Category: Concept of Digital Imaging – G4

Pre Production

When I got the assignment brief I looked into famous self portrait photographers that I knew about and studied their works. I picked out what I really liked about their style, their considerations and their workflow.

Oh and lucky for me, as I was walking around kinokuniya, I found these two books on this kind of portraitures (yay). So that was my weekend readings as I worked on this project, too. Also that was probably the most expensive part of this project I spent on. Goodbye 48 dollars. You could’ve gotten me so many McSpicy Meals. 

I decided to explore the concept of the various types of dreams as there is a surrealistic, mystical and mysterious themes in my photographer research. They dwelled on the magical world created in their minds and thus I looked into the various types of dreams.

You can see my write up on my photographers here

After which, I sketched out my concepts and looked into various shot sizes, concepts, props, poses and ways to interpret the emotions.

I pitched my concept and was feedbacked into looking into ways emotions are conveyed through semiotics – such as crushing a paper, breaking something, screaming and what not. I relooked my concept and did a final sketch before searching for my props.

Daiso is bae. And there is where I found a glass jar, balloons and strangely enough a very, very small lamp. I said, heck it – and got it.

Production/Shooting

I decided to use myself as a model for three main reasons.

1.  I couldn’t convince my friends to model of me, and also my friends were confused when I stated that they had to “fly using their core muscles”.

2. I felt I could convey what was in my head best. Explaining to people my concept to others made me mentally exhausted trying to explain the metaphorical meaning behind art. 

3. I am vain. Okay. Not really.

I borrowed the tripod from a friend because mine decided to become a two-legged tripod instead of a three (so thank you, friend), and tidied up my bed from all the mess I made in the past 2 months of laziness.

If you’re wondering why there’s a fan, it was a warm day so I had to look glamorous. 

I used the wifi capability on my camera and used the phone app to snap my self portraits with a timer of 2-seconds. Never have I had to frame my shot, toss my phone aside and pose in two seconds until today.

I am officially a model ready for hire. 

After three hours of tossing, modeling, re-tossing, re-modeling, sighing and groaning. I was done and into post-production.

Post Production

Visual References

For those asking me how I did it, here’s Brooke Shaden explaining. 

Sadness

Visual Reference

Fear

Visual Reference

Disgust

Check out my final work and the explanation here!

 

 

Hello world

I am quite stoked to explore photo manipulation in this project. I decided to look into surrealist self-portraiture photographers.

Brooke Shaden

Brooke Shaden explores darkness and light in people and her portraits are strong in the concept of juxtaposition. She uses herself as majority of her subject as it’s a window into her life. I studied Brooke’s works and identified some common stylistic choices in her work.

“I noticed early on that I loved using the square format, and that has come to define my style. The square format almost reminds me of a window, allowing the viewer to see past a photograph and into a new world,”  said Brooke.

Using a square format in her pictures, it is remnant of medium format cameras and toy cameras such as Holga and Diana. As there is clear that the image is manipulated, it removes this belief that is from the fact that photoshop was not possible in the era of medium format cameras.

Brooke further justifies this by utilising this opportunity in a storytelling aspect as it is in a way, a window to the world of dreams, like stepping through a wardrobe into the world of Narnia.

It is very apparent that Brooke’s works are inspired by surrealism paintings. The texture, the lighting, the wardrobe, the colors echo the styles of paintings. There is a strong sense of make believe with painterly pictures, that we can be imaginative – we could turn grass purple, we could make it snow indoors, or we can even make people levitate. Using little details like texture and colors, we evoke the sense of paintings and it is as though we are looking at a hyper realistic painting when it is in fact, a picture.

Brooke’s works always feature one to two characters. They tell the mood, the story and the emotion of the piece through wardrobe and poses. If it is a mood piece, it is blue or white, if it’s a piece about innocence, they usually be wearing white. This careful attention to detail tells the story through colors of wardrobe and color of the work itself.

Alex Stoddard

Alex Stoddard works are much more darker in narrative/storytelling as compared to that of Brooke Shaden and Kyle Thompson. His work features more muted warm tones and depict darker themes such as fear, death and loss.

His stories echo certain fables such as featuring, characters such as wolves, rabbits or birds. This adds to the surrealistic worlds that he builds by including characters from a make believe story and adds to his whimsical nature to his pictures.

Kyle Thompson

I first saw Kyle Thompson’s photos when he appeared on Yahoo News in 2012. I was intrigued by the world he creates, the tones and how he builds dream-like worlds that are somehow life-like than painterly like Brooke Shaden’s.

Unlike Brooke’s focus on storytelling, his stories are more open-ended and he defines his work as “the collapse of narrative” and “there is no defined storyline with a beginning and end”.

1.  Attention to color

Kyle Thompson’s works feature an element of attention to color. He utilizes split toning to bring a film-like look to his images.

Sometimes he features analogous color harmonies or triadic color harmonies. For example in the image above, he uses purple and orange, and he uses green and blue cold tones.

Unlike Brooke Shaden, Kyle Thompson does not confine himself to a square frame or a full body shot. He exlpores using hands, lips, legs and other parts of his body.  This intrigued me as he expresses emotions and story even without a face or a body language of a character.

 

Conclusion 

All in all, both artists features surreal storytelling by using photo manipulation to bring people into either a dream world or bringing  the impossible into realistic.

They derive inspiration from fables, paintings or just to convey a narrative from the head. Through creative photo manipulation, they build intrigue to pictures that are far beyond the conventional photography.

okay, bye.