Beyond Fractals:
Intimate Images of Natural Patterns
Photographs by Neil Goldstein
About Neil Goldstein
I have loved taking pictures since I was given my first camera at age 13. The first serious project I shot was a series of slides for a light show while I was in college. After college, I had a day job most of my life, but I never stopped shooting photographs. At first, I shot exclusively in black-and-white, with a darkroom in my basement. For many years, my day job was also photo-related, as a "stripper", or film technician for offset printing. As a stripper, I assembled pages for brochures, advertisements, and publications of all types, many of the things that Photoshop is famous for, but by hand in full-size negatives. As a photographer, I am self-taught, in the sense that I never had an organized education in photography. Instead, I learned however I could, reading books on all aspects of photography, and taking classes wherever I could, and I continue to do so. In 1993, I studied color photography at the Santa Fe Photography Institute, after which I switched exclusively to color photography, and I have never looked back (well, maybe once or twice).
My earliest influences were Ansel Adams, Galen Rowell, and Eliot Porter. I consider myself part of their tradition of nature photographers. However, unlike them, I do not favor images of awe and wonder. Instead, I favor scenes where an intimate image will create a moment of beauty and peace that only nature can provide. In a sense, I rely on a portrait sensibility, but not to find images of natural objects, but rather of natural patterns. My goal is not to create "modern" images, but photographs that can be part of someone's life for a long time.
People often ask if I "Photoshop" my images. I do use Photoshop to “develop” (i.e., interpret) my images in a manner similar to the enlarging process in a darkroom. However, while I try to remain true to the spirit of the images I have captured, I take full advantage of Photoshop's capacities to emphasize the colors and patterns that I felt most strongly, so I can share with viewers what I found compelling about each image.
About Titles
All of my photographs are titled the same way: the location, the date, and a brief, generic description of the subject of the shot, numbered in the order in which I digitally "developed" them. If the lowest number showing is not 1, then I worked on other shot(s) and decided not to publish them. Since my work is about interactions among natural patterns, the location is as important as the apparent subject. And since the natural environment is constantly changing, the date of any shot is just as important as the location and subject. Beyond that, any title might limit the viewer's imagination.