique experience. You can read about related posts in the blog section, search for Orchis.
I have also done commercial photography for annual reports, product labels, billboards, and magazine ads. My last commercial assignments were photographing wristwatches for an importer for magazine ads. They represent a small fraction of my total work, although I enjoyed the assignments and the challenges of photographing watches. (It never occurred to me that all watches are photographed at 10 passed 10 or 10 minutes to 2.)