For the past 3 years I've been selling my work as limited edition fine art digital prints in editions of ten only from a variety of on-line galleries, and I enjoy running my own on-line portfolio of personal work at www.pixelsoup.biz where I try to show recent work and past works together in a banner-free, image-rich site. I've exhibited widely throughout the UK and had work featured in many publications, including the British Journal of Photography (BJP) in November 2000.

In 2001 I was awarded first prize in the Kentmere Awards (digital section) and in 2002 I was a merit-awarded finalist in the London Photographic Awards (LPA.5) for a digital image "Come And Be My Baby". I've also recently exhibited at the Pixxelspoint International Computer Art Festival in Nova Gorica, and at the International Open Image showcase at the Deluxe Gallery, London.

My work is strongly influenced by surrealists, sci-fi art, Fuel, Hipgnosis, the styles and traditions of 70's & 80's album cover art, 90's advertising, Irving Penn, Francis Bacon, and modern visual culture generally.

Contact details:
55 Caernarvon Rd, Norwich, Norfolk NR2 3HZ, United Kingdom
telephone (01603) 610753
email: jeremywebb.photo@virgin.net

UPDATE: October 2005

AVA Publishing have recently produced 'Creative Vision' a new book by Guest Photographer Jeremy Webb.

"Creative Vision aims to bridge the creative divide between progressive digital image creation and traditional photographic concerns. The emphasis is on creativity, inspiration and encouraging experimentation, rather than techniques, rules or safe strolls down well trodded paths".

Examples of photography and creative vision strategies from Jeremy's book are shown below, but first, and exclusive to Digital-Fotofusion Gallery, Jeremy outlines his ideas about what creative vision is, and provides background information about the books production over the last 12 months.

"Creative Vision is about seeing rather than merely looking, about developing an intensely artistic awareness which is uniquely personal and undiluted, original, uncompromised, and set free. It's about not giving in to negative voices which say " don't be daft, that would never work", or "what would so-and-so think". It's about playful experimentation in a creative laboratory, generating self-confidence, and self-awareness so that a fulfilling and highly productive visual artist can really reach their true potential. If all this sounds llike a regurgitated sales conference manual - don't worry. Although the business of Creativity is a serious one, the book hopefully contains many lighthearted moments in the captions, anecdotes, and images which flow over 192 pages. I spent the best part of a year researching this book to eventually find 44 contributing photographers (including yours truly!) whose work ranges from very traditional and beautifully crafted film-based photography, to cutting-edge digital photographers who have put film well behind them many years ago, or who are able to fluidly integrate the two disciplines together. All of the contributors however, share one thing in common - a unique self-confidence in their own creativity and artistic vision".

"Some of the research is based on my own experience of teaching, both for adult education, and within further education colleges. The big problem with digital art-based photography to my mind, is that students become intoxicated with the ease with which special effects can be applied and start to take short cuts by creating imagery which is effects-driven with the source image coming a poor second. The end result is often derivative and cliched. Creative Vision I would argue, starts from within. With the personality, emotional landscape, memories, influences - all the internal nuts & bolts which make up YOU, the person, the creator. Photoshop, and digital image editing generally, is still just another tool in the visual artists toolbox. An understanding and appreciation of how and when to use it is of paramount importance. The best digital art of this kind is almost always ideas-driven, displays a "light touch" or adds significantly to the communicative power of the image. No amount of photoshop wizardry, however spellbinding, will rescue a poor source image if the creator simply wishes to dazzle the viewer".

"Over the course of the book I try to overturn assumptions, tease out the threads of creative productivity and challenge artists to work in different ways, to imagine the unimaginable, or to attempt forms of visual communication previously untried in order to "open up" the channels through which creativity and productivity can flow. I've even attempted to define the impossible; What Makes a "good" image? More importantly, I've tried to show an eclectic range of work and to try to create a book which is "lavish" and inspiring visually".

"It was fascinating to uncover a variety of styles and undercurrents from photographers around the world - those that enjoy all the messy chemicals of the darkroom, those that find a natural ease with pixels, all under the umbrella term of Photographic Art. There's even a guy who builds mouth-sized pinhole cameras and shoots some wickedly funny images through his teeth! Only true dedication to the medium takes a photographer to these extremes and his images were an essential antidote to some of the more earnest (but beautiful, nonetheless) landscapes which our american cousins are so fond of. The cover features an image which many will recognise by Misha Gordin, and it's interesting to note that while it may have the look and feel of a digital composite, the image was actually created entirely within a traditional darkroom".

"Creating this book truly was a labour of love, and the publishers AVA Publishing have been immensely supportive in assisting its journey from concept to actuality in the world of photography publishing, and immensely brave in allowing me to attempt such a personal project. I'm delighted to have over 60 of my own images featured, but I feel that in the end its the pictures themselves which really illustrate the concept of Creative Vision and I hope that readers will be as inspired as I was to soak up such a wealth of stunning contemporary photography. 192 pages/146 images/10 chapters/1 great feast for the eyeballs (... now theres an interesting image...)". Jeremy Webb, October 2005

Creative Vision Contents:
Introduction
How to get the most out of this book
Chapter 1 What is Creative Vision?
Chapter 2 Mixing Film with Digital
Chapter 3 Cameraless Photo-Art
Chapter 4 Montage
Chapter 5 Distressing Films and Papers
Chapter 6 Specialist Films and Processing
Chapter 7 The Inner World
Chapter 8 The Outer World
Chapter 9 Extending Traditional Genres and Styles
Chapter 10 Innovative Presentation of Work
180_Conclusion
Appendix

Creative Vision Strategies

Overturn expectations
Nothing remarkable here, just the creative photographers ability tocommemorate the everyday as the exceptional, or the exceptional as the mundane. Applying alternative contexts to iconic subjects in this way can stop your audience in their tracks, and allow them to consider your subjects in a completely new light. In the end, can we really ask for much more from photography?

