Mieke Van Geest: Photographic Artist
Exploring Spirit in Nature

“The basis of meaningful photography is then, for me, intensity of relationship, an obsessive fascination with the subject, with the attempt to see more deeply,

to move from the visible to the invisible, from surface to process.”        John Blakemore, landscape photographer

 

 

 

       

I am a photographic artist and a teacher of creative photography and, at times, a painter.   My art is for me a dialogue between my inner self and the outer world.

I choose my subjects because of who I am and how I see the world. I am drawn into relationship with my subject, representing what I see in a way that expresses meaning for me. Every subject, or combination of subjects, can be photographed in a multitude of ways.  I choose, consciously or unconsciously, the ways that are meaningful to me.   

The primary focus of most of my work is nature—but as the artist, I am always present, and it is my relationship with the natural world that is essentially the subject of my work.  Some images are simply an appreciative response to a relationship of colors and forms I've noticed.  In other images I may focus on capturing my response to the energy of the natural world around me.  Or at times I place myself within the image to highlight my sense of oneness with the setting.  What I view in nature often becomes the screen on which I project my own emotions and thoughts.  Photographing, for me, involves looking past the surface of an object or scene, suggesting a mystery of depth and extent beyond our knowing.

Viewers will notice that my work frequently includes motion, as in the above image. This is a sense of motion created by camera movement during an exposure.  The resulting effects are consistent with my view that all of the world about us and within us is energy in motion.

The literal meaning of the word photo-graphy is:  writing or drawing with light or radiant energy.  Light is the primary medium of photography and the camera a tool. Thus, my camera may be compared to a paintbrush, drawing with light.  Other than some fine-tuning of colour, contrast and details in Adobe Photoshop, most of my work is done with the camera itself, allowing an immediacy of response to what I see and feel in a given situation.