Time Stacks
In this era where everything is digitized, you can still make use of it to create art. Matt Molloy is a Canadian artist who has found a new way of expressing himself through art – photography. With a diploma in graphic design, he likes experimenting with digital software in order to create stunning surreal photos.
Using a technique of lighten layer-blending – a way of overlapping two or multiple photos by only emphasizing the lighter colors – he creates “motionless videos” of landscapes, sunsets, clouds, etc. At the beginning he has used the time slacks technique to capture the “star trails” and moved on from there. Combining into one single picture up to 500 photos, or even more, he is able to recreate a still motion, what we can experience by looking at his creations.
Some of his time slacks are adding up to 4 hours of pictures taken a few minutes apart, depending on the speed the things he’s trying to capture are moving. He has acknowledged he is also using contrast and color enhancing filters in order to create the effect he’s looking for, and he is often experimenting with multiple tries until he finds something that pleases him.
Apart from the colors, which are fairy-like, the greatest asset his art shows is the contrast between the static nature of the landscapes, the trees and buildings, and the time in motion, captured in the changes of the sky or the water, the sun’s position and the alternated day/night light. It takes a lot of time and patience to create one single image, but the outcomes are really worth it.
By Cristina Juc
