Llewellyn Berry
Artistically Speaking...
Posted on February 20, 2017by Llewellyn Berry
For more than 40 years I had been primarily an urban black-and-white photography artist, walking through the city studying the visual effect of natural light across objects, people, and scenes. The city inspired me, driving my art with every new person I met, every new item I encountered, and every street I walked.
Not much has changed, since 2014, except everything outside my door. Two years ago, I moved to Middle River, Maryland. Unsurprisingly, my work has taken a turn toward the pastoral. My streets are now footpaths and I see more animals than people. I am now inspired by the way the forest cuts the sky, the change of seasons on the river, and the rich visual variety of an area I call the Middle River Moors.
The “Moors” have hills and berms and dune-like areas with grasses against a backdrop of tall saplings. Sunrise through an early morning fog or the implicit weight of a late afternoon Sunset provide striking visuals of the land and its forests. I studied the beach at Gunpowder Falls State Park and the expansive minimalism offered by shoreline, sky, sparse flora and wooden jetties.
My most recent landscape portfolio includes photographs that capture subtle light inferences in backgrounds that are representational but subtle enough to evoke moods with contrast given to sharper, stronger tonal images in the foreground.
Continuing to create black and white imagery, I have captured the area in all kinds of weather conditions, as well as moonsets and sunrises in late summer, autumn, and winter. I have photographed the forest edge, the forest trails, reservoirs and swales and conservation basins.
Secret paths leading through fields and forests evoke visions of early indigenous peoples traversing the land and water long before the landing of foreigners. In my artist’s imagination and vision, I craft many of my photographs with this in mind. The land changes as natural light rises and falls during the course of a day and with seasonal changes the dramatic effects nature presents is stunning in its subtlety and the notion that it has been here for centuries.
These images are designed to be provocatively calm. I make specific choices to craft each image, as I look through the viewfinder. This conscious selection of aperture, shutter speed and ISO at the very beginning is critical to my process and my product, with much self-editing of what I see before I press the shutter button. As I say to my students: “The Review button is your best friend.” I review my last shot in order to decide whether it is what I had in mind or do I need to further edit my controls. Invariably a move to one side, or to come in or move back; shift from horizontal to vertical, I will find subtle new ways of seeing the scene in front of me.
These visually stunning images provide a pictorial view of nature reminiscent of early photographers in the late 19th Century, capturing the tonal range of a crystalline blue sky, along with layers of land in the foreground leading to a background of trees and their subsequent silhouettes against the horizon.
The city has its appeal and its energy invigorates as it electrifies daily life. Nature in its understated brilliance stimulates in quieter, calmer and a more stately way and as I capture that dynamic I am one with it and feel a different vibration and life energy.
Next…A New Life in Baltimore ???