by Bella Erakko
Featured member artist Connie Stephens, retired from the Missouri Department of Social Services, today picks up her Canon Rebel T7i and 90D cameras and hits the road. It began innocuously enough: photographing her very cute grandsons who were only too willing to pose. But they grew up… “So I looked for other possibilities. And at some point, I began to see photography as art.”
That’s when she became enamored with travel, and she has her favorite places: White Sands National Monument for the stark contrast between the white gypsum sand rippling like water in the wind against the cloudless stark blue sky. Or Santa Fe, where art oozes out gallery doors onto streets and every tiny back alley. Once home, she dives into Photoshop and Lightroom to edit her images. “I think that’s what I like most—bringing out so much color.” She laughs. “Sometimes I have to desaturate the image.” That became particularly obvious after she had cataract surgery. With cloudy lens removed, her whole world became more brilliant. For Connie, the post processing of an image is a way to deal with stress. “It’s like a form of therapy. I love what I’m doing, and I can spend hours enhancing colors, removing unwanted items, adding vignettes.”
There is an edge between photographic realism and imaged art. Connie plunges in to find that point where image becomes art—and art becomes image.
