Pointillism Painting With My Camera
Pointillism is, according to Sotheby’s, ‘a revolutionary painting technique pioneered by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in Paris in the mid-1880s. Yesterday, I discovered it could be a pioneering technique for modern photographers. Unless it’s not that new as we will find out in a moment.
Pointillism Painting With My Camera
’ A watercolourist originally, I moved to photography 12 years ago. I’d always practised photography too, but it’s only then that it started to become a very serious affair for me. Recently I bought a brand new Nikon Z9 camera equipped with – amongst other things – a super sharp 40 mm f/2 lens. As I was fiddling with my camera and getting ready for an outing, I pressed the shutter release button incidentally and realised that I could paint with my camera too. Here is what I found out.
Pointillism, 2025 Style
Painting with one’s camera may seem strange but the rendition of that shot of the houses in the backyard of our apartment building came as an epiphany. What if one could paint, not with brushes but pixels? After all, all kinds of techniques are acceptable and it’s not because modern digital cameras were made to depict reality with utter precision that other approaches aren’t possible.
As it happens, our photo club in Paris focused a lot on unfocused pictures recently. It’s a new trend, which in a way isn’t that new. Benedicte is our Chief Culture Officer, as it were. She inspires us, once a month, with examples taken from famous artists and photographers. As it happens, she spent a lot of time showing us the work of Ernst Haas, a master in the art of blurry pictures. He too was enthralled by the possibility of ‘painting with his camera’. His photographs are stunning and can be found on the IP website.
Ernst Haas and his mesmerising pictures
The main picture that caught my eye was that New York City 1980 rush hour shot. Talking about painting with a camera, this may not quite be pointillism but expressionism, rather. Nonetheless, Haas was a master, and a self-made photographer too. Probably the only thing we may have in common.
Yet I’m quite proud of my dotty picture (pun intended), and the way the buildings are described, however imperfectly, through these points of coloured light.
Want to know what’s behind the blind? Not to worry, I made a watercolour, or rather a series of watercolours, on that subject. Here is the latest.
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Je suis photographe et aquarelliste. Je pratique la photographie depuis l'enfance et la photographie numérique depuis 1995. J'en ai fait mon activité principale en 2021. Je possède un studio photo dans le 15e arrondissement de Paris
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