Perceptions
A Fine Art Photographic Project
The structural idea that I based this series on was the concept that the colours we perceive as red, green and blue may not necessarily be the same colours as the person sitting next to you.
The second section to the idea is the emotional connection to colour. Research has shown that the difference in the way we each perceive colour doesn't change the emotional response our bodies have to that form of light. Regardless of whether you see the sky as my blue or my red, its shorter wavelengths tend to make us calm, contrasting that of longer wavelengths such as yellow, orange and red as these tend to make us more alert.
This leads into the photography itself and how I have interpreted those ideas.
I planned it so that most of the frame would be empty and desolate in order to focus the viewer's eye towards this "portal into another world" where a lone figure seems to be stuck, trapped and unaware of the viewer's presence. He struggles, trying to move and understand what has happened to him, how he arrived in this situation and what he can do about it.
In the first set of photographs, we see clarity of the figure, although distorted and clearly in some sort of broken state. This gives the viewer a base on which to interpret the other images, which become more abstract and less clear, alluding to how not everyone is able to see through the eyes of everyone and cannot possibly understand and see everything. As the photographic sets progress we see segregation of colours into sets, hinting at the idea that we see what the people around us want/allow us to see, understand and interpret.
Some of the images are tough to look at, both because it is difficult to form ideas of what is actually happening. In seeing the subtle details hidden in each and every single image that reveals a new character, detail or emotion to the images we begin to understand the effort it takes to understand others. There are times when the images seem to blur into one another and other times when there is a clear divide. This alludes to how we can see when there are clear definite parameters in life and understanding it, whilest at other times we may not know how or when to stop, understand and listen.
There is also a progression of relative clarity into distortion and then back into clarity, hinting at the idea that perceptions can become distorted in the eyes and minds of people who do not fully understand or cannot see what the other person is able to see.
This project was created in response to Adobe's ADAA competition for the Fine Arts Photographys catagory using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom as tools to help me fullly expressive my creative expression.
The Process
I set up my tripod with my camera and a remote trigger release so they were opposite the white wall where I had mounted my mirror and shifted the positioning untill I achieved the compotion I was looking for. I then experimented with different lighting conditions and eventually settled on a single light angled upwards, almost directly below the mirror to cast a shadow upwards as well as to reveal all the imperfections in the mirror itself.
I also had a couple overhead lights that were built into the ceiling and I angled those to point at the wall opposite the mirror where I would be standing.
Then I began experimenting with shutter speed, ISO and aperture to achieve the effect I was after. Once I had settled on the settings, I began to play out a story I had created for the character, which was to be confused and unsetteld at first and then to evolve into panic, which would then subside into acceptence of the sitution.
After I had taken enough photos for me to select down the best 9, I then took the images into lightroom where I did a basic edit on which all the different edits would be based off of. I then set the tone curve to edit the RGB curve and each separate primary colour. This took a lot of experimentation, trial and error and patience as the results can vary drastically and I had to throw out a few ideas because they simply didn't work.
I ended up inverting, desaturating and adjusting many settings inside the tone curve, which is an exeptionally powerful tool, and through that I have learnt a great deal. Once I was happy with an edit, I then used the sync funtion to apply the same edit to each of the 9 photos and exported them over 70 times in unique sets.
Once this part was done, I imported the photos into Photoshop where I then complied them into the sets that you see now, exported them in Tiff and the highest quality jpeg. Tiff so I can go back and change things since there will still be different layers and jpeg in order to upload the sets more easily.
If you want to see some of my other photography then head over to my website here http://gvbaard.wixsite.com/gb-photo
