Clayton Smalley

By Elizabeth Piseczny

-I came upon Clayton Smalley’s work completely by chance, thanks to modern technology.

I was wasting time on the internet, on Blogger.com, clicking through random blogs, and one caught my eye. It had a simple layout, photographs on a plain black background. But the photos looked familiar. With a quick scroll, I realized that’s because they were. By some strange coincidence, I had found the website of an amateur photographer who lives in Plattsburgh. I guess it’s a small world after all.

Smalley, a twenty-four year old certified nurse’s aid, had set up the site to showcase the product of his hobby-- digital photography.

Acting partly as a sort of portfolio and partly as a way to share the one photograph out of many that met his standards, Smalley enjoys that there’s no pressure with his blog, www.claytonsmalley.com. “I just throw my pictures up there,” he says.

As a teen, he was involved in art, but never really found his niche, Smalley says over the phone during an hour long interview. With seemingly no need to stop for breath, Smalley described how he found his way into art, starting with pen and ink drawings of local Plattsburgh buildings. With no art training, he just “picked up a sharpie one day, and doing some goofy strokes of a street, I thought, ‘This is fun,’” he explains.

Soon, Smalley was doing sketches of many buildings downtown, but one drawing, of the Cornerstone Bookstore on Margaret Street, seems to be the starting point for Smalley’s career as an artist.

“They liked it so much that, several months later, I sold them the rights to use on it as a postcard,” he comments about his first experience selling his work.

Despite the opportunity to make money, Smalley insists that art is strictly a hobby for him. His day job provides him with enough money to live comfortably and pursue his hobbies. Working as a nurse’s aid at CVPH Medical Center, Smalley helps the elderly with their daily activities, like getting dressed for the day.

“I really enjoy it, helping out people,” he says. While many people pursue a hobby to get away from the mundane drivel of their jobs, in Smalley’s voice, there is a hint of satisfaction as he talks about working. Simply, he explains, “I decided I’d never take a job I wouldn’t do for free and once I decided that, it’s all been vacation.”

Smalley expects a few of his pieces to sell at an exhibit at the Coffee Camp that will last for the next few weeks, but he isn’t relying on that for much, maybe just enough to cover the cost of printing and framing.

“I’m not doing the starving artist thing where I have to produce art and sell it” he reasons, “Because if I have to do that, there’s a sense of desperation in the artwork, I think.”

Eventually, Smalley made the transition from pen and ink to a cheap point-and-shoot camera. He explains the transition with an almost practical manner.

“I drew every place I wanted to in Plattsburgh, so I stopped drawing. I know that I still can draw and I will sometime eventually,” he says.

The optimism and easy-go-lucky attitude Smalley has translates into his artwork. As I glanced at his work the first time, my eye didn’t snag on anything. You’ll find no gruesome battle scenes, no sweaty sports photography, no images of anything painful. The objects captured in his photographs seem… perfect.

Many of Smalley’s photographs are landscapes, vibrant suns setting on the silhouettes of tall, straggly trees. Each sunset shines vividly, melting over the horizon like rainbow sherbet, as gorgeous shades of deep blue descend on the trees. Every hue seemed saturated with color. Even images of foggy fields shine with an ethereal light.

Every now and then, a black and white image occurs, but almost suspiciously absent are people. Smalley does not show many of his portraits on his website.

His reasoning is simple: Besides not fitting with the theme of his blog, he doesn’t post portraits because high quality images are easy to steal, and people will take photos of themselves for their own use, so why bother?

“I do (take portraits), but I never put them on my website. I don’t know why. I take tons of photos of my friends,” he says. “If you give away large resolutions photos online, anyone can just take them and print them off as their own.”

He opts, instead, for Facebook as an easy way to share the images he snaps of his friends, who have grown accustomed to the camera Smalley always keeps “on his shoulder,” he says.

But there is something else that sets Smalley apart from many other photographers.

He has no problem admitting that he “shamelessly Photoshops” his images.

“People think Photoshop is a bad word,” he says. “I don’t care. Photoshop is a tool to make a photo that much more beautiful.“

But he also counters himself, saying, “It doesn’t make a photo great; it has to be good to begin with… I'll adjust the contrast, just for fun. The real thing is the camera, going out and finding things and looking at it from a different angle than other people might. It all comes down to, really, the physical act of having the camera and snapping the shutter.”

Smalley’s work is not restricted, not by his lack of formal photography training, nor by film and chemicals. He uses the technology available to him (a more advanced SLR camera replaced his simple point-and-shoot years ago) to enhance the things captured in his viewfinder, and does so unabashedly.

With all the conveniences of a computer, Smalley believes, “That’s the great thing about digital today, you can take 10 thousand photos in a couple years and it doesn’t cost you anything.”

Still, he warns, “It’s not a hobby you can throw money at and be great.” Smalley represents a new kind of artist-- the every man. With the internet as a resource, anybody can try their hand (or eye) at photography.