Skip Draper's photographpy

[Rich Engle]

My sister Elizabeth is married to a man named Skip Draper, he is a Doctor, they live in Oregon.

Skip is a lot of things, but he has this passion for photography. The two of them are building a new studio and doing collaborative work.

This is rugged beautiful landscape stuff. There will be a new website soon, but for now, take a look. Buy some stuff!!

www.skipdraper.com

Highly recommended. I've never even met my bro-in-law yet but will soon. I think his work just speaks for itself.

rde

[BaalChatzaf]

My sister Elizabeth is married to a man named Skip Draper, he is a Doctor, they live in Oregon.

Skip is a lot of things, but he has this passion for photography. The two of them are building a new studio and doing collaborative work.

This is rugged beautiful landscape stuff. There will be a new website soon, but for now, take a look. Buy some stuff!!

www.skipdraper.com

Highly recommended. I've never even met my bro-in-law yet but will soon. I think his work just speaks for itself.

rde

Excellent scenic shot. I like that balancing rock (upper right).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dragonfly]

Well... I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I must say that I find them horrible. That is, perhaps these could be great photos if it weren't for those garish, terribly oversaturated colors with all that purple and violet. I really don't understand how anyone can stand that, it's like constantly playing music at 120 db.

[Barbara Branden]

Dragonfly: "Well... I don't want to rain on anyone's parade..."

Then why do so?

Dragonfly: "I must say that I find them horrible."

Why must you say it?

When I lived in Santa Fe, I saw rock formations the exact colors of the photograph called Arid, and in Niagara Falls and around Toronto I’ve seen waterfalls and forest scenes the colors of several of the photographs. And have you seen the sky and the water on a clear day in Greece? Or a tree covered in hoarfrost in a Winnipeg winter? Blame nature for many of the colors, Dragonfly, not the photographer.

Barbara

[Brant Gaede]

Dragonfly: "Well... I don't want to rain on anyone's parade..."

Then why do so?

Dragonfly: "I must say that I find them horrible."

Why must you say it?

When I lived in Santa Fe, I saw rock formations the exact colors of the photograph called Arid, and in Niagara Falls and around Toronto I've seen waterfalls and forest scenes the colors of several of the photographs. And have you seen the sky and the water on a clear day in Greece? Or a tree covered in hoarfrost in a Winnipeg winter? Blame nature for many of the colors, Dragonfly, not the photographer.

Barbara

Color landscape photography has its problems. There is no art in it. I prefer black and white like Ansel Adams' or my brother's work. The garish photos of "Arizona Highways" of which I've done +50 years looking at is much more tolerable to me than Skip's work. I have to agree with DF on this. If you appreciate the real thing go look at it. It looks better if only because you can see more. It looks great. The most beautiful sight I ever saw in nature was driving an 18-wheeler in south-central Colorado alongside a burbling brook tumbling its way south, its banks and rocks covered with new snow which was also in the trees plus mist rising out of the water. No photo could have captured it as well as my eyes for there was movement and continual change as I drove along. All photographs freeze the action. With color photography the freeze frame is all you are left with. With black and white you see the detail from shadow and light. The only book of color landscape photographs I've ever really liked was "Slickrock" with text by Edward Abbey. It was published in the early 70s, I think.

Sorry, Barbara, but DF mentioned it because they scoured his sensibilities as they did mine. I hadn't looked at these photos until this exchange with you. I can't stand overly sweet wine and I can't stand these pictures, which also show improper or non use of light and composition. If I had seen these previously I would have mentioned that I didn't like them, but not with DF's characteristically blunt style.

--Brant

[Dragonfly]

Dragonfly: "Well... I don't want to rain on anyone's parade..."

Then why do so?

Because for me it's a matter of integrity. By not speaking up when people around me are praising bad art or a violinist who's playing terribly out of tune, or who promote crackpot theories or quack doctors, I feel that I'm betraying the values of real artists, musicians, scientists, doctors. Faking reality is not my strong suit. Anyway, anything that is published on the Web is fair game for criticism, even if that may be disagreeable to some of its supporters.

