Carl Johnson

Utata Member

Bio

The Trowel of Colors is Brutal


I've been a victim of available light since I picked up my first camera at 16 and learned how to push film. I love low light and good depth of field. But through the others at Utata, I'm also learning to use lights, to pose my subjects, and how to get something extraordinary out of the ordinary.

Comments are always welcome.

Testimonial

"I have a ridiculous weakness for available light," says Carl Johnson by way of introducing his work. He's right; browsing through his online galleries a viewer will note his blown-out blankets of sunshine and his easy capture of shadows toned to a natural palette. Color enhancement may be gorgeously easy in our computer age, but Carl is a photographer of texture. Apart from his abstract images, where anything goes, his colors serve the compositions and don't dominate them.

I am struck, in his Flickr pages, by a short run of old scanned family photos. The play and flare of light in them is familiar, as untamed and spontaneous in the context of his digital work as it was in the time of simple passing Brownie snapshots. His available light illuminates an available world, drawn to appreciate nature rather than conquer it.

Testimonial written by Linus Gelber