Highway Photo At Twilight

Highway Photo At Twilight

Highway Photo After Sunset

Public Domain Image: Monet Haystack In Full Light

Public Domain Image: Monet Haystack Late In the Day

Public Domain Image: Monet Haystack At Twilight

Monet was obsessed with light and the way that light changed on the same object or surface. Because of this, he painted the same subject over and over in different light such as these haystack paintings above on this page. This idea led very naturally to the quite modern notion of taking the same basic composition and examining every possible variation. I think of Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Albers, and Mondrian as examples. In my case, it gave me the freedom to take repeated photos of the same thing such as the same stretch of highway again and again -- sometimes at twilight, sometimes in the rain in darkness, sometimes with heavy traffic or little traffic or no traffic, sometimes in the dead of night (my photos required a dark setting). But I repeated this idea with many more subjects such as my wife driving her car as I sat on the passenger side. And over months I found a number of fruitful variations that I had not expected from the same idea -- all thanks to Monet showing me how to thoroughly examine a visual idea.