Digital Paint
Digital photography has changed everything. The pallet now consists of digital images containing rich mixtures of pattern and color. The canvas is temporarily a monitor where the background can be turned into virtual paper, canvas or almost any other surface. A mouse, a stylus or even a finger is used to create subtle and/or profound changes in brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and texture. If desired, software converts hundreds to thousands of individual stylus strokes into strokes of virtual oil paint, watercolor, chalk, or almost any other material a traditional artist applies to a flat surface.
An alternative to adding brush strokes, is to systematically remove details from a properly focused and exposed digital photograph. As this digital "re-painting" prpgresses, the images lose their photorealistic quality to become very painterly in appearance.
The images here range from photorealistic representations of flowers, creatures and scenic views into more stylistic or even abstracted interpretaion of the same subjects. All began as photographs, often multiple images, combined in ways that permit capturing broad ranges of light intensity, enlarging the digital negative to permit larger prints, and even bringing elements together that couldn't be captured by a single exposure.