Mark Lissick - Bending Light: The Fine Art of Flower Abstraction

BENDING LIGHT

The Fine Art of Flower Abstraction

Bending Light is a fine art image book created by award winning nature photographer Mark Lissick. It contains 59 unique and innovative images that blur the boundary between photography and art while taking you on a visual journey of creativity. Using flowers as the source of color, shape, and tone, they become the paintbrushes to produce sweeping color and line on a digital canvas.

The book is a compilation of a four year journey in creative thought as Mark was photographing in the estate gardens of Claude Monet in France. Using innovative techniques, Mark abstracts the flowers to a point where the resulting image can no longer be considered a photograph. It is a merging of source and technology into a new whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts.

The result is a body of work that cannot be thought of as photographs but rather a collection of visual imagery whose interpretations is subject only to the viewers imagination.

While Bending Light is primarily a showcase for the fine art abstract images, Mark begins the books visual journey with a discussion of his creative journey from reality-based photography to abstract design.

Bending Light also includes an introduction by former National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones in which he talks about how the images represent a paradigm shift away from traditional flower photograph into the realm of fine art abstracts.

MARK LISSICK has been a freelance nature photographer for nearly two decades. His landscape and wildlife images have won numerous awards from organizations such as Natures Best Photography and the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA). His works has been part of major gallery exhibitions and have hung in the Smithsonian Institute. His photography and writing has been included in a number of publications including Outdoor Photographer , The Nature Conservancy , Natures Best Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine , and Audubon . He lectures extensively and conducts his own workshops and photo adventures both in the U.S. and internationally. He can be reached at www.wildlightnaturephotography.com .

59 full-color images

B E N D I N G L I G H T

Plate 1

~ The Art of Flower Abstraction ~

By

Mark Lissick

Plate 2

Copyright 2011 by Mark Lissick

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be

reproduced or used in any form by any means graphic,

electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval

system without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 9781617925696

INTROD U CTION

By Dewitt Jones

Many photographers can trace their first real flash of creativity to the moment they looked at a flower through a macro lens. The world changed; things were not as they seemed; the viewfinder was filled, not with flowers, but with line and color and shape.

The down side of this commonly shared experience is that the world is now cluttered of millions and millions of mediocre macro shots of flowers. They are all lovely, due primarily to the flowers color and shape, but they are all eye-numbingly similar. To take a truly unique macro photo of a flower? Well, it borders on the impossible.

All of which only serves to make Bending Light even more remarkable. On these pages, Mark Lissick has brought together a truly extraordinary set of images -- totally unique, immensely innovative.

Hes done this in the same way he approaches all his photographs -- with marvelous blend of technique and creativity. Ive worked with Mark in the field and he is both consummate craftsman and consummate artist. As you read his introduction, you realize that he didnt just stumble on the techniques he displays. Rather, each was painstakingly worked out through long hours of mentation and practice.

The results are breathtaking. Images where flower and photograph merge into a new whole that is far greater than the sum of the parts. My personal favorites are those where Mark literally uses the flowers as paintbrushes, sweeping color and line onto his digital canvas. It is a book crammed with creativity and overflowing with artistry.

You are in for an unforgettable visual journey; one that will boggle your mind, delight the eye, and touch your soul as well.

-- Dewitt Jones

Plate 3

Plate 4

Do not copy too much from nature

Art is an abstraction.

Bring it forth from nature

by dreaming in from of her

and think more of creation

than the actual result.

The only way to reach God

is to do what he does, create.

Gauguin

B E N D I N G L I G H T

~ The Art of Flower Abstraction ~

By

Mark Lissick

Creation is mankinds ultimate treasure.

For me, being a photographer is as much a state of mind as it is a way of making a living. The almost obsessive passion of creativity through image making as well as the equipment and techniques, has as much to do with my identity as it does with the images I make. My images speak for and of me, letting the viewer inside to understand what I was visualizing and feeling while gaining a glimpse of who I am.

For years, I had conceptualized images floating around in my mind that I was unable to create by classical photographic techniques. They represented an opportunity to achieve a new degree of creative freedom if I could but solve the technical hurdles using the tools at my disposal. My goal was to bring time, color, and light together as one to create an entirely new visual experience. It was to be a journey into uncharted artistic waters. While the unknown consisted of things that I had seen a thousand times before through the lens, I discovered aspects of them I had never previously recognized.

The images in this book represents a progression of creative thought from what was learned to what was discovered. They bear testimony to a journey of creativity. Like many of my fellow photographers, both amateur and professional, I began the journey by walking in the footsteps of those who came before. It was there that I gained the knowledge and understanding that became the foundation upon which my art was built.

On many levels this was a good thing as it helped me to define and put structure to my understanding of our world, how it operates, and how we are a part of it. Words such as: fundamentals, principles, and rules are all used to describe the world and reality in which I chose to practice my art. In a creative process, having some artistic structure is necessary. Artistic structures are figuratively comprised of foundations, columns, and beams. These components provide us a framework around which to build our artistic creations. That said, such structural concepts can just as easily become bars of a cage beyond which our creative process cannot go. To open up new avenues of creativity either creative barriers have to be removed or new realities put into place.