Abstract and Chance in Photography

"The Light of History and Allegory” What I have attempted to do in this series is create a new vision, one that goes beyond one that takes the viewer beyond the cliches of standard long exposure photographs of street lights or moving cars and into the realm of the invisible and unknown. I started this series based on a scientific article I read that said, in a nutshell,  All the light ever produced by stars is still circulating through the universe, a phenomenon known as extragalactic galactic background light or EBL.  From there I created a background of glitter on a painter;s cloth and where I place my lights and what light sources I used determined the tones of the image. The speed and direction I moved my camera along with the shutter speed determined the direction and movement of the light trails. This is my idea of EBL.

 In this series I have tried to combine painting within my darkroom. I start painting with Kodak's Dektol photo paper developer, of different strengths from full to a very diluted version. I usually start  with the diluted version and build up to the stronger solutions. This gives the paper different shades of gray and depth.The fact you can not see what you painting since the developer is clear and the room dark makes it exciting from a chance perspective. I also dip my brushes and fingers in the fixer and paint over the developer which gives me an lighter tone and again unexpected results. The whole process takes no more than two minutes and often times less.