Basalt Shards
East Central Oregon
2009
[photography]
Matt Niebuhr
West Branch Studio
This photo from a road trip through East Central Oregon has continued to rattle around in my imagination…
Basalt Shards
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Category Archives: Personal Photo Notes
Handle with Care…
“Do not lay flat”
Photography
Matt Niebuhr
West Branch Studio
Looking through the camera and finding a composition – a readymade – appear right before my eyes is still quite a thrill. I like to sharpen my visual sense through photography. Composing, framing, taking notice of those objects filled with potential – seeming to appear in the viewfinder, just waiting to be noticed. This visual hunt is a different task than drawing for me, both of which can sometimes be equally surprising… The camera and the frame, the opportunity to layer visual information, are welcome constraints. Drawing, when it comes from a similar understanding of constraint seems to be what I’m most interested in accomplishing.
first day of 2013…
Amaryllis
2013_01_01
Matt Niebuhr
www.mattniebuhr.com
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First day of the new year and already I succumb to the impulse to try and preserve what to me is a perfect example of beauty – this amaryllis. It just seems to be exploding with joy this new day on our window sill. It’s a cliche of / about beauty for sure – who can argue against the inherent beauty of a flower in full bloom, but then too, why let that stop the impulse?
Agnes Martin remarks in her writings: When a beautiful rose dies, beauty does not die because it is not really in the rose. Beauty is an awareness in the mind. (Beauty is the Mystery of Life – Agnes Martin)
I think the impulse today was to see if I can make a photograph that can remind me of what I experienced today – that I paused enough to notice…
But, photography is a quick sketch — very different process than drawing – considering light, lens, subject, color and having a sense of what the machine can do – all of this is very much of and about the “world out there” that you and I both have the opportunity to see and touch – though I know that we all see it in a bit different way… there is enough in common that we can relate.
That’s one aspect of what I think is so great about photography.
Happy New Year !
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