A local photographer has changed his style from animals to abstract. Ray Tysdal’s new digital exhibition is on display in Rapid City.
Ray Tysdal is a South Dakota fine art photographer. He explains the photographs in his exhibit to viewers at the Garage in Rapid City.
“It’s called Alternative Photography. It’s not like alternative process. It’s alternative interpretation.”
The black and white images are made of geometric shapes and detailed patterns. Tysdal says he used techniques such as scanning negatives and combining photos for this exhibition.
He spends hours digitally manipulating subjects to create the abstract work.
“I don’t want my photos to look like anybody’s. I look at a thousand pictures a day and I learn from other people’s photographs but I don’t very often try to emulate them so to speak.”
Tysdal is well known for his black and white images of animals, especially buffalo.
“But I got bored. After about seven years you know you go out and you take pictures of buffalo, and I really love buffalo. But it’s a long, hard thing to go and get the image that you that you can really translate into something.”
He says he wanted to take his work in a new direction. He felt a rush from making abstract images.
“When I started working on those digital images. I would literally get up at 6 o’clock in the morning and start working. And I’d be working on my laptop. I’d go to my studio; I’d work on the computer there. Then I’d come home and work on my laptop at ten o’clock at night. And I did that seven days a week and I did that for almost three years. It was very rewarding.”
Alternative Photography is on display at the Garage through April first.