FIELDS OF COLOR
By A. Cemal Ekin
FIELDS OF COLOR By A. Cemal Ekin
“On August 7, 2008, I took a helicopter ride over the Great Salt Lake in Utah arranged by my wife and daughter for my 65th birthday. The primary destination was the Spiral Jetty which was well worth the trip. But, the journey proved to be equally rewarding with unexpected colors, patterns, and an amazing variation of scenery. The ecosystem of the Great Salt Lake contains a rich variety of elements. They create borders and boundaries where one stops and the other begins.
FIELDS OF COLOR By A. Cemal Ekin
From the air, the Great Salt Lake greets the eye with a range of hues that both amaze and delight. Patterns on and around the lake created by nature challenge the best of a painter in visual structure and artistry. Below me, at times, was a reddish orange view with white sprays on it; surface, depth, and bottom were hard to distinguish from each other.
Inside the red body of water below me, a mysterious glow emanated from the bottom and delineated shapes, of what I did not understand. The ecosystem with high salinity and other mineral deposits creates a great range of hues through evaporation. The natural process of evaporation is then parceled out and controlled for the production of specific minerals.
And, the result is the Fields of Color.”
About A. Cemal Ekin
A. Cemal Ekin Portrait, Lens Magazine
Retired from Providence College in 2012 as Professor Emeritus, I benefited from teaching for over 40 years. It affected my photography, and how I share what I know with others. That, in turn has helped me to learn more about photography, my photography, the art of photography.
I practice photography as an interested, curious observer, and am a fully self-taught photographer through practice, experimentation, failures, reading and looking at photographs. I write about photography to sharpen my understanding of it.
I have been involved in photography for over 60 years, but digital photography presented a fertile ground for me since the early 1990s. I have learned the tools of this new world, Photoshop, and later, Lightroom, to be totally comfortable in them. I enjoy sharing what I know in presentations, workshops, private mentoring and tutorials.
My photographs present my vision and I keep an open mind about making all necessary adjustments to my photographs to convey my vision. Despite that, I strive to produce work that is free from processing artifacts and look “effortlessly done.”
I have had ten solo exhibitions in three cities; issued limited and open edition folios; published photo books and magazines featuring my work. My photographs are in the public and private collections in the USA and abroad. The prestigious magazine, LensWork published more than 70 photographs from my Infrared Earthscapes series in November 2011. I am included in the first edition of the International Masters of Photography published in December 2012.
Festival Ballet Providence commissioned an original ballet inspired by and featuring a collection of my photographs of dried orchids. The ballet, Orchis, was performed in March 2013, and then in March 2014 in Providence.
FIELDS OF COLOR By A. Cemal Ekin