Juxtapose opposites
The pastel with the pop art, the quiet with the loud, the clean with the dirty, images which place two opposing themes within four sides of the frame often leave an arresting feeling akin to a visual xitchx that needs scratching.

Expose incongruity
Most of us from time to time (and some of us for most of the time), will consider the world to be a pretty mundane and predictable place. Incongruity is where the unexpected or uninvited appears in an unlikely or unsympathetic setting. Such moments always stick out and remind us what it is like to be alive and sentient in a world full of genuine surprises.

Simplify/complicate
Simplicity can smack us in the face and leave no room for misinterpretation, the opposite approach can impart a pleasing imprecision, a teasing ambiguity that may hold our attention longer than any immediate hit.

Mix your media
Resist the temptation to sneer at the idea that paint, crayon, acetate overlays, and other artistic materials might not be useful to your practice. The point is not to experiment for the sake of technique, but an open-minded approach to experimentation like this can reveal previously unarticulated ideas.

Reveal/hide
We live in an age of instant gratification. We're expected to have opinions on everything. We expect a return for our efforts. The activity of looking at photographs raises many of these issues. Photography can shout and scream at you, or it can purr softly in the corner where only the quiet child will notice its there. Be bold not bolshy, or be enigmatic, not exposed.

AAF - Actively Avoid Fashion Fashions come and go and every dog, as they say, has its day. Just because a gallery displays a transient vogue for huge, realist documentary photographs doesn't mean something new wonxt be required in the future. Don't be seduced by fashions. Explore the components of these genres to understand their appeal, then subvert them and appropriate their language in order to offer something fresh, not dish up the same.

Recycle everything
Those test strips or that scratched negative could provide you with something useful. A textured overlay, a non-specific background to scan in and use later, a chemical spill that holds a fascinating abstract in it yet to be discovered.

Mistakes present new opportunities
In other words, embrace failure as a positive experience. This one can be hard to swallow when a whole dayxs shoot is accidentally exposed. Less extreme disasters, however, can present us with alternative outcomes which could form the basis for further work.

Challenge every rule
Where do the rules come from? Who says this or that is so? The art world is full of rules. Some are very formal, such as the rules on composition laid down in rigid Victorian fashion by painters such as Henry Peach Robinson. While others trickle down informally from positions of cultural power, permeate educational institutions, and become stifling straightjackets that can directly and profoundly affect the course of an artists practice.

Use a notebook
Memory can't be relied upon when one is preoccupied with the business of creation. Films have different characteristics – which one suits your aims? You create a magnificent digital abstract: What were the stages you took in Photoshop now that the history palette is wiped clean? Jot down ideas as and when they occur.

Give yourself doodling time
Time to fiddle about absent-mindedly is a gift. Get used to the idea of experimenting without aims or outcomes in mind, purely for the fun of it.

Develop and trust your intuition not technology
Intuition can only flourish once technology is mastered, or at least until the manual and functional operations of a camera are second nature to you. The formidable Albert Watson once remonstrated with Photography Monthly's Terry Hope in an interview: 'Look at this camera here'. Itxs the same camera thats been sitting around here since 1978, its old, its worn, its held together with Gaffa tape...You should know everything there is to know about a camera until you can virtually use it in your sleep. That doesn't make you a teccy: it just means that you're fluent. Today, I wonder if we're as fluent with our cameras as we are with our mobile phones?

Change your brainwaves
If you get stuck, take a break, have a shower, do some puzzles, allow your subconscious some time to marinate the issue before returning to it refreshed. Just don't sit there, head in hands, creating negativity. The raw materials lie right under your nose. Or to put it another way, familiarity breeds contempt. Photographers are constantly looking for the bright, shiny, exotic, next best thing, but tend to ignore subjects closest to them: their lifestyles, interests, environments, which are often overlooked. Is a fish aware of the water within which it swims?

Let your interests and emotions drive your creativity
Music, literature, poetry etc. all celebrate the world of meaning, values, emotions and life. For the expressive artist, it helps to develop a kind of photo-sensitive synaesthesia, seeing sounds and smells, creating work in response to a piece of music, illustrating a short story, and so on.

Creative Vision text and images copyright AVA Publishing (2005) and Jeremy Webb.

Creative Vision is available now from all good bookshops, priced £24.95

AVA Publishing: www.avabooks.com.sg/avauk/books.html
Email: enquiries@avabooks.co.uk

Photographs on this page by:
Misha Gordin (Creative Vision cover page)
Jeremy Webb
Floris Andrea
Todd Kurtzman