Julie Bonney

Local photographer Julie Bonney’s new show, Caught In The Moment, opens at The Photographer’s’ Gallery At The Ashland Art Center during the First Friday Art Walk on July 6.  Julie finds inspiration in the natural beauty of Southern Oregon and Northern California.  Her flower images are especially beautiful and ethereal.

Julie’s images incorporate textures to create visual interest and to create a subtle, unified background for her flowers.  Adding a texture to a photograph happened long before the invention of Photoshop.  In the film darkroom days, negatives were scratched with pins, and marred with sand paper.  Photographic paper was stained with fixer before exposing or the film ISO was pushed to increase grain.  Two negatives were even layered one on top of the other in the enlarger to enhance the original image.  In the digital darkroom an image, the texture image, is layered upon the original image to add an extra level of depth or feeling to the photograph.  Textures can create mood or a painterly quality, help add interest to negative space, or help to hide a background that is less than desirable.  Because the process of adding textures to a photograph is akin to painting, using textures in her photography allows for a more artistic expression of the final piece.