Fingerprint collaboration with Maria
These are the first edits of the fingerprint inspired curve
body paint. I really like the results as I believe I achieved an elegant and classy
finish with my editing style. I experimented with lots of different techniques surrounding
colour as it was interesting to see the difference the warmth and monochromatic
black and white colours made to the overall effect of the photo. While painting
Maria I didn't have an accurate plan as to how to I would paint the lines onto
her skin. I let my imagination run wild and just followed her natural curves as
best I could. The decision to only paint half her body was an on the spot addition
to the project because I realised that I wouldn't be able to achieve the symmetry
that I would have wanted. I made the decision to paint a sharp line straight
down the middle of her body and to only paint the left-hand side.
In these first standing poses I love how the
editing makes it the body look doll like. You can really see the stark contrast
between each side of the body. I particularly like how the lines abstract and
somewhat help the left-hand side of the body blend into the background. One
regret I have is that I forgot to paint the line continuing all the way up into
her chin. On one hand the paint transforms only her body and leaves the head which
maintains the human form but for the effect that I wanted to achieve, which was
more abstract, I feel I should have continued that division line down the
middle all the way up her neck and under her chin. When it comes to editing, I
must admit that I have edited most of the photos too dark. This is something
that I struggle with due to my surrounding conditions and my general taste for darker
photos. I'm learning too find the happy medium between too dark and just dark
enough.
Here is a link to my timelapse painting the stripes onto Maria; I have also included the timelapses of me braiding her hair, and projecting stripes onto her body.
There's something just so blunt and yet elegant about the
pose she’s standing in. It's just full frontal, relaxed, and elongated due to
her relaxing her head backwards, thus stretching out her neck and removing the
face. While editing, I chose to warm the skin tones as I felt this made a
brighter contrast to the dark background. Looking back at my editing there's a
few things I would change. In a second round of editing for example I may
change the background for it to be just solid black. Due to the lighting
choices we made you can see where the floor joins the wall; this grounds the
photo and removes the somewhat abstract Avant Garde style of the image.
This next trio of photos are something I was just experimenting with as I wasn't sure how they would turn out. I initially believed that my black background would be the crispest and eye catching which I believe to be my style, but I wanted to experiment with different ways of editing things and one way of doing that was by inverting the colours. I must admit, the third photo edit happened completely accidentally, and I had no idea what I had done to create that effect. Initially I didn't like the outcome but as I looked at it more, I enjoyed the blurriness and somewhat more fragmented vision of the body. The lines that I have painted on the body appear somewhat transparent which gives her a hollow effect turning her into a doll. I really like how this last photo turned out, if I were to go back and edit these again I would be aiming to achieve the same effect, and I would have to work hard to try and figure out how I made the initial mistake.
Since having completed this photo shoot, I have realised why
I want to paint the nude body. I want to portray the body in a way that I feel
is beautiful, but I don't necessarily want to associate a personality to the
body as I see it merely as a canvas. By doing this I invite the viewer to look
at my creations as art and therefore change the sexual way that we are conditioned
to look at the naked body by society. In this next photo I feel I lose the
purpose of why I painted this body. By not painting on the face I made an
artistic decision in that moment that changed the overall composition. This is
something I hadn’t accounted for during the shoot. In my opinion, it would have
been more successful had I painted half of Maria’s face as it would have
created a seamless blend in the overall composition. I feel the contrast is too
strong between the blank skin that's left on her face and the painted lines on
the arm that's covering her face. I want her face to blend in with the lines and
it sticks out too much, which takes away from the image, for me. Also, I feel
this image is too dark and I've lost the brightness in the skin. I want to
learn more about exposing photos correctly to achieve the effect I want. I'm
practising capturing photos in different exposures to achieve the effect I want
I'm looking for. I have more research to do in this topic.
These are more photos that I edited too dark. I was more focused on removing the head to see if it created the effect that I was trying to achieve. Other than the image being too dark I did like the effect that removing the head had on the image. It depersonalises the body immediately and creates an abstract form on the black rectangle. With these photos I transformed the background to look 2D and just crisp black and I am leaning towards that as a series as well as maybe a more hollow shape look.
With these close ups I like the curve of the back being accentuated by the body paint. The angular focal point of the shots is successful but maybe the crop is wrong. The left side of the photo is very busy when I reflect on it and I wonder if that is affecting the quality of the final photo.
These close ups that include the face are probably my least favourite out of the shoot because they do not bring any emotion to me when I look back at them. I did not achieve anything in these shots as I was not confident in my artistic direction. I was very wobbly when it came to directing Maria into positions that I wanted. I also think this was a path we explored but chose to abandon as I hadn't painted her face and the contrast between her face and neck was not crisp enough to bring any more to the portrait.
These poses were an attempt to create a fingerprint shape by contorting the body in a specific way. Creating the illusion of the lines that are not touching at all, being linked by your imagination and creating a unique fingerprint in that image.
When experimenting with other ways to edit this shoot I discovered the "invert colours" button. I absolutely loved the results as the are much more abstract than the originals. I would like to look into creating more abstract (potentially avant garde) photography with the body.
A little pop art inspired experiment which came out quite successful. The defining characteristics of the body are not captured in this angle and therefore we are left with an abstract shape that works well in all the primary colours.
#studioculture2
Comments
Post a Comment