Explorations: Photographs by Jeff McDonald

Beloit (WI) Art Center December 2022 Main Gallery Solo Exhibition

Photographer Jeff McDonald Featured Artist At Beloit Art Center In December

Beloit Art Center welcomes the community to join us as we open our monthly exhibits with a First Friday Gallery Reception in conjunction with the downtown Holidazzle event on December 2nd from 5-9pm. A gallery talk featuring Main Gallery artist Jeff McDonald will be held at 6pm. The exhibits will be open through December 29th. The Center will also be featuring a Pottery Studio Open House during Holidazzle.

Artist Statement:

Many genres of photography draw my interest. If a photo opportunity arises, or I can create one, and something sparks my interest, chances are I will at least try to photograph it. That is really the common thread running through this show which draws upon six very different and distinct bodies of my work.

The "Shadows With Highlights" collection is representative of much of my black and white work. As explorations of the interplay between shadow and highlight, this work tends toward the dark side with lots of shadow detail together with areas of contrasting highlights. Realizing my vision for these images depends on getting a good base image in the field and then, heavily, on post‐production processing in the digital darkroom. Sometimes I have a clear vision of a finished image while I am still in the field, but more often at that point I have a good general idea of the direction for an image. The image comes to life later when I can evaluate its potential and coax it into how best to represent my vision.

"Flutter" portrays birds in various ways ‐‐ in flight, in portraiture, and in abstract form as the "Avian Abstracts" series depicts. "Avian Abstracts" is a series I developed while photographing birds in flight. When photographing larger birds, like geese or cranes, you can freeze motion in the wings by using a fast shutter speed. Slower shutter speeds will show a little motion in the wings, which is a nice effect too. Small birds like swallows require a very fast shuttter speed to totally freeze their motion. I have always been interested in portraying motion in still frames using long exposure. This is often seen in landscape photos with clouds or water. Why not try applying "long exposure" to birds in flight and see what happens? A swallow and its wings move a lot during 1/30 to 1/40 second.

"Liquidity" (The "Oil and Water Studies" and the "Parasols"), a new and ongoing body of work, consists of photographs of liquids. The studio setups for these range from the simple and straightforward to the highly technical and complex. The "Oil and Water Studies" are, as you have probably surmised, composed of oil, water, and carefully positioned colored light; the "Parasols" are a different matter entirely.

The images in the "Parasols" series remind me of, well, parasols. They are high‐speed photographs of colliding drops of liquid. This type of photography presents a number of technical challenges starting with the type and viscosity of the liquid being used and the sizes of and timing between drops used to produce the collisions. Small changes in the sizes of the droplets or the milliseconds between drops make a world of difference in the result. Yes, I said milliseconds. Lighting is another big issue. In most types of photography, motion is frozen, or not, by varying the shutter speed. Very few cameras have shutter speeds fast enough to freeze the motion of drop collisions. Even if they did they would still not be able to produce high quality images without intense, controlled lighting. Instead, very short, intense bursts of light are used to both illuminate and freeze motion. By short burst I mean around 1/18,000 second.

"Chemical Abstractions", another new and ongoing body of work, are both very real and very abstract. The subject matter, as with many abstracts, is probably not readily apparent. These happen to be photographs of various chemical crystals with birefringent properties. They were photographed in cross‐polarized light through a compound microscope. One of the first things you will no doubt notice is the bright colors in many of them. This is pretty much the way they look when looking through the microscope. The colors result from projecting polarized light through birefringent crystals, then cross‐polarizing the light for your eyes through the eyepieces or for the camera. The compositions were chosen because they either reminded me of something to anthropomorphize or had an element such as line, texture, shape, color, or something else that made them (to me) interesting enough to photograph.

"Interpretations", a collection of photo illustrations, is an ongoing body of work represented, in part, by a number of prints from my "Interpretations" book. Photo illustration has become a keen interest of mine so there will be future volumes of "Interpretations". These all begin as photographs, after which they undergo various transformations and recombinations using the tools of digital illustration and painting. Generally I create several versions and then blend them back together to produce the final result.

"Race Day", excerpts from a bicycle touring event, was shot immediately after finishing "Avian Abstracts", which greatly influenced my philosophy, approach, and camera technique. My goals for this collection were twofold. First, to convey the energy, speed, competition, determination, grit, intensity, heat, challenge, joy, and chaos that were so abundant on the day. Second, to creatively add dimension, variety, and a little spice to the mixture. Noticably absent was any goal of documenting objective reality. I took documentary shots too but not many of them made the cut to end up in the final project, published as a zine called "Race Day:Tour of America’s Dairyland, East Troy Cycling Classic June 17, 2022 ‐‐ Photographs and Photo Illustrations by Jeff McDonald". Photos do not need to be sharp to be compelling, they just need to express your intent. I don't care about sharpness unless it is central to the vision, I care about expressiveness and communicating my vision. Sometimes that involves sharpness, sometimes not. This show covers a lot of ground and I hope you enjoy it.

BIO: Jeff McDonald's photography has been awarded medals at international photography competitions in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Africa, and Asia and he was awarded the Photographic Society of America's Proficiency Distinction (PPSA) for his extensive international exhibition record. He is a four‐star exhibitor in both PSA Monochrome Projected and PSA Color Projected competition divisions. He has received numerous awards at local and regional photography exhibitions, including the Beloit Art Center's Juried Photography Show, over the years. His broad photographic interests include black and white, long exposure, abstract, landscape, nature, birds‐in‐flight, microscopy, and high‐speed photography, along with photo illustration.

Born in west‐central Iowa in the late 1950's, he grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. After receiving Bachelor of Music and Master of Business Administration degrees from UW‐Whitewater, he spent 18 years working in information technology and executive management with a large supplier of musical instruments and related products in the Milwaukee area. He later spent 14 years working at a community bank as its information security officer and a member of its board of directors. For the last five years, he has been accountant and IT director at a Whitewater company.

He has served as board member of the Whitewater Arts Alliance for 7 years, including several years as its treasurer. He continues to chair the Annual Fran Achen Photography Competition. Photography has been his passionate pursuit for over 15 years.

BAC Note: If you would like to learn more about Jeff's photography he will be the featured speaker at this month's Photography Club meeting, Wednesday, December 14, beginning at 6pm.

“Explorations: Photographs By Jeff McDonald”

International award winning photography in the main gallery of the beautiful Beloit Art Center.

Opening Reception & Meet The Artist

Friday, December 2 - 5pm to 7pm

Exhibition

December 2 - 29, 2022

Gallery Hours:

Monday: 10am - 2pm

Tuesday - Friday: 10am - 5pm

Saturday: 10am - 2pm

Sunday: Closed

Free and Open to the Public