Wyeth Like
iPhone 12 Pro 6mm 1/2800 sec f/2 ISO 25
Every once in awhile a photographic vignette will catch your eye that has a certain look and feel that reminds you of a favorite artist. So, you go ahead and capture the image with the camera hoping that in the final editing your initial intuition will be proven correct. Such was the case with several photos I took over the past few years that, mainly because of their rural subject matter, had a very “Wyeth look” to them, particularly reminding me of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. Of course, it’s seldom the case that the images come out of the camera looking exactly like you imagined them at first sighting and capture. They often require some toning adjustments and a bit of editing work to get them to that final point.
The image above is a good example. It was a simple doorway on the main street of the village of Francestown in New Hampshire. It was the way the shadows played against the door and side of the house that first reminded me of a Wyeth painting.
iPhone 12 Pro 6mm 1/800 sec f/2 ISO 25
Another similar image is the one above, of a large white barn in rural New Hampshire. Like the image of the doorway preceding it, it was captured using an iPhone. It was the rather sad and decaying tree in front of the barn that I thought added that “Wyeth touch” to the overall image.
Then there was this image of an equipment shed taken on a farm in Concord, Massachusetts. Maybe it was the peeling white paint or the exposed timber-work along the roof that reminded me of the more than 300 paintings and drawings that Andrew Wyeth did of sections of the Olson house in Cushing, Maine from the 1940’s to the mid 1960’s.
Nikon D850 1/500 sec f/8 ISO 200
The Olson House, Andrew Wyeth
The images below represent an odd coincidence. I captured the image on the left of a beech tree on June 10, 2022. Just a month later I purchased a book on Andrew Wyeth (“Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography”) that contained his painting “Spring Beauty.” I had never before seen this work by Wyeth. Wyeth said about Spring Beauty…”This is important for the development of my way of seeing reality. Here is a time I used pencil and Higgins’ ink, too, to make the silver gray of the bark, for the texture of that bark was fascinating to me. Now this is far from the colorful “impressionism” of my earlier works. Here I’m slowly changing. I’m seeing things in a clearer way.”
I only hope that my own attraction to the bark of that beech tree, and my desire to want to capture it as an image, also means that I’m beginning to see things in “a clearer way.”
All of the following images below were captured with a Nikon D610 at Scott Farm in Dummerston, Vermont. Scott Farm is owned by the Landmark Trust and is not only famous for its heirloom apple orchards but also for being the location for much of the filming of Cider House Rules. The white barns and outbuildings all lended themselves well to color grading in Lightroom and several layers of “paper texture” added in Photoshop helped give them that final “Andrew Wyeth look.” What do you think? Do they have that Wyeth feel? You can click on the individual images to enlarge them.
And, finally there was this image of a beaver pond in Greenfield, New Hampshire that I captured in 2015 that seemed to channel Andrew Wyeth in some small way.
For more on the three generations of Wyeths you may want to take a peek at this video.
