About the Artist

Artist's Statement
Smart phone cameras brought a flood of fun, quirky or happy memory images that anyone can easily capture.  That's great!

But I see things differently.  I invite viewers to join in the enduring beauty of things that are hard to see - things that enunciate only in certain light, entice with their design and intrigue with pattern.  I make difficult photographs of wildflowers, special lightings, fleeting instants, and tiny things.

In my prior scientific career, my goal was to help data researchers visualize patterns that they had never seen before.  My goal in photography is similar - to see things in new perspectives.

About the Artist
Kevin B. Pratt's photographic work is in the permanent collection at Center for Fine Art Photography, Ft. Collins, Colorado and has been shown in galleries in Flagstaff, Tucson and Albuquerque.  He has spoken on imaging techniques in Australia, Canada and the US.

Kevin has been taking art and photography classes on-and-off since grade school.  He began taking photos seriously when high resolution digital photography became available.  He currently uses a Sony A6300 camera.

His first career was as a commercial and natural resources trial and appeals lawyer.  His second career is computer application of artificial intelligence to very large data.  He is chief scientist at ZZAlpha Ltd.  He hasn't discovered his third career yet.
Some opinions:
One learns to make very good art by studying the very good work of very good artists.  The only reason to peruse poor art, even when it is in famous museums and galleries, is to understand how it fails.

Definition of an artist: A person whose body of work communicates that she or he notices things differently.

Is a photograph art? Most photographs are no more art than grocery lists are literature.  What makes a photograph possibly art?  Design, lighting, texture, interest and no screw-ups.  If the photo includes a human or animal, there must be emotion and gesture also.

Nobody sees colors the same (even us color-blind folks).  All eyeballs are biologically varied.  All lights are different mixtures of colors.  Every camera records colors differently.  Every printer and projector show colors differently.  every ink and pigment color ages differently.  Textures change perceived colors.  Nothing produces a "pure white" light.  A human standing on the moon looking at a rock in sunlight sees different colors than that same human standing on earth looking at the same rock would see.  Humans have poor eyes: bees and vultures see more colors than humans.  Even sounds can change how some humans perceive colors.

A proper photograph should blowup to large size and an up-close viewer should still find no processing artifacts.  Looking at a blown-up .jpg is like listening to music on a 1950's AM radio.  It was ok in 1950.

Photography is harder than painting.  The photographer seldom has more than a few instants to obtain his or her raw material - then the expression fades, the light changes, the wind rises,  the tiny hairs on the stamen wilt, and copulating flies alight on an object in the foreground.

A small wildflower is difficult to photograph artfully.  My goal is not to document a botanical specimen nor to demonstrate my expertise with an exotic camera or an image processing manipulation.  A wildflower is very alive, active and wild - unlike a preservative filled commercial bouquet positioned stoically on your kitchen table.  In the best of circumstances, one wildflower image in 100 will be usable.

A long journey involves putting one foot in front of the other and never quitting.  Everyone has obstacles - best to find those folks who overcome them.

Most people want respect, justice and opportunity.  Most governments can't seem to remember that.


All images Copyright 2018 Kevin B. Pratt All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2018 Kevin B. Pratt