Portrait | Why I Love Texture?

Adding textures to a photograph is definitely is not a cup of coffee for everyone especially to those who don’t have much free times to play around with Photoshop. Maybe I was lucky to have so much free time to play around with Photoshop then but then again it is not really about whether you have the time or not, it is about whether you like it or not. I believe we can always find the time to do what we love to do, people who love fishing will find the time to go fishing, people who love mountain climbing will find  the times from their busy schedule to go mount climbing and people who like to travel, will surely find the way from their busy office life to travel, when there is a will, there will always a way.

I don’t quite remember exactly when I fall in love with texture photograph but I do remember fascinate by them when I look at them, I’m wondering, how did they do that, how can they make their pictures look like they were taken in the late 60s or 70s, I want that look too and and I want to learn how to that, I said to myself. The truth is, I have no idea how to start making my picture look like them.

I learn all this things from scratch actually, maybe I was driven by desire to know how to do that because I love what I see and I want to know eagerly how to do that and maybe I was adventurous kind of person who always like to challenge myself to learn new things. Always wanted to push my Photoshop skills further. Always never satisfied and maybe I want to make my photograph a bit different from my friends.

Why I like texture then? I want my photograph to stand out from the crowd, I want my photograph to be different from everybody else because nowadays there are a lot of photographers and I want to be different, I want to have something or new skills that not everybody have but the truth is I love it, if we are driven just for the sake of to be different is not good enough, we must have a solid or firm stand why we love to do something and that’s the only way we can do it passionately, I’m passionate about my texture work, I can spent hours just to finished one single texture artwork, like I said, I have the time doing something that I love the most.

Another thing why I love doing texture work is because I like the look and feel of the photograph, a vintage or retro kind of look really fascinate me. It is something that I can’t explain any further but I do like something from 60s or 70s look especially those retro look or style. Adding texture to a photograph can bring character to the photograph itself, it have extra depth and feel.

I like to stress here that adding textures will not make bad photograph a good one, everything must start from a great photograph. Usually a photograph that have a  strong emotional or expressive look will always work. Textures are not only for portrait work, you can also use texture for landscape or architectural photograph to have that timeless or classic look but be sure not to add them to the modern architecture, it just doesn’t look right to the eyes but there is nothing stopping you to try.

Sometimes, it is hard to explain why, you just knew it. Sometimes it comes from the heart and when it does, you will do it passionately no matter how hard it is. You can get free textures from the internet easily but is not that easy to play with it, you need to be passionate about it to  do it well, you need to feel it.