by Bill Hobbs
I have been a photographer since the age of 10, and like many a kid with a camera, I spent a lot of time trying to unleash my inner Ansel Adams, creating competently executed photographs of beautiful landscapes. I still do that, but increasingly I am drawn to the challenge of making impactful images of things that most people would walk or drive past without a second thought or not notice because they are looking at things the way most people do.
Junk Pile – PSC Metals on the east side of the river downtown
As I worked to make these abstract images, I wrestled with the contradiction of abstract photography itself—after all, by its very nature, photography captures an image of something real. A painter may paint whatever comes to mind, but a camera captures the reflected light of a bit of reality—though the final image is reality as filtered through the photographer’s many choices affecting exposure, perspective, cropping, focus, and processing.
Cornelia Fort Airpark hangar along the river in East Nashville
For these images, turning mundane things like an abandoned airplane hangar or a giant pile of metal junk into abstract art, then eliminating the distraction of color and focusing only on black and white, light and shadow, shape and line encompasses the basic elements of photography. As much as the beauty shots of the skyline and the river are, these also are Nashville to me.
For more information about Bill Hobbs, please visit www.billhobbs.com.
