Photo Essay: Impressionistic Photography - focus on Israel’s Nature by Dubi Roman.

MY IMPRESSIONISTIC PHOTOGRAPY by Dubi Roman

In the autumn of 1994, I started my creative journey of Impressionistic Photography. After graduating NYI (The New York Institute of Photography (www.nyip.com), I wondered how I could express my personality in the endless "sea" of photography. I felt my photographic stage would blossom into one that will express my inner self, my search for harmony and my love for nature, in a way that will deal with what I believed to be the common values of humanity. Also, I had been expressing the search for happiness and security, the sense of belonging, and above all the hard journey to self-fulfillment.

As naive as I was, I wished myself to be able to influence others to prefer communicating with one another in peaceful ways and understanding, while concentrating in what we share rather then with the things that set us apart.

For years, my heart went after the French Impressionism; I particularly loved Claude Monet's ways of seeing the world. I started to search for photographic ways to enrich the viewer's senses, experiencing nature many spheres and concentrating on the inner touches of nature – the fragility, the smell of mud after the rain, the sights of flowers blowing in the wind with its great sense of freedom.
I started to experiment with photographic techniques to recreate such expressions. It didn’t take long before I developed my own unique style of Impressionistic photography.

The technique I use is based on multiple exposures, changing planes of focus, soft focusing and scattered light. Practically, for all my first series of images, I used an old film camera with one good lens. I used several exposures on each piece of film, some of them "in focus"; others were "out of focus". In this way I was able to create a romantic and impressionistic feeling, using the palette of dreams. In general, I think the subconscious mind is a bit misty and out of focus. Lower definition seems to be a key element for the ability to capture deeply buried sights: our visual memories and deepest wishes as well as our fears. In my opinion, we need to have sights with lower resolutions in order to make us listen more carefully to our inner voices.

It wasn't long before I received great responses and strong sense of personal involvement from my group of viewers.
Looking at it today, I believe that time really formed my style and led me into where I am today. The impressionistic photography became my creative way for personal imageries that could hold emotional atmosphere and tenderness.

During the recent years, I was involved in marketing in an effort to spread my works over the Internet.
Five years ago, I was invited by Mr. Alastair Firkin to join his prestigious "Family of Man 2" – the 5-year documentary worldwide project that ended this year.

At the moment, I am involved in giving many artist workshops for small groups of creative and talented photographers. I also lecture about nature art photography, and take part in art exhibitions and hundreds of Internet galleries.

Limited Editions and Open Editions of fine art prints are available for purchase via my personal web site gallery
http://www.DubiRoman.com