Rolando Gomez from Lens Diaries wrote at the beginning of this month about the significance Rembrandt lighting for portraits, from the classics all the way up to today’s digitally rendered photographs. His post reminded me of my recent trip to the Denver Art Museum and its collection of impressionist art from the likes of Picasso and Monet (I didn’t see any van Gogh in the museum). I would like to echo Mr. Gomez in saying that paying close attention to how other art forms, classic forms of visual creation in particular, can lead to a very acute eye for form, light, and character in the photographic world.

Take for example the two images provided in this post. West Texas skies are often compared to paintings from a day gone by, and while I have talked to artists that are inspired by the skies, others can relate the skies themselves to other works. The two images included here reminded me of those impressionist-era paintings I saw in Denver. The camera cannot physically provide the rise and pits of the brush strokes you see in this type of painting, however, the colors and the texture provided by depth and contrast are likened to the tangibility offered through the earlier artists’ creations.

Then again, the camera was never designed (at least at conception) to produce the type of three-dimensional feel that Monet did with his harsh strokes and extremely visible globs of paint on the canvases. What the camera does do, however, is allow us to capture those environments and experiences that often remind us of such artistic feel. The broad-brush clouds and the faint grasslands and the pastel-like colors both images reckon toward a 19th-century oil painting in said style. You can even imagine the distant town in the first image as small dots of white raised from the visual plane.

Recognizing and embracing historical art and art styles raises your awareness of similar occurrences in your own work. While a camera can’t quite offer what early impressionists did in the way of actual, physical touch, there are certain things that impressionism did not do in an equally artistically limiting way that our modern-day digital cameras bring to the table. However, there is a visual foundation that transcends all forms of art, and this foundation, whatever it is, is left up to the creator to find and draw from.