Whatever you can imagine is real – Pablo Picasso

Artist Statement

With this piece I wanted to tell a story and evoke a certain feeling portraying a fantasy reflecting myself as a womaniser. The power of staged photography has helped combine the real and surreal together capturing a fragment in time where fantasy meets reality.

Upon receiving this brief I decided to create images based on my fantasies. Portraying myself in a different perspective that might not exactly be true allows me to live in that brief moment when the image is being captured what it is like to feel as a womaniser.

Image Description

The image portrays me as a high class womaniser. In this fantasy i see myself as someone that only dates women of status. To support this fantasy I had my female models to put on jewelry and have their hands all over my face to show that I am desired by them. The pearls and coloured nails on the female hands is to depict that the women desiring me are wealthy and exquisite. The expression on my face is to present that I am subtlety enjoying the attention from these women. To further support this fantasy, wearing a suit has helped to represent sophistication, masculinity and also arrogance. Unbuttoning the inner shirt and revealing some skin leads the viewer to understand that there is some form of lust and sexual desire involved.

The background and cropping of the image is also deliberate. The tight crop of this portrait is to portray a sense of intimacy. Having the hands emerging from the black backdrop hints that whatever that is going on in the image is happening in secret.

Camera Decisions & Technical Aspect

Camera: Canon 5D Mark IV

Lens: Canon 24-70mm F4L

ISO: 1000

Aperture: F4

Shutter Speed: 1/125

Focal Length: 41mm

Shooting on the 24-70 lens has enabled me to have the flexibility to zoom in and out of the setting. The lack of professional lighting has definitely made the surroundings darker than expected thus pushing the ISO to 1000 and shooting at F4 was necessary. Having he focal length at 41mm allowed me to have enough space to work with in post if I wanted to crop the image further.

Before & After

 

Before                                                                                                                   After

Straight of the camera, the image is very flat as it was shot in RAW.

Firstly creating masks for the highlights and shadows helped me separate and add contrast to the image. Thereafter masking the hands and myself i used a tone curve to darken out the background and whatever that was unnecessary in the image. Using the dodge and burn technique i have also deliberately darken and brighten the image in places that would enhance the lighting of the face and suit.

Touching up the skin i used frequency separation and retained the high frequency texture of the skin while gaussian blurring the blemishes to give my skin an overall consistency. Adding to that using the spot healing brush and clone stamp tool i got rid of all the odd speckles and imperfections in my face to make it look flawless.

The nails of my female model’s hands were not painted initially. To show the viewer that they are indeed female hands I went ahead to paint their nails in photoshop which helped the image look more realistic to support that the women were of status.

During the shoot pearls were added onto one of the model’s hands however due to the many reshoots and overlapping of hands some of the pearls eventually transferred over to another model’s hands. I went ahead to clone stamp the pearls instead of removing them to add more interest into the hands.

On top of everything I changed the white balance and made the image colder and also added fade on a overall tone curve adjustment layer creating a dreamy fantasy look.

Artist Reference

Sean Lee’s Two People

Flora Borsi’s Iréel

Some artists that inspired me to create this image are Flora Borsi and local talent Sean Lee. Both series are focused on the human body and how hands are used as a semiotic. Sean Lee’s images inspired me to create a very contrasty feel which gives a more exaggerated overall look. Flora Borsi’s series helped with the art direction of THIRST. I liked the pastel palette of her series however I think the colours would not fit in the context of my image.

Conclusion

This assignment has helped me look deeper into how i can use staged photography and digital image post processing techniques, to further enhance my images and my voice as an artist.