Robert Carter

Through my photography, I share the things I see in the natural world around me. My photographic aim is to end up with a photograph I can share that looks like what I saw in my mind's eye and to have it appreciated by the viewer. To that end, I shoot in camera raw and develop it in my digital darkroom to achieve a high quality, realistic-looking photograph of what I viewed. Beyond that process, I sometimes take a photograph to an additional step by rendering it as an Impressionist might have painted it centuries ago or by giving it a 'dreamy' look through my own technique . . . it all depends upon the photograph in front of me and how I wish to present it. I feel there exists an immediacy in much of photography that does not exist in any other art form. We have all seen examples of the photographer being in just the right place at the right time to capture an unforgettable photograph (e.g., Nick Ut's shot of a little girl running naked after being burned by napalm during the Vietnam War). In many genres of photography there exists that immediacy which says, "Get it now or you will not get it at all." We should never forget that photography is 'drawing with light' or 'painting with light'. My photograph is never finished until I have adjusted the light somehow with my digital brush and performed my personal painting with light. Just as a painter, upon seeing a candy wrapper on the ground in her scene will leave it out of her painting, I will use my digital light and brush to eliminate the same candy wrapper. I got my start in photography as a forensic photographer where that was not allowed . . . but now it is. My decision to take a photograph is sometimes a surprise, i.e., something I notice as I drive along a road, or a movement that catches my eye as I stroll through a park, but more often my creations are the result of a wonderful anticipation. I love the anticipation of a shoot, the anticipation of a visit to a new area. In art, I feel everything is okay. You are the artist . . . use whatever light drawing you feel appropriate in your digital darkroom to help you achieve what you are looking for. Just as the painter adds the final dab with the paint brush, so do I add the finishing dab with my digital brush. Unlike painters, with the exception of a few like Claude Monet, the photographer is able to finish a photographic product in hundreds of different ways. I enjoy presenting the same raw material with a different end result and sometimes post those alternative photographs to my site here. I am not hampered by one style or technique . . .