Materialism is the only form of distraction from true bliss – Douglas Horton

Artist Statement

In a society where your credibility is deemed by ink on a certificate, it is tough not to be a guilty of materialism. Like zombies going through motion we are numbed and can only feel joy through possession of material items. What most of us fail to realise is that everything will eventually fade away and turn to dust.

In this image I wanted to portray how I am a victim of materialism and that I am lost in this never ending sea of always chasing happiness through the possession of physical items, be it the latest clothing trends, or the coolest tech gear in the market.

Hong Kong being one of the busiest and densest Asian city in our region seemed fit for this assignment. Hong Kong is known for being similar to Singapore in many ways. On my trip there I realised that life in Hong Kong was extremely fast paced and often times employees have to work overtime and are not even getting reimbursed for their extra efforts. The people in Hong Kong remind me of myself which inspired me to create this composite, that I am always constantly working and chasing happiness through material things such as money.

Art Direction

The idea of an hourglass is the focus of my project. I wanted to show that it is only a matter of time before everything in the world will fade away. Thus metaphorically using the sand to represent time and the inverted city to show that material items are just idealised sand ticking away.

The human subject portrays my view on how in today’s society even human beings are perceived as tools and will one day eventually be disposed when we become of no more use to anyone.

Before & After

 

Technical Decisions

The original background layer of this image is the city landscape of Hong Kong.

Shot from the famous Lion’s Rock Peak in Hong Kong it used a 70-200 lens to capture the amazing cityscape below me. Using a focal length of 85mm I was able to get a tight crop onto the busy city making my focus of the image the tallest building in Hong Kong; The International Commerce Centre.

When i shot this photo it was approaching blue hour and i was running out of light thus i had to use an aperture of f5.6 to maintain a consistent clarity throughout the image and not sacrifice anything to be out of focus. As it was super windy and cold up in the mountains i tried my best to shoot as slow as i could while maintaining sharpness in the image. Fortunately my lens has in built image stabilisation thus i was able to get away with shooting at 1/100 with a combination of ISO 640 and still maintain sharpness in throughout the photo.

The other two images that make up the composite of the final image were taken from google. Some of the challenges i faced while making this composite was trying to blend everything together to make it seem like one seamless photo even though it was obviously photoshopped.

First i blended the skies of the city and the desert together by using a soft brush and fortunately enough the original photo of the city was also a little orange thus the skies blended seamlessly. Next I added an overall orange colour fill to maintain a consistent hue throughout the image with the addition of playing with the curves.

Adding the human in was the tough part. Finding a subject that was standing/walking in a position that expressed restlessness was not easy. Fortunately i found one image with a subject walking in the desert. I masked out the entire background of the image with the human in it and played around with curves, highlights and shadows to blend the subject into the desert background.

Artist References

Erik Johansson

Erik Johansson’s photos inspired me to create something that plays around with landscape photo manipulation. He conveys his message through the extensive manipulations of the environment and successfully conveys his message through unfamiliar perspectives of a familiar landscape.

Ricarddo Bognali

Ricarddo Bognali’s images are always centred around human subjects placed in contrasting backgrounds. A lot of these subjects don’t naturally belong in their environment that is portrayed in his works. This gave me inspiration to also include a human subject to further show the contrast of the environment that is set in the composite.

Conclusion

This assignment has allowed me to explore and put to use what i have learnt through the past weeks of digital imaging. The creative process was really fun even though i struggled to find images that fit together in the idea that i wanted to carry out. Overall it was a good learning experience and I will definitely apply these skills in my future week be it professionally or for fun.