Artist Profile

Yard Goat #8081
20x16 $195

Metamorphosis
24x16

Spider Lady
20x16

Naughty Cheesecake Picture
6x20

Artist Statement – Lawrence (Larry) & Faith Bilansky Photography is our avocation. We seek to create unique fine art photographs for exhibition and sale. Recently, we’ve been exhibiting in group and solo (we treat us as one) shows produced by various galleries and art organizations. Prior to the pandemic we also exhibited in various outdoor art fairs and festivals each summer. We still do the Open Studio Hartford each fall.

Although we photograph numerous subjects for exhibition, we refer to the primary focus of our work as “Nontraditional Portraiture”, which we define as anything you want it to be other than standard studio portraits. Prior to the pandemic, a lot of our work was live performance photography – theatre, dance, musicians and singers. Also, included in the category are sports action, intimate portraiture, figure studies and other fine art subject matter.

As an art form, live action photography is a special challenge. Although a still photograph freezes a moment in time, the spontaneity of expression – the reality – of action photos gives them a feeling of dynamics that is usually missing in studio portraits. An additional unique challenge, especially in the theatre, is the photographer’s inability to control the lighting of the subject and setting. Light, after all, is what makes a photograph.

As to other subject matter – landscapes, animals, and inanimate subjects such as buildings and vehicles – we believe that in today’s cell phone-camera environment, anyone can take very good pictures. They do it to record memories of places they’ve been, people they know, things they have and the good times they’ve had. They take “personal” pictures. Of course, so do we. However, when we travel, visit special places (for example, a zoo) or just go out with our cameras having no specific destination in mind, we look for subjects that lend themselves to artistic interpretation. We look for the unusual and for different views of the usual. We believe that photography as a fine art is no different than other two dimensional works of art. Let’s take a painter, for example:

• Painters start with a blank canvas and a vision (that vision may, in fact, be a photograph), of which they draw a rough sketch (a first draft).
• The photographic artists’ blank canvas is an empty digital file (or unexposed film) in which they create a first draft by taking a photograph of the vision.
• Painters then use oils, pastels etc. to create the vision, modifying it as they paint.
• Photographic artists use digital imaging software to create and modify the vision, but they control the rendering of that vision.

We work primarily with Photoshop Elements (the “lite” version of PS). We start with a straight from the camera file and crop the picture for format and composition. We also make basic adjustments for things such as brightness, contrast and color. THEN we start creating – making various changes and trying various effect filters. When we finish, the artwork could be anything from photo-realistic to looking like a painting (oil, pastel, watercolor, etc.), a drawing (charcoal, graphic pen, line drawing. etc.) or something more far out (an abstract, etc.).

We feel very greatly complemented when someone asks “What kind of paint did you use?” or says, as a few have, that it looks like a Dali!

Contact the artist at LJBFoto@aol.com

Tour Location:

Website: www.LJBFoto.com

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