It’s always great when I get a chance to reconnect with Jim. We worked through a range of creative scenarios in this shoot. I shot his reflection with a broken mirror. I shot through a distressed air filter. I played with mylar. It was my first time splattering water onto the mylar, and found that the warped nature of the material in addition to the water added a nice graphic novel-look to the images. These techniques are all part of a new video series I’m currently working on, titled The Creative Portrait. Keep an eye out for the first episode, dropping soon!
Read MorePsychedelic Fever Dream
I recently picked up some prismatic window film, which is both reflective and transparent. I experimented with shooting the warped reflections on the surface and then moved on to shooting through it while lighting the model from behind. After going at it a few different ways I decided to start adding layers of texture to it by crinkling the film, splattering water drops on it, and layering up my fingerprints. The best thing about it? It’s portable, rolling up into a small tube…
Read MoreFinding Inspiration at the Hardware Store
Over the past year I’ve been pushing my images into more abstract, painterly directions. As digital images seem to be moving into a realm of hyperrealism, I find myself longing for gritty tangibility. Since I have always more in the get-it-in-camera camp, I have been experimenting with a range of techniques and materials to try and achieve the look I’m after. I started off this past spring by adding substances such as coconut oil and honey to glass and then shooting through it. After that I moved on to shooting with imperfect, fungus-covered lenses to get a hazy, dreamlike quality. Next I tried my hand at capturing distorted reflections in mylar. Most recently I explored what broken mirrors can add to an image.
All these experiments have worked together to inform my process in terms of optimal focal length, aperture, and light quality/direction when working with multiple planes, layers, and reflections. Now that I better understand how to manipulate these mediums I can walk through a hardware store, for example, and visualize how certain materials would look when photographed and lit a certain way, which is exactly what I did last week…
Read MoreDreams Are Like Water
I’ve been experimenting with photographing reflections in mylar for four shoots now, and I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. In order to get a good range of movement in the mylar (which translates to warped reflections), I set up an oscillating fan nearby, and turned it on to the lowest setting. The effect ranges from minimal to so abstract that you can’t even tell what you’re looking at, so there’s a bit of luck involved. Every time the fan would pass over the mylar, it would ripple like pond water after a rock was tossed in, so I basically shot like hell and hoped for something good.
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