Featured Artist Tom Kelly

Artist Tom Kelly uses bright, contrasting color to enhance his photographs, creating a vibrancy that makes them pop. Visit his website to enjoy more of his work.

 

 

I like photographing subjects that have a lot of things happening in color.

 

 

I choose things such as shooting storefronts and homes straight on with the porch and the front door, windows and curtains.

 

Storefronts make great puzzles when used for that purpose because of the variety of things and colors used to catch the eye of a shopper passing by. Homes in San Francisco, such as the Painted Ladies, so popular because of their architecture, craftsmanship and the colors they are painted, are wonderful to photograph.

 

 

On each of my four websites I use a lot of bright colors to bring out subject matter that seems to get lost when the photo is printed in the standard color format such as for a postcard.

 

 

I have come to realize that when I use different colors on everyday objects like fruit, flowers, cars, houses, cityscapes and the sky, things look a lot different. But they are still the same as they were before I added new colors to the subjects.

 

 

The whole picture takes on a new feeling, a new sense that something is really happening. Details that have not been noticed before are now seemingly alive, almost as if they are jumping right out of the image.

 

 

All of this comes from just changing the colors, hues and the contrast in a controlled manner.

 

 

I truly like being close to my work. As a photographer, when I see something that interests me, the urge to photograph it immediately takes over. After that, the image is forever implanted as a memory.

 

 

I take this new image and begin the process of looking at it with different colors dropped into it. Just because the fruit is yellow does not mean that it has to remain that way in the finished product. After all, the moon in all its glory has been seen by different people in many different colors. I myself see the moon as the color of Swiss cheese, now what color is that?

 

 

Whatever you do, if it comes from within you, do it for the good of all people. Then you have truly created a thing of beauty.

 

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