Ok I’ve taken a stroll deep inside the rabbit hole. Yes I’ve met the rabbit too! But before I start into what I’ve discovered inside I want to back up to where I was just hours ago.

Last week I finally shot a wall by my house that I walk by every day for texture elements. I didn’t know what to do with textures so I figured I’d start by capturing some and see where it takes me.

After taking the shots and processing them quickly In Adobe Lightroom I brought a couple into Photoshop and composited some images together. What I quickly learned is that textures add an artistic old worldly quality to an image. It can be applied lightly or heavy handed and the textures create there own natural artistic element that can really add to the look of a plane image and take it to a whole new level.

With textures photographs become more painterly and the camera becomes just a tool to express a greater artistic voice.

So let me start with texture for texture sake. I made a few images that didn’t go beyond the texture itself, added contrast and saturation but that is it.

And these images had qualities that looked neat just with minimal processing.

Years ago I came across the painter Alselm Kiefer who used photographic emulsion as part of his giant mixed media works and a few of these textures had a similar quality so I brought an image to overlay and the result was “The Road to Center Camp”. I was quite pleased buy the resulting almost obscure image coming through the texture. If you are unfamiliar with Center Camp it is a Black Rock City fixture and a general hub of the cities community.

Ok now here’s a simple texture study I did that is simple enough to share here.