Growing originality and imagination.

It’s some six years since I exposed Ed Hebert’s special imagery here and that piece makes for a good introduction to his later work which shows a remarkable growth in imagination and originality.

In the interim Ed has been busy graduating from Harvard where he earned his Masters in Information Technology, with a concentration in Digital Media Arts and Web Technologies, as well as tending to a growing family, yet despite these commitments he has made time for his photography which remains focused on the sea and his Massachusetts environment.

‘Seasketch’ has a lovely flowing quality and just look was he does with the wake of the flying bird. The second video – ‘Winter’ – is in equal parts striking and disturbing for its subtle movement effects. Did I see that or did I not? For some reason I flashed back to Coppola’s movie The Conversation, a movie also replete with glimpses and mystery

Ed writes:

I developed a technique to sample individual video frames (i.e., still photos) and restack and visually layer them atop each other programmatically. The end product is a long exposure image that reveals itself over time. Some of these visuals – along with some of my typical subject matter –  are included in the following video.

Click the image.

For something a bit more photographic, but equally bizarre and experimental, I tried photographing the same object or scene from a variety of locations and angles, and then stacking these images together in the manner somewhat akin to multiple exposure. I was really captivated by the textural and painterly qualities that this technique revealed. To see the same object from all sides at once reminded me a bit of “photographic cubism”, although the results aren’t quite on par with Picasso. Again, I thought about how this might look as created over time, so I used the stills as frames for video.

This ‘Winter’ series was built into a weird little conceptual video. Equal parts calming and disturbing:

Click the image.

In his video ‘What I Believe’ the artist does a masterful job of combining art and science. It’s one of my favorites among his recent work. Take a look:

Click the image.

In his usual modest way Ed writes that he has been too busy to really focus on his photography. If this is his idea of a modest effort then we have a great deal to look forward to.