The printers are warming up and it's getting to be that time! I'll be sending my book in for printing within the next 2 weeks, so the crunch has begun to get all the details in place. After spending many continuous hours fiddling with color corrections and lighting adjustments, I feel that my photos are starting to reach a level of cohesion that will work really well within my book. Whether or not this is the final stage before making final prints, I'll have to see in the future.
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| Cover Photo © Hillary Rogers |
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| Caligula © Hillary Rogers |
After my one-on-one critique with our guest lecturer,
Nick Olson, I feel that my photo series makes sense but could still do with some refinement. He suggested that I experiment a little further with my figural-focused works and push the saturation down even further within the portraitesque pieces. I feel that at this point I really need to decide what place the figure studies have within my body of work and within the book before I go ahead and sent the book in to print. In addition to all the color correction I've been able to complete, I've decided on text layouts and am in the process of adding an appendix that includes brief descriptions of the characters featured. At this moment, I'm getting a lot of satisfaction from the personalities I'm able to bring out through the portraits and will focus on those for the book. I'll still continue to shoot both portraits and strictly physical forms and decide in time which pieces will make it to my senior exhibition in May.
I also agree with Olson's idea that you should expand on the figural portraits because they are so striking and mysterious, as they exclude the face of the models. This anonymity adds to the work really well, and leaves it open to interpretation for the viewers to decide what type of personality each individual has.
ReplyDeleteI think your Photoshop editing skills are quite impressive, and you have come a long way in making all the photographs look cohesive. However, just as Olson suggested, perhaps you should also experiment more with the skin tones for some of the photographs, to make them look more "marble" and statue-like as you want them to be.
I agree with Anam - there is something rather mysterious about the faceless, statuesque figures and poses, along with some interesting references to the limbless, incomplete nature to actual ancient pieces. I really like the way the poses you chose mimic famous Roman artworks, and the way you use lighting is very powerful. I have to say I agree with Olson on the saturation idea as well, given that you may be able to push that to a point where the images are not quite real or surreal, but make the viewer unsure whether they are seeing a statue or an actual human being. Playing with that dynamic of viewer perception could be an intriguing focus to add as well.
ReplyDeleteExperimenting with the text now will be helpful to developing your book. Your artistic development will be pushed by making a draft and showing it to outsiders for reaction to determine whether your ideas are reading. Visually, the images and design are catching. Fingers crossed Blurb will do a good job with the printing. Your design with the use of black and subtle flesh tones would be a challenge to even the best off-set lithography printers! Have you tried printing some of the images on 17x22 to get a sense of their impact on a larger scale?
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