About Fields (Concept Galleries)
Fields is a long-term on-going conceptual project with the purpose creating images of unbroken expanses of large space which hold abstract and expressive symbology at both distant and near viewing. These fields are distilled representations of the subjects source and highlight a specific region of the subject where a flattened visual effect exists. Due to the long duration needed in a given environment to produce this work there is an aspect of process art in play as much of the works end product is the creative journey itself.
About Landscapes and Flora (Location Galleries)
These galleries were created in a style of realist and objective depiction, (straight photography) to display my experiences from various hiking locations. This is my typical approach in working to create images of new environments and often how I get adapted to being in natural surroundings. Once I am immersed in those surroundings for a proper duration my goal is delve deeper into the subject and apply its elements unto one of my conceptual frameworks. I consider the majority of these landscape and flora works to be scopic in nature and thus their best quality lay in the use of compositional elements to organize the space a viewer enters and to offer useful depictions of the environment from my perspective.
About Simple Chrome (Concept Galleries)
Simple Chrome is an on-going conceptual project in which an image’s color is manipulated during post-processing. This method is used to simplify and organize and image space to recreate the impressions and elemental aspects of viewing the subject live. This manipulation also aids to concentrate and highlight elements of an appropriate image for the intent of heightening the subject’s narrative and emotional impact. This process lends an intended historic reference to the similar appearing popular imagery produced from hand-coloring methods used on photographs in the mid- to late- 19th century.
About Plant in Hand (Concept Galleries)
Plant in Hand is a closed project that was created in 2006 to explore the incorporation of an expressive human presence with natural objects. This project was born from initial use as a means to give scale to plant observations, and thus create images that could act as a taxonomic aids. Further processing of these images to remove the color, and thus the realism, from hand led to it’s use as an abstract narrative. These works are a more focused aspect of prior work using night photography and light painting to incorporate a whole human form upon natural landscapes.
About O.F. (Concept Galleries)
O.F. is a long-term on-going conceptual project of imaging subjects purely in and out-of-focus manor. By concentrating on the aesthetic quality of the blur, or Bokeh, aspects of the subject’s form and larger expressive nature can be explored in ways which are lost when fine detail is also included. These image's Bokeh are created at the time of exposure in full presence of the subject. Beyond lending a symbiotic relationship to the use of blur this method has the end result of giving a blurred image a focused texture and grain which, when viewed in hard copies, gives and refuge to the eye disoriented by the process.
Additional Information About the Galleries
- Pacific Crest Galleries document a 2650-mile Pacific Crest Trail hike from the Mexican boarder to the Canadian Border (May 5-Sep 20, 2010).
- Appalachian Mountains Galleries document a 2175 mile Appalachian Trail Hike from Springer Mountain Georgia to Mount Katahdin Maine (March 21 -August 31, 2006).
- Devil Path Gallery documents a 26-mile trail in New York’s Catskill Mountains (Oct 10-12, 2008).
- Rocky Mountains, England/Scotland, and Peru Galleries are environments only experienced for shorter durations. (one to two weeks in 2007/08).
- Hawaiian, Haleakala, and Kipahulu Galleries were all created while working in the Hawaiian Islands for the National Park Service (2003 to 2006).
MICHAEL VACEK