Strange “things” float in the glow inside the Temple of Helios…

Back in the old (pre-computer) days, I would switch from taking photographs to etching plates every so often just to keep things interesting. Photography is a scattershot process – you take a lot of photos, but very few of them end up being great. Printing etched plates is a craft – you spend weeks on a plate trying to make it perfect and worry at every step whether you’re improving your print or about to ruin it.

These days, I mostly switch between the program ArtMatic and creating huge layered Photoshop files as epitomized by the “Atlas Of Dreams” series. The layered Photoshop files have become my modern equivalent of etching a plate, with the added benefit of being able to save old versions and go back to them if I take a wrong turn. My modern equivalent of a taking photos is ArtMatic. Instead of looking for interesting subjects and trying to find a good way to shoot them, I can visually search mathematical parameters for interesting algorithms. When I find one, I can tweak it until I find it appealing, then explore all its nooks and crannies.

The “In The Temple Of Helios” series is an exploration of several related algorithms. The images were then brought into Photoshop for additional tweaking. This series is from 2003.