No Camera Needed at Exit 270

Many of us think that photography is all about the camera and the lenses you have in your kit – but it is really about the creative process.  The camera is only a tool you use in this process and nothing more.  Photographs can be made without a camera using the scanner and a technique called photograms.  If I were teaching photography, I would start my students out with using the scanner to create images as a way of teaching them how to see shapes and forms before ever touching a camera.

Photograms are an imaging technique that dates back to 1800’s, the exposing of objects to the sun by placing them on a sensitive paper.  Today the digital scanner and an imaging-processing program can offer a wide range of experimentation without using a camera.  The images here are a continuation of my experiment with creating different effects using some Fall leaves, the scanner and Photoshop.  The backgrounds are textures blended into the image using layers and the opacity slider to create the double imaging effects.