Site gives him nice exposure
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.29.2007
At his town home on the North Side, Brayden Harp was waiting for his digital photo prints to dry. The 16-by-22-inch prints were of photos that he took last summer: a man selling flowers in Munich, an old man walking on a street in Munich, and a woman sitting on a bench in a public square in Zagreb, Croatia, holding her head in her hands.
Harp placed images of the Croatian woman side-by-side. The image on the right side has the woman's body in black and white, with the rest of the image in color. The image on the left is just the opposite: Her body is in color, and everything else is black and white.
These photos are part of a brand new series — so new Harp hadn't even come up with a name for it yet, although he has spent "painstaking" time boxing out areas of color and areas of black and white.
"I'm getting into digital because it's new," he said. "I've been developing photos since I was 12. Digital is a new field."
This new technique is just one of the ways Harp has been experimenting with the world of digital photography. Normally this 24-year-old photo major spends his days — and nights — developing black and white or color film prints using the traditional process with enlargers and chemicals in the basement of the fine-arts building at the University of Arizona.
He built a darkroom in his house that doubles as his office. Harp said he spends more time in the UA darkrooms because they have more, and better, equipment.
His old-school style wide-angle lens photographs of Spain are on the Ugallery.com Web site.
"Ugallery is a good place to get your name out," he said. He has sold two prints through the site so far.
Harp gets ideas for photos all the time, when he's doing mundane things or sleeping in the middle of the night. It doesn't hurt that he has tons of undeveloped photos from his annual summer travels abroad. So far he has visited Spain, Ireland, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Germany, Austria and Costa Rica.
Harp, who grew up in Prescott, makes a point to leave the country at least once per semester. All the traveling, all the sights, sounds and smells have given him a different perspective on life and have taught him much about himself.
"I think the artist's job is to open people's eyes and minds," he said.
His photos do just that.
Harp will graduate next December and plans to work as a freelance photographer and show his photos in art galleries.
You can see his work on Ugallery or at the Society for Photography Education show at the Todd Walker Gallery in the UA photo department area in the basement of the theater building. The show will run until the end of the year.
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