Artist Profile: Greg Piazza
Originally recorded July 26, 2022.
Greg Piazza shares a firsthand look at the painting and photography practices behind his contemporary work, including the landscapes and images featured by Western Gallery. View Greg Piazza’s artist profile and available work.
Transcript note: Speaker labels were assigned from the source audio where available and dialogue context otherwise. Paragraph breaks were added for readability, and verbal filler was lightly edited. Joint labels mark rapid or overlapping exchanges. This was prepared from an automated transcription, so minor transcription errors may remain.
Artist-narrated profile—July 26, 2022
Watch the original video on Instagram (05:24)
Participants: Greg Piazza
Greg Piazza: Hey guys, I'm Greg Piazza. I'm a contemporary painter and photographer. 2007-2008 when the housing market crashed, you know, wasn't selling many paintings anymore so that's where I first picked up the camera. So I just focused on learning a lot about the camera and photographic process but really in the last two or three years is where that has been hung down with working with Alan Ross on refining my post production process and then even the printing process after that. Alright, this piece is Jackson Lake Hays and this was a piece that when Alan Ross saw it you know blew my mind he had no edits to it at all when we went through my portfolio normally he'll find a nuance somewhere here in there that he wants to tweak and he pretty much said hey this one looks great as it is I wouldn't touch a thing so that was a huge compliment and this one's actually sold out in the 60 by 40 edition. This one here part of the Impermanent Collection at Western Gallery, this is morning aspens and unique thing about this photograph, it was taken early morning in Yellowstone National Park and Tamron Lens Company had actually let me borrow a lens extender 1.4 lens extender so I shot this on my 150 to 600 with the lens extender otherwise I took it from the road at full length otherwise by the time I would have hiked all the way out to these trees the light would have been gone up we've never been able to capture it and you know cross the River, Voida, Herd, Buffalo and everything else to get to it.
Greg Piazza: So Tamron has actually used this one in some of their publications that kind of highlight you know how you can really utilize the full length of a lens without losing too much definition. This is one that's tough to get all the subtlety on a computer screen. Yeah this is Rain Over Valley number 1. I was out shooting with Alan Ross and we searched all day long for a scene like this. Finally went back to his house and worked on some images that we had captured and decided to pack it up and you know head to dinner and driving to dinner I saw the scene almost through like a crevice of the mountain. Of course, I was on the wrong side of a four lane highway and had to speed to find a U-turn and come back and park on side of the road and was able to capture two or three images that I was really proud of from this scene, probably one of my favorites. And Alan didn't see it until two or three months later when I was like look what I found outside of your house on the left and he loved it. A lot of my photos prior to Alan they were very contrasty what he would call them and when people look at Alan's work or Ansel's works sometimes online people really do think that they are black and white, and they lose the full range of tonality that should be in an image.
Greg Piazza: And even today a lot of stuff you see on Instagram that has thousands of likes, now when I look at them, I really see what Alan saw my work at the beginning is how dark they are and you're losing all the stuff that's in the shadows and those details and so my work has really kind of broadened the spectrum of the tonality and really brought out those details as you're missing in the shadow and also concentrate on not over-blowing the highlights. There's two styles that I work with in photos, so right here we have the cactus couple and this is one that i consider more of a minimalist style photograph versus some of my landscapes where you're really seeing every blade of grass and i just love the freedom to get outdoors and explore and you never know what you're going to find. A lot of times i have my mind kind of pre-visualizing before I get to a location of what I'm going for, when I think I'm gonna find there. I'll stop 15-20 times on the side of the road because I saw you know a ditch that I like that you know the leading line to a mountain or just anything else that kind of catches my eye and I really enjoy finding the unknown more than getting to a destination and saying oh here's the scene that i've seen all over instagram. I take sometimes hundreds of photos on a given trip over three or four days.
Greg Piazza: And yeah, it's really strange when you go back and you look at them on the computer versus when you're in the moment and you saw it. And just what the camera captures versus which your eye can capture too. It's hard to explain sometimes but it's just that feeling that's what people talk about. You know why photography is fine art is the the feeling that you can get from a photo and how does that translate to a third person?
Greg Piazza: Can they have the same feeling that you felt in the field with it?
Artist-narrated clip—July 20, 2022
Watch the original video on Instagram (00:30)
Participants: Greg Piazza
Greg Piazza: I take sometimes hundreds of photos on a given trip over three or four days. It's hard to explain sometimes, but it's just that feeling. That's what people talk about. Why photography is fine art is the feeling you can get from a photo and how does that translate into a third person?
Greg Piazza: Can they have the same feeling that you felt in the field with it?
