A Fatal Mistake
Perspectives from The Artist's Road
On the Battery II Oil John Hulsey
One of the major challenges of painting outdoors is the need to gather enough visual information about our subject in a brief moment of perfect light. In rushing to capture the light in nature, it is easy to lose those subtle details and tonal changes in the shadow areas of our paintings. In those situations when we won’t be able to return to a given site again and therefore must get all we can in the first go, the camera can be a very valuable tool for recording some of the visual details which we may not have time to get into our plein air studies. However, the camera does not see at all the way the human eye and brain sees. Therein lies the danger of relying too heavily on our photos when working back in the studio.