Art, Art, Art

Although I am not done with this project to submit to Soho Gallery on May 12th, I have been experimenting with several things on these images.

The first thing that I started thinking about was STORYTELLING... I had my Underground Ghosts Theme already, but the images seemed a little disjointed. So, I started putting those images together and telling a story through a sequence. Clearly my film influences were starting to act upon me without me trying.

Here is an image that I call 'Locked', What story do you see?

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I then did a composition of an image that I had worked on previoiusly... and made it really Angel Wings by mirroring. I chose not to tweak each wing individually, but to allow for the symmetry to tell a story of perfection. Maybe they are the perfect Angel Wings that fell off from the Fallen Angel when it went Underground.

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This other image is Solitude, and for me it reflects how lonely we can be in NYC, and how technology is further isolating us from our surroundings!

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I feel like this work is pushing me to think in different ways. Of course outside of the headshot world, but also in terms of presentation of the work. A more surreal, painterly look for images captured in NYC. Does all this experimentation mean it is art? That is something that I can't answer for you, but for me, it is giving me a different perspective of the world around me, and that to me is interesting.

FYI: All the zoom effects were done in camera, not in Post. Color correction and lens effects were done in Photoshop with AlienSkin Exposure 7

Cross Processing People!

Saw a tutorial by Joey L and started experimenting with some cross processing techniques. The image felt special because the US flag had a fluid quality that blended into the windows. Although there was something there, the image was not popping, so I decided to try Joey's technique on this image.

Three Photoshop layers changed this image radically. 

I added a curves layer to increase contrast. 

I then added another layer to play with the different color levels in the image, to achieve a look that looked interesting to me. 

And here comes the cream, to finalize it, I added a Channel Mixer layer, and played with the sliders. Hint: It is important that the values of the sliders you change always add up to 100%.

And here is the cherry on the cake! Play with the opacity slider and follow your instinct. You will see the cross processed look take place in front of you.

What I love about this approach, is that images have a degree of color and luma information that you can tweak at different stages of the process. Give it a try an let me know what you think.

Here are the before and after images.

Before 

After