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• Welcome to Melissa Schelling Photographs, Writing and Editorial Photography •
• Featuring: Dogs, Castles, and Digitally Enhanced Color •
• See Prelude section for black and white kid photographs, selective focus and motion •
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From the first time I held a camera, I have used photographs to touch my feelings, my memories, my loves. The camera is my ticket to slip into the action and become a participant in the events around me. When I photograph my dogs, I become one of them, moving with their pace, feeling their energy. In a medieval castle, I imagine how it felt to live in the 13th century, and photograph my surroundings as a visitor from the past. I make sequences of photographs to tell a story about the passage of time or an emotion, like a still from a movie. By adding motion and selective focus, I use the camera to stretch the boundaries of a still photograph and show a picture that our eye doesn't see. I photograph color for color's sake, to find every color within one frame, and make color the object instead of the coating on a photograph. As I did when making the tiny icons on this site, I photograph to strip away extraneous detail, to come face to face with the true meaning of an image, simplified and hiding behind nothing.