Milk River by Francis Marte

We’ll let you in on a little secret…in our minds some of our earlier stuff…well…it doesn’t fill us with the warm and fuzzies. Mainly it’s the images we don’t like and not so much in regards to composition, but specifically how we processed them when we started shooting RAW (in about 2014). All to frequently we did it very badly*. (RAW: a direct uninterpreted image that gets processed in “post” with a software package like Lightroom instead of in camera as a JPG).

As with many photographers, a few years ago, we were lead down the “HDR” rabbit hole (even when not shooting true High Dynamic Range). You’ve seen those often overly saturated, frequently dingy looking pics done in an over-the-top way that in the early to mid-2010s were all the rage? That’s probably HDR. You looked at a photo done this way and instantly you thought it’s a painting, right? Another common trait of the technique.

For a time we saw this style (naively) as a way to elevate or improve our work, but now see the results as cringe-worthy. It was a phase, with numerous photographers sampling the drug, not just us. We’re always learning and improving in skills (even if today, we still think we’ve got far to go) and have taken a more dialed-down approach in post the last few years.

All this rambling leads us to the photo seen here, one shot in the Southern Alberta Community of Milk River back in 2014. It’s a street scene showing one of the town’s Grain Elevators, which became fodder for something awesome.

Comes a saviour, an artist. The photo’s redeemed on being chosen by talented Francis Marte, out of Edmonton, as inspiration for something fantastic in watercolours. Our photo that looks like a painting, becomes one! Francis’ actions have changed our outlook and instead a dreading the idea of showing you the original, we display it proudly, in a most reserved way of course. A big thanks to him, and encouragement to continue. Scroll down to look at our work and his.

From the Philippines Arts Council website in regards to the artist: “Francis Marte is a professional watercolourist and charcoal artist, specializing in realistic landscape, cityscape, still life, figurative, and portrait paintings…Albeit still young in the arts scene (he has been doing this professionally for only 2 years now), Francis dreams of being able to devote full time to painting.”

We think he’s got the stuff. The level of realism in his work is something incredible.

And what a great honour it is that this person choose our photo, one that we saw basically as worthless today, and with a bit of reinterpretation, made it into something cool and epic. Bravo!

This is not the only BIGDoer image Francis has used as the basis of a painting. We’ll soon be posting about another he did (here: Old Jack’s Hand by Francis Marte). To look up Francis, search “Francis Marte Watercolours” on Facebook. Tell him we sent you.

Interesting timing, the grain elevator seen in the photo, as we’re typing this, is being demolished. These wooden prairie sentinels don’t have a lot of value in today’s world and on being unneeded and of no use for any other purpose, they get torn down. One more old elevator bites the dust. But it’s economics, plain and simple. We understand.

Artists who wish to use our photos as fodder for other works, much like Francis did, are welcome to contact us. We welcome it.

*While we’re on the fence mostly as to the value of our earlier (RAW era) photographs, with some that we downright hate, we don’t hide them away. Search our site and you’ll see every single article with every single photo, going back to day one, no matter what we think of it. We were pretty bad back then, mostly and much better now, mostly, and we hope it shows how we’ve matured in what we do. Some of our write-up are badly done too, but hey, that’s another story. Hope you enjoyed the piece.

The original pic some from this post (bad photo alert) and some background on the elevator seen…
Prairie Sentinels – Milk River Alberta.

A second Francis Marte painting inspired by this website…
Old Jack’s Hand by Francis Marte.

If you wish more information on what you’ve seen here, by all means contact us!

Date of (original) adventure: August, 2014.
Location: Milk River, Alberta.

An HDR-style image we’re not all that crazy about.

But we’re elated it inspired talented artist Francis Marte.