Cortez artist Janet Chanay will exhibit many of her photographs at Spruce Tree Coffeehouse through the middle of January.
When you look through the lens of a camera, the world looks completely different, Chanay says as to how she is inspired to pursue her craft.
Chanay started practicing photography about 10 years ago while leading the Panther Press newspaper team as an English teacher at Montezuma-Cortez High School.
I trained myself, she says. I just started learning about photography, taking pictures and realized it was something I could do that was creative, and I just loved it.
The current exhibit features a variety of 12- by 14-inch photographs of nature, landscape and architectural interests in both black-and-white and color. The images were taken in the area and during her travels throughout Rome and Ireland.
Some of the color photographs are from Animas up near Silverton and feature fall colors, Chanay says. I shoot all kinds of different things.
One of the photos on exhibit at Spruce Tree Coffeehouse has garnered her a first-place award at a previous showing at the Cortez Cultural Center.
I printed it on water color paper. It uses a lot more ink, and its only the second time Ive ever done that, she says of one of the techniques she used to create the prize-winning image.
Recently she has been playing with light and dark zones and studying the art of high dynamic range, or HDR, photography.
Its super, super interesting to take a color photograph, and then play with it and work on it, and bring something else out of it that you didnt get in the color, Chanay says about her appreciation of black and white imagery.
You see the line better, you see the composition better, because the photograph is all about how you compose it, and where you can place it, and how your eye goes into the scene, and how your eye moves through the scene maybe its because the color itself can be a distraction, Chanay says.
Ansel Adams is one of the many and most iconic photographers who inspire Chanay.
Ansel Adams divided everything into light and dark zones, she says. When he went into the dark room, he was trying to bring out as much detail as possible.
Chanay has been crafting a similar style by playing with state-of-the-art software that allows her to virtually superimpose under- and over-exposed images on top of each other to create layers that bring out more details and depth within each range of shadows.
Your eye just sees light; it doesnt see an image, Chanay says. So if you over expose the photograph you let in too much light, and in other photographs theres too much dark. Adams was able to keep exposing photographs in the chemicals, so he could bring out all of the light and all of the dark that he could manage.
To view the collection, visit Spruce Tree Coffehouse, 318 E. Main St., Cortez, or visit Chanays website, jechanayphotograph.com.
Reach Nathalie Winch at nathaliew@cortezjournal.com.