For more than a decade, I've been capturing seemingly random and unrelated images, only to realize as of late, there has always been underlying themes to what I shoot.
Earlier this year, while looking through my archive of images, I found a substantial amount of architectural photos. I gathered and sequenced the ones I found most interesting and published a book I call "the lines between spaces".
Each photo was taken with various film and digital cameras, over the course of 9 years. And from what I can remember, none were ever pre-visualized.
Pre-visualization is a very important concept not only in photography but in my journey into creating fine art. A technique I have yet to master but seemingly have been implementing it this whole time - allow me to explain.
Most of these photos, if not all, were taken spontaneously during various outings in the neighbourhood and cities, road trips and travels across Canada and the US between 2013 and 2022.
Upon further review however, it wasn't necessarily the buildings themselves that I was particularly interested in. I found that my style in architectural photos often do not highlight features of importance, nor take into consideration techniques that often define such photos.
Instead - if I had to explain why I ever even took these photos at random - what I found most interesting was the lines that I found in these compositions.
I find lines that have elements of patterns, angles and symmetry, oddly satisfying to look at it from an aesthetically visual perspective. In other words, I just find them cool to look at. And it's this desire to capture lines, that draw my attention to take a photo.
In some sense, this innate intent to find lines in my everyday life, particularly in buildings, is the starting point to how I've always been inherently pre-visualizing a photo. In other words, I already know in my mind's eye what exact shape or pattern of lines I'm looking for and I'm just waiting for the moment to capture it in my everyday life.
Through this realization, I have been recently refining my eye, to not only continue capturing the lines between spaces but to also enhance my ability to pre-visualize a composition. And to make much more deliberate choices, especially in my journey to creating fine art. It is only until I can master pre-visualization can I truly call my work fine art... only until then.
- Neil Laborce
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed my musing, please feel free to take a look at my "the lines between spaces" collection.
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