White Paper

I definitely have a thing for white paper. There is something so incredibly romantic about embracing the pure whites on a sheet of drawing paper. I always marveled at artists who could use all that white as a compositional element. They would add just a few suggestive lines here snd there. Slowly form takes shape. They carve out of all that white space something so beautiful.

I am going to try something a bit new, for me today. I will drop in some more photographs in between the writing. So from now on please make sure you keep scrolling to read and see more below.

I am always amazed that celebrating the whites is so often seen as no no’s in some traditional circles. Apparently having any more than dancing ants is taboo. As is having blocked up shadows. Why?

Well that is because the dominant genre in photography is photo realism. We apparently love photographs that look like how we see the world. We see into shadows and we rarely see a white sky. Even most whites we see still have clearly defined textures. We are taught to print stretching our histograms out so we just hit white and black at each end. It is even how I teach monochrome processing.

I think it is where I started too. A photograph was meant to look a certain way, and to give the impression of realism. Times and people change. And I certainly have. My photography gets freer and more expressive as I age, and I continually strive to let go of my beginnings.

White paper

The further I get away from those traditional starts the better my work feels to me. So why not use my camera as a drawing tool rather than as the recorder of truth. Photography is with no doubt a tool for drawing with light as the name suggests.

What started out talking about celebrating the white paper in the print has now brought me around to the issue of getting hooked on limiting beliefs. If we believe something, well then it’s true for us. We all have thousands of these beliefs. Each of them limits us.

Choose which ones to question wisely and challenge them. Art has no rules. Should photography too?

I love white paper. What do you love?

Photographs from Mount Wilson, the Blue Mountains and The Lake District, UK. Photographs and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2021