The Vector Series — Ben Harvey Photography

Most people know that I enjoy photographing architecture, a lot of architects do - the two crafts seem to go hand in hand. Black and white photography is a niche, long exposure photography is another niche and if you delve even deeper you will find ‘Fine Art Architectural Photography’.

The above image falls into this category, and although the word fine art gets over-used, I have created the above image - it looks nothing like the original photograph. I didn’t just ‘take‘ the photo, I decided how I wanted it to look, where I want my viewers to look and I created the direction of light.

What is the vector series?

To create the above image was not a case of moving a few sliders around in Photoshop, and it isn’t the result of a plugin or a preset. To have the ability to sculpt the direction of light, create drama where the wasn’t any, and give the two dimensional image depth - you have to make selections. This is a photoshop term, but essentially we have to create a stencil so that when we add highlights or shadows in photoshop, they don’t ‘spill’ everywhere.

I have been learning this genre of photography for many years now, and I have spent many days, possibly weeks, of my life creating selections to manipulate my images. Once I had edited the above Glasgow image, I saved the image and never opened the photoshop file again. Until now. I asked myself whether I could use the selections, which I slaved over for hours and hours, for anything other than manipulating the photograph from which it was created?

Sticking with the same location in Glasgow, the above ‘image’ is not a photograph. The only pixels transferred across from the original is the sky. The rest of the image was drawn in photoshop using the selections. Selections in photoshop show as white, so I start with a black canvas and I start to paint in the light.

This project bridges the gap between photography and digital art, each image having a different proportion of pixels captured with my camera and those which have been drawn on to suit my imagination. But the consistency throughout is that the vast majority of the frame has been created by me. To avoid the images looking like digital art I blend in skies, reflections, subtle detail in the glazing, something that tells your brain ‘hey this is not a drawing’.

This is also a bit of a ‘behind the scenes’ of how I edit my fine art images, as these are essentially the layers that sit on top of the photographs to create the depth. If the original scene captured has subtle light, then it can be manipulated. If you have harsh sunny conditions then you won’t get the same results.

This might be too much of a departure from photography for some people. I am expecting them to get chucked out of online photography groups, because the don’t fit inside a box. How far can you push a photograph before it is no longer a photo? This is close.

This is just the beginning. Every fine art image that I create will also become a part of the vector project, and it will evolve as I make more and more of them.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Ben