Photos

Always in pursuit of a composition filled with spontaneity, sunlight, and colour - when I chanced upon this scene: the play of light on the leaves reminded me of the Impressionist paintings, which emphasise on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities.

The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed colour—not blended smoothly or shaded, as was customary — in order to achieve the effect of intense colour vibration.

They developed new techniques that were specific to the style. Encompassing what its adherents argued was a different way of seeing, it was an art of immediacy and movement, of candid poses and compositions, of the play of light expressed in a bright and varied use of colour.

The Impressionists relaxed the boundary between subject and background so that the effect of an Impressionist painting often resembles a snapshot, a part of a larger reality captured as if by chance. At the same time, photography was gaining popularity, and as cameras became more portable, photographs became more candid. Photography inspired Impressionists to represent momentary action, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape, but in the day-to-day lives of people.

In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of artistic expression, and rather than competing with photography to emulate reality. The Impressionists sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exacting representations. This allowed artists to depict subjectively what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience". Photography had encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked.

Extracted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism