question the tools (Tim Lewis Photography): 5/11/14

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Inspiring Photographer - Michal Mozolewski

I use the term “Photographer” loosely on this one, because Michal Mozolewski doesn’t take pictures, as far as I know. Instead he starts with images from other people’s work, and then drops them into photoshop and tweaks and layers on bits of textures and brush strokes and paint images to create these very impressionistic images that look like mixed media works on canvas.

It’s a very evocative, gritty, emotional way of creating. There’s a lot of chaos to it. I’d love to sit down and watch him work, there’s probably a lot of throwing stuff up, seeing if it fits, and tossing it if it doesn’t. I kinda think that the fact that he doesn’t shoot his own images gives him an edge. Since he starts with someone else’s picture he has to obscure it in some way, or else it would just be creative theft. So he layers and layers things until it looks completely different than it did.

Very inspiring though. He’s definitely doing it in a way that makes it his own, and his unique voice is coming through very strongly.

Be sure to check out his portfolio at: https://www.behance.net/mozolewski

Inspiring Photographer - Michal Mozolewski

Tree Building Shadow Idea

Just a quick old idea from the notebook. I think people are more affected by where they live and what they see than they often realize. When I lived in Texas I never thought about how the environment was being transformed by people, or if I did think about it, it was that towns and cities were better than fields of scrubgrass and mesquite thorns. But living in Oregon, surrounded by lush forests and rivers… you start to see buildings as eyesores and the tradeoff of natural for urban starts to look like a losing proposition.

So I think that’s where this idea came from. Something pointing out the very temporary state we find ourselves in, trees that become buildings in the blink of an eye. It’s not an uncommon value here, and I think it’s because everyday you see so much natural beauty around. It’s hard not to be moved by it.

Tree Building Shadow Idea

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Water Portrait

The other day I was watching the Gulf Photo Plus competition video for 2014, in which Zack Arias and Sara Lando went head to head to create an image in 20 minutes in front of a live audience. Sara Lando won, by taking a picture of her subject, printing out the photo, and then submerging the print in water and pouring more water onto it, making it look like her subject was drowning/struggling underwater. Great idea, right? (make sure you check out her blog post about it here). It reminds me of this old Irving Penn image, although I’m not sure it’s the same technique.

Anyways, I have been thinking about that process ever since, and exploring ways to tweak it and come up with something different. Today I figured I’d start out by just experimenting with the basic setup. So picture in a tray, three lights to illuminate it, and pour some water on there. I decided quickly that I liked the ripples best, as well as having reflections on the water and shadows cast onto the image, so I went with that. The picture in the tray is a black and white image, I experimented with crosslighting the pouring water with gelled lights, but I didn’t like how it looked against the b/w shot. Here’s a video showing my process:

Pretty simple. As you can see, it would be easy to make it look like it’s someone actually under the water.

I’ve got a few more variations I’m going to experiment with. Food coloring in the water? Color picture in the tray? Float a lot of small objects in the water? Motion blur? Shallower depth of field? Deep DOF? Squirt guns? Distort the image in the tray before printing so that it looks more watery/swimmish? These pictures are all just old practice shots and lighting test images that I got printed at Costco. Actually shooting a picture with this process in mind would create much more interesting images, I’m sure.

It’s interesting to take an idea that you’ve encountered somewhere and then see how far you can go with it. How many iterations of the idea can you come up with? Sit down with a notebook and see what happens. These are a few of my ideas, but there are so many more possibilities, so many more directions to go. The fun thing about trying out ideas like this is along the way you come up with so many more ideas/paths to go down. And you’re learning the whole time, obviously. Good luck, and happy idea hunting!

Water Portrait

Monday, May 12, 2014

An Introduction to Albert Watson

Fall 2010 Feature: ALBERT WATSON from RETV from Resource Magazine on Vimeo.

To be completely honest with you, I didn’t know the name “Albert Watson” until I watched that video up there. But I had seen his work. You probably have too. He made “the” portrait of Steve Jobs. You know the one. The iconic one that was omnipresent after Steve died. This one. It’s one of those pictures that at first glance seems simple. Clean white background, Light above camera left. Looks like a softbox. But then you start to realize the subtleties of it. that dark core on the left side of Jobs’ face. The way the far right side of his face gets darker as you move toward the ear. Masterful. And he’s not calling attention to it, either. He’s doing it without bragging to the viewer. Subtle. Clean. Pro.

So yeah, fair to say, I’m a big fan. Especially now that I know his name. I really like a high degree of control of light. Illuminating the front of someone’s face, but not either side…. amazing. You want to just watch and take notes, it’s so clean.

Check out his website. Fair warning, though… it autoplays music. I won’t hold it against him, though.

An Introduction to Albert Watson

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Jenni Concrete #2

Another shot from my session with Jenni. This one was taken just a few minutes after this one, and in the exact same situation. The difference in how they look is that I processed this one to emphasize the concrete texture and put as much of a color twist on it as I could. So I toned the fabric slightly blue, and warmed up her skin and the chain to make it warmer. I thought it could use even more warm on cool tones, so I then added a bit of a fake light leak to the edges, which I thought added another subtle twist.

Dodging and burning on the concrete really drew out the texture by increasing mid tone contrast, and had an interesting added effect of making the concrete look more three dimensional and less flat. It creates just ever so much more motion in the image. I’m really pleased with how it came out. I think motion is something I need to put more of in my images. What do you think?

Jenni Concrete #2