The Showcase: Brad Moore

“The Showcase” is a weekly publication featuring a photographer that has caught our eye here at The F STOP. I’ve asked Brad Moore to answer a few questions about his clever and elegant observational images of the California landscape.

Please describe what your work is about.

About three years ago, I started driving around in some of the areas where I had grown up, worked and gone to school (mostly North Orange County, California). The areas I remembered were fading away, and I was struck by the simultaneous growth and decline. At first, it was the buildings that interested me; I shot them in formal, almost symmetrical compositions. Then I began shooting the surrounding shrubbery with the same architectural approach. The buildings and shrubs seemed to work together, and that’s how the project evolved. To me, the images have a sense of sadness and isolation, but at the same time a quiet sense of humor; I like the conflicting feelings.

How do you find the locations in your imagery? Is it serendipitous or is there a more structured approach?

It’s a lot of random driving around, I usually just happen upon things. I started by revisiting areas from my past, but now I see things all over. It’s really about seeing something where there seems to be nothing.

Do you use Photoshop to enhance the images in any way?

I use Photoshop as a darkroom replacement. I dodge and burn, color correct, and do general image clean up. I do not construct an image in Photoshop. For me, it’s about finding something and capturing it, then preserving the way I felt about it at the time of exposure. I don’t really like post production that much, so I try to do as much as possible in the camera. I use Photoshop as tool for enhancement and, ultimately, making the image as strong as it can be.

I’d imagine you spend a lot of time scouting and shooting images that don’t make it to the gallery wall, about how much time does it take you to create one image that makes the cut?

I don’t really know, but to guess I would say it takes a week or two to make a single image. I probably spend as much time printing as shooting. I shoot pretty deliberately, so I’m far more likely to return home without shooting anything than with hundreds of images that get edited out. This might be different if I was shooting something else, like people. I shoot primarily on overcast days; in Southern California this means there are very few shooting days in a year.

You seem to be exclusively a fine-art photographer, how has the market for your prints changed since the recession began?

Last year was the best year I’ve had selling prints, but the gallery that sold most of my work closed this year, so that’s had an effect. Now might be a better time to create new work than to sell it. I’m optimistic.