Patrick Ellis

     I’ve long drawn inspiration from the Depression-era Group f/64 photographers and their ethos of “straight” or “pure” photography.

     With the advent of powerful digital editing tools, I thus held back from their use, as I was bothered by the too-often cheesy exaggeration they encouraged. I gradually came around to using them to lightly tweak sharpness or color balance, but only in service of presenting a straight shot.

     Then I took a phone shot through a grimy airliner window of western Nebraska croplands amid tortured ridgelines. I loved the abstract quilt feel of it, but it was washed-out, fuzzy, low resolution, and utterly hopeless. There was no way I could keep it a straight shot, but I played with it to see what I could pull out. By the time I was done it had become a painterly abstract, and despite my attitudes, I absolutely loved it.

     While I continue to do straight shots, often inspired by Edward Weston’s classic California landscapes, I now also pursue abstract and painterly pieces, with digital manipulation and selective cropping to remove context and present a mystery to the viewer.

     I’ve little formal training in photography and only worked in photography in my late teens as a darkroom tech for a giftware catalog. I am now inspired and learning from the many very talented local photographers I’ve come to know and admire since moving to Gualala.