Distinctly Montana Magazine

A Fine Evening Is there a particular artist or photographer who inspires your work? I don't think there is any one artist or photographer who has inspired my work. I am a self- taught pho- tographer except for some classes in non-silver printing processes, dye transfer print- ing, and film-making. Some of the photographers whose work has inspired me are: Arthur Rothstein for his WPA photographs of the dust bowl farmers; Dorothea Lange for her moving photographs of life during the great Depres- sion; Ernst Haas for his ar- tistic color photographs that leaned heavily toward abstract; W. Eugene Smith for his documentary studies; Edward Steichen's black and white photographs published as The Family of Man. I suppose I am more of a documentary photographer but with, in my opinion, a very strong artistic, aesthetic approach. Tied "Hard & Fast" What key elements do you look for when composing a photo? The key elements that I try to be conscious of when composing my photographs are: the kind of light; where the light is coming from; the positive and negative ele- 38 © 2012 BARBARA VAN CLEVE, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ments in the photograph; the composition of the lines in the photograph and the action (that may or may not be in the photograph); and most importantly, what emotion or feeling I am experiencing when I make the photograph. A large body of your work is in black-and-white, but you seem now to have turned toward color. On the contrary! Although I have always photographed in color in addition to my black and white photography, I preferred black and white. And I still do. © 2012 BARBARA VAN CLEVE, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED How has digital photography affected your work? With digital I get instant feedback and can see if I "got the shot" I wanted. Before digital a lot of film was exposed in an effort to make sure that I got the shot I wanted. Digital is a real time saver. And it makes learning so much easier and so much faster for students in my workshops. Do you believe the digital medium is a positive or negative development for photo- graphic art? I think that the digital medium is probably a positive development for photography and the environment. In many less populated parts of the U.S. where photographers practice they no longer have to dump the chemical residue into town sewers or much worse into septic tanks where those chemicals eventually leach into the ground water. The digital image is not yet equal to a film image, but it will be, and it will supersede the film image in the not too distant future. I believe firmly that the use of Photoshop DISTINCTLY MONTANA • SPRING 2012

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