William Toti Fine Art Photography

Welcome To My Blog!

Where I will be sharing my thoughts and observations on fine art prints and photography...

“Art implies control of reality, for reality itself possesses no sense of the aesthetic.
Photography becomes art when certain controls are applied.”

-Ansel Adams

“…and when certain aesthetics are achieved.”

-William Toti

To start with…

Forgive me in advance. I will not commit to blogging regularly. This blog will always be a journey.

Here’s the deal: I won’t waste your time by adding content when I don’t have anything to say. But I hope you do check in periodically to see if there is something new and interesting here. My fine art photography, as with any form of art, will evolve, and as it does I will explain why here. To remain stagnant is to die.

Photographers learn and expand, their

tastes change, and sometimes their styles are modulated by new insights, visions, or viewpoints. How many abstract painters transitioned from cubism to other styles over time? So it is with folks like me.

My current interest is finding that juxtaposition between traditional landscapes and an “in the moment,” journalistic style. The great French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson coined the phrase “the decisive moment” to describe photographs that had captured a moment in time that would never be repeated. My goal is to take the essence of Cartier-Bresson’s concept, and apply it to landscapes. In that regard I hope you find unique, “decisive moments” in each one of my images.

At the time of this writing my style involves big, bold colors. While I love black-and-white, color is my current medium. (I reserve the right to change my mind sometime in the future.) Will this be one of the best places to buy art online? That remains to be seen.

To that end, I seek images that continue to expand my color palette. Today, New York may be found in a hue somewhere between violet and lavender, modulated by the artificial lighting that permeates the city. Tomorrow we may find it in a tone of blues and grays. The Palouse may be mostly green today, then veiled in a pink, misty fog tomorrow. A sunset scene may look orange in Iceland, pinkish in Norway. For me, those colors are more than an element of the image, they become a photographic objective themselves.

I hope you find this interesting. But if you don’t, no worries. I never intended to please everybody. But I do hope that it pleases at least some of you.

The blogs below will be presented from the most recent post on top to earlier blog entries below. You will see an index of past blog entries in the rightmost column. After blog entries reach a certain age, they will be moved to the “archives” file.

More to come in the weeks and months that follow. I hope you find them interesting.

And if you like my posts, please share them by clicking on the appropriate link (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc) here:

Photo trip to Antarctica

by William | Dec 26, 2017 | Field Shoot | 0 Comments

Chinstrap Penguin Climbing Mountain in Antarctica I recently returned from a photo excursion to Antarctica aboard the Research Vessel Ushuaia. This was an incredibly difficult and somewhat dangerous due to high seas in the Drake Passage. I may expound on the trip a...

« Older Entries

Behind the Image: Arabian Colt Fleeting Dust Storm and the Pyramids of Giza

by William | Jul 14, 2017 | Behind the Image | 0 Comments

Arabian Colt Fleeing Dust Storm ’d like to be able to tell you that I had planned this particular shot for months. That’s the way it is with most of my images. But the truth is that for this particular image I got lucky....

Do You Use Photoshop?

by William | Jul 10, 2017 | Field Shoot | 1 Comment

Manhattan Skyline at Dusk his post may seem like a bit of a stream of consciousness. Stay with me, there is a method to my madness. It’s a bit of a tutorial for non-photographers. Trained photographers can go on to the next...

Behind the Image: A Photographer’s Self-Portrait Against the Milky Way

by William | Jul 7, 2017 | Behind the Image | 0 Comments

A Photographer's Self-Portrait t was about 2 in the morning, I was in the ghost town of Bodie, California, and I had been waiting for hours for the Milky Way to get in exactly the right position over this old barn. I wanted...

How Fine Art Photography is Priced

by William | Jun 30, 2017 | General | 0 Comments

Castel Sant'Angelo and Tiber River at Night lot of people have wondered why a fine art print can seem so expensive. After all, it’s just a picture, right? There are many ways to answer this question. The first method of...

Chasing the Decisive Moment in Fine Art Photography: An Exhibition

by William | Jun 23, 2017 | General | 0 Comments

Manarola at Sunrise n July 7th my fine art photography exhibition begins at the Cooley Gallery in Leesburg, Virginia. The focus of the exhibition will be “Chasing the Decisive Moment in Fine Art Photography. Six of my...

How to Buy Fine Art Photography

by William | Jun 16, 2017 | General | 0 Comments

We'lll Always Have Paris Sometimes I'm asked what the best way is to purchase fine art photography. As one who sells his art online, my default answer should be obvious, you should buy art online. But there are two aspects to this answer: - How physically to...