Artist Inspired Photography - Essence of Spring

Spring is a time of renewal, new beginnings, and beauty. The arrival of spring has inspired artists for centuries, and one such artist who captured the essence of this season in his work is David Hockney. His vibrant and colorful spring tree and flower images have inspired many. I saw this spring collection in a large-scale gallery exhibit at the Chicago Art Museum. It was stunning; the colors, textures, and how the collection screamed “spring.” I decided to take inspiration from this collection and emulate Hockney’s style capturing the beauty of spring with similar colors, tones, texture, and a painterly look. I will share my image collection, photography, and editing tips with below. 

I first thought about how I wanted to capture the essence of spring. What shooting techniques would I need to use and what composition styles?  I worked on compositions highlighting different perspectives of the spring blooms, capturing grand and intimate landscape scenes. Working with multiple exposures in camera and intentional camera methods helps to achieve a painterly technique. 

The final touches to create painterly photographs were done in post-processing.

In post -processing I used a combination of color enhancements, adding texture, and painting techniques to help create an artistic look to the photos and using brushes in photoshop to add impressionistic touches or whimsy to images. The editing program, Topaz Studio 2 also added painterly textures and brushes to the images.