clicking an image will take you to a gallery of more images

Let There Be Music

Introduction to LightSongs^®

I began this body of work using Photoshop with a single photograph of a saxophone, french horn or piano. The saxophone and french horn required studio light and expertise which I did not have so I hired Douglas Saglio (who resided one floor up from my own lab and gallery) to do that work. The piano is my own and I photographed it in my home.

I made the first images in 1995 and am still working on others. Photoshop provides extraordinary capability and, as with a musical instrument, there are nearly infinite possibilities. It is a large challengy to find the right ones to explore. To get images like these with a paint brush...I would not want to try.

So what happens to make these images? It is a kind of partnership. Of course Photoshop does not make decisions as such on its own, but what it does is extraordinarily flexible. The designers have put in more tools than I have time to try. However, the more capable the tools the longer it takes to explore possibilities, although that is only a begining. One can go down some pretty ugly roads. A complex creation may require years of tuning until that which is interesting becomes, perhaps, a work of art.

Each image here is made from a single photograph of a single instrument (with the exception of the Sassy Saxophones).

This is my collection so far. Some I think are quite extraordinary but they did not get that way until the very end.

Each image will link you to a gallery, and each gallery is the expression of a single instrument: French Horn, Saxophone or Piano.

But how can it be, from a saxophone comes a “contradance,” from a single stright picture, and no cutting into pieces.

Scientist would call it an “emergent phenomina,” something new is born from what already exists.

Well, you say, that is what a wood carver does. And I say, yes a little bit but my tool kit is very large and it stimulates my imagination and I can experiment which means I can undo as well as do.

The result is printed just as photograph would be, but just a bit better on the best printer and the best paper the famous French papermaker, Canson, can make. And they will never fade, from sunlight or from your memory.

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