You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper. – William Albert Allard

I wholeheartedly agree with what William Albert Allard says above. As a photographer, everything I see is a picture. The mundane, the ordinary, is never ordinary in my eye. I firmly believe that beauty surrounds us, we just have to be open to it. I also believe in using whatever tools I have to hand to capture the beauty around me and often times manipulate that which I choose to bring forward, enhance and expose. In the images below, I took a vase of tulips I received for Valentine’s Day and photographed the flowers specifically with my iPhone to explore the tulips in a way I had not explored flowers before, creating imagery that takes on serveral different qualities, yet in my mind, enhancing the beauty and wonder of the original product. At the end of the day, I like to expose the subjectivity of all the images I make using whatever tools I have to hand. I plan to show some of these images in the upcoming Bideford Art Walk, February 26, 2010.

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I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time…Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism—real life—the now. - Berenice Abbott

For Polaroid lovers everywhere, my first endeavor after a 3 year hiatus of not using my SX-70 camera using TZ Artistic Polaroid film. I purchased the film at http://www.polarpremium.com which had a turn around time of two days (not long to wait seeing as I had waited 3 years to get this particular camera out).

The beauty of the SX-70, for me, is the ability to focus it, adding some depth of field to the final image. I hadn’t used TZ Artisitc before, so I wasn’t sure what the results would be. The film develops quite differently than the SX-70 film I was used to, but that, to me, just adds to the beauty and quality of the final image.

This image was composed soley with natural light coming through the window of my studio. Like any other new photographic product, you do have to experiment with it a bit to get the best results, but I was pleased with the overall tonal quality of the image to the left and look foward to more experiments with the film.

For more Polaroid images, visit http://www.angelacoulombe.com/polaroids.php.

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“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

Elliott Erwitt

I’ve always been facinated with the photographic image, be it constructed from conventional means, digital means, or other. I’ve spent many a moment thinking about the sacrosanct nature of the photographic image and what it means to alter an image. I’ve felt that printing an image itself is an act of manipulation and altering. If I use one type of paper and one type of developer, I end up with something completely different each time I swap one or the other out. Taking this further, does scratching, marking or using any other physical means beyond developer and fixative to mark it, considered desacration, a sacreligious invasion of artist intent, or visual enhancement?

When I was at university studying art, I was strongly influenced by a few people: Kurt Schwitters, generally acknowledged as the twentieth century’s greatest master of collage, Francis Picabia, Christian Ludwig Attersee and Arnulf Rainer. Their artistic vision was in line with mine and I learned more about the manipulated image from both Schwitter’s photographic collages and the paintings and imagery of the others. Though my work does not expound any particular political message, I do use phrases, words and text to illustrate a more subtle view point.

Finally, I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, the photographic image is one tool, one ingredient in the larger piece of work, in the overall way I see things. Below are some examples of some recent work I created in January 2010 that go a little way to explain the way I see things.

^ Colour print from digital montage, Brighton UK, Handpainted canvas (8×8)

^ Colour print from digital. Flower ME, Montage Brighton UK, Handpainted canvas (6×12)

^ Colour print from digital. Flower ME, Montage Brighton UK, Handpainted canvas (8×6)

^ Colour print from digital. Flower Montage, ME (sunflowers), Handpainted canvas (6×8)

^ Colour print from digital. Flowers, ME. (8×8) Handpainted canvas

^Colour print from digital. Flowers, ME. (6×12) Handpainted canvas (6×6)

^ B/w print from digital. Pinhole camera, Nottingham, UK. Handpained canvas (6×6)

^ B/w print from digital. Pinhole camera, Crystal Palace, UK. Handpained canvas (6×6)

^ B/w print from digital. Pinhole camera, Crystal Palace, UK. Handpained canvas (6×6)

^ Colour print from b/w & digital. Mexico City, Ferry Beach Maine. Handpainted canvas (6×12)

^ B/w print from digital. Flowers, Nottingham, UK. Handpainted canvas (8×8)

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