By Tracey Maras
Micro, macro, close-up, cropped, intimate….quantum?
These are all adjectives for the concept of creating compositions that bring the viewer in close. Not the expansive vistas that encompass from horizon-to-horizon, but those that embrace the details and nuances of the environment that is nearby. How near is determined by the artist.
Whether working en plein air, from life, or from a reference photo, the goal when working up close becomes not to include everything, but to carve out a portion of the scene which interests and inspires you. Within any scene, you can discover infinite varieties of inspiration as you move in and discover what may have been lost when taking in the scene as a whole.
There have been times when I have found myself sitting on the ground to get even closer to that hidden world. I went so far as to lie on the ground to capture an up-close reference photo of this fingernail-sized grey tree frog.
“What Should I Wear Today?” by Tracey Maras.
In our world of electronic images, it becomes a relatively easy task to “zoom in” on a photo. However, we are limited to the overall resolution of the photo before the zoomed-in images become simply a series of colored pixels. And yes, some artists are creating works that are “pixels” of color.
Original reference photos by Tracey Maras.
We can take the idea of cropping in even further. When seeking inspiration for an abstract, there have been times that I have zoomed in on a digital photograph or even used a microscope. In these instances, the goal is not for a representational interpretation of something, but to abstract it.
Could we zoom in so closely that we cross into the quantum realm? Given an expensive enouch microscope, who knows where you will next find inspiration?