Is This Fine Art?

I did a little photography project yesterday. I look a picture of some tulips with a water splat:

 

 

Do you like it?

 

I showed this picture to my friend, Calvin, and he was impressed. It took him a while to figure out exactly what  he was looking at. And he ask me how I got the water to do that. I told him that I threw the water in the air with a table spoon measure and took the picture. Well, actually I ending up throwing about two cups of water one tablespoon at a time and took about 220 photographs. This picture is two of them Photoshopped together.

 

Do you still like this picture?

 

Can I use Photoshop? Is that ok? I don't think it is. Even though Calvin is a pretty liberal guy, he was offended at the use of Photoshop to digitally manipulate a scene. There is just something wrong with Photoshop. It's like cheating. It's not real. You can't make art with Photoshop.

 

I was actually delighted to hear Calvin say that. I makes me feel a little more like an artist. You see, just last week I went to the Roy Lichtenstein exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. You know, the guy that did the comic book type pictures:

 

 

I didn't like Roy Lichtenstein's work before I saw his exhibit. It didn't really look like fine art to me. At the exhibit I saw lots more of his pictures and learn about his motives. I'm not going to explain it all here, but it's definitely worth your time to go to an exhibit or read a book about him. He's one of my favorite artists now.

 

One of the things that makes Lichtenstein a great artist is that when you first look at his work you quickly dismiss it. I'm not totally sure why, but this is key characteristic in good fine art. This leads to "Tod's Rule To Understand Fine Art":

 

If you like a picture the first time you see it, it's probably not fine art.

 

Most now-accepted modern fine artist's work was originally not well liked. Picasso is a perfect example. Only after his death did people fully appreciate his work. So that's why I was delighted to hear that Calvin didn't accept my picture. It makes me feel like I'm going in the right direction with my photography towards making fine art.

 

I have a prediction to make for you aspiring artists out there. The big fine art movement of this decade is going to be Photoshopped works. So take your work and manipulate it with Photoshop to offend the people. Then after you die, your work will be appreciated. (And if it isn't, you won't know because you are dead.)

 

Ok, back to my photo. Does anyone else out there take pictures of water? I have some technical problems. I first tried dropping the water and I couldn't get it not have motion blur. I exposed the shot for 1/8000 of a second, but it still blurred just a little which totally wrecked the image. So I started throwing the water and taking the picture at the top of the arc. This works ok but it really inconsistent. I need a way to throw a table spoon of water and have it stay together and hit the top of it's arc in a reasonably consistent place. My thought is to use a garden hose and put the arc of water right where I want it. Then block the flow of water to shoot tablespoon sized chucks of water. I think this could work, but everything would get wet. Probably not a good idea to do that in my dining room. My other thought is to use a flash. I'll probably try both of these ideas and see how they work out.