Dragonfly: "I must say that I find them horrible."

Why must you say it?

See above.

When I lived in Santa Fe, I saw rock formations the exact colors of the photograph called Arid, and in Niagara Falls and around Toronto I’ve seen waterfalls and forest scenes the colors of several of the photographs. And have you seen the sky and the water on a clear day in Greece? Or a tree covered in hoarfrost in a Winnipeg winter? Blame nature for many of the colors, Dragonfly, not the photographer.

Sorry Barbara, but as someone who has a considerable experience in nature photography and in painting I can assure you that this is wrong. Memory of colors is notoriously unreliable and many people remember colors as being far more brilliant than they really were. Probably they confuse the intense light and the high contrasts in nature with the saturation of colors. When I saw the photo's I immediately saw that the colors were considerably "pumped up", that is, the saturation of the colors was artificially increased to unacceptable levels. Some cameras even have already a built-in saturation bias, while people often find natural colors not vivid enough.

[BaalChatzaf]

Well... I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I must say that I find them horrible. That is, perhaps these could be great photos if it weren't for those garish, terribly oversaturated colors with all that purple and violet. I really don't understand how anyone can stand that, it's like constantly playing music at 120 db.

Visit Colorado somtime. It looks to the naked eye exactly as portayed in the photographs. I have seen it first hand, right there.

If you are Eurpean you might be more used to having the colors blotted out by the moisture in the air. In a dry place the air does not diffuse the light as much and the colors are much more well defined.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Jonathan]

Sorry Barbara, but as someone who has a considerable experience in nature photography and in painting I can assure you that this is wrong. Memory of colors is notoriously unreliable and many people remember colors as being far more brilliant than they really were. Probably they confuse the intense light and the high contrasts in nature with the saturation of colors. When I saw the photo's I immediately saw that the colors were considerably "pumped up", that is, the saturation of the colors was artificially increased to unacceptable levels. Some cameras even have already a built-in saturation bias, while people often find natural colors not vivid enough.

Many of the images do indeed appear to have had their saturation levels bumped up significantly. Even when using the photographer's color-space profile, Photoshop is giving me saturation warnings up the wazoo. There are also certain little telltale indicators which strongly suggest universal or selective saturation increases where they wouldn't exist in nature -- technical little details that I think would require a lot of effort in order to explain it to laymen.

Anyway, I think it all comes down to tastes and whether or not highly saturated colors appeal to you. Personally, I like some of Skip's images, but then again, unlike Dragonfly I sometimes also like to listen to certain kinds of music at at 120 db.

J

P.S. Weird. I was just looking through my photo files and I found this image that I apparently made in August of 2006 and never posted:

[Brant Gaede]

Well... I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I must say that I find them horrible. That is, perhaps these could be great photos if it weren't for those garish, terribly oversaturated colors with all that purple and violet. I really don't understand how anyone can stand that, it's like constantly playing music at 120 db.

Visit Colorado somtime. It looks to the naked eye exactly as portayed in the photographs. I have seen it first hand, right there.

If you are Eurpean you might be more used to having the colors blotted out by the moisture in the air. In a dry place the air does not diffuse the light as much and the colors are much more well defined.

Ba'al Chatzaf

What you are saying is true enough about the effect of altitude and the differences in light between the American west and Europe, but these photos take that and go beyond nature in a way I don't like. You do see some incredible things color-wise in nature though, especially at high altitude. Driving north from Santa Fe toward Colorado the clouds and sky seem to all but kiss the highway and yes those colors are bright and vivid.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just caught up with this thread. I skimmed the photos and I liked them very much. They are stylized, but I thing they are supposed to be. I am not sure, but I don't think Skip Draper's idea is to present his work to National Geographic or publish tourist postcards.

Then I saw the following:

P.S. Weird. I was just looking through my photo files and I found this image that I apparently made in August of 2006 and never posted:

Good Lord!

Michael