Mel Theobald: Photographic Artist

For most of my life as an artist I have been a painter. My creative interests shifted dramatically in the summer of 2001 when I first put my hands on a digital camera.

In progressive stages, I began to see the potential for images that would combine the content of my paintings with the freedom to explore the creative manipulation of a photographic surface. With paint and canvas, the texture of the surface is as absorbing as the subject.

Using the computer and mouse as an extension of the brush and paint, it came as a great surprise that I could think as a painter and work in a photographic medium. From that point it was apparent that the whole idea of space, surface and texture could be integrated into a most unusual fabrication of seeing broad areas of the landscape without distortion.

To that end, I began shooting multiple images across a horizontal panorama using a telephoto lens. This enabled the subject to remain flat without the normal distortion of a wide-angle lens. Combining these images made it possible to retain a vast amount of surface detail and yet generate a composition that was natural to the scope of human vision.

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