067: First Light of Life

First Light of Life, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Flying Feet

Growing is like flying, a long, slow movement towards the sun. This shot is straight out of the camera, taken at dawn with still a lot of blue in the light. It took quite a few attempts to get it right, especially as we were using the timer and had little time to get into position.

Most of my effort went into the planning of the shot, it was Ania's decision to shoot in the morning, and she did almost all the work in making it a reality - all I had to do was lie back on the bed while she repeatedly jumped on me to get in position before the camera timer triggered the shot. There was no flash, the white light is from a halogen room light and the blue is city light reflected off the sky at dawn. Notice how Ania's hands seem to grow over the solid reliability of my feet.

055: Superwife

Superwife, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Feeling Super.

Your partner has more to offer than you realise, they also have their own personality, something worth paying more attention too. Here Ania has an expression that I never asked for but which she has brought into the image. She is much stronger than she will admit, even to herself, especially in the environment of Poland where the social pressure is to keep saying how unable you are - until you eventually subconsciously believe it.

I wanted to create an image for her to show how much I respect her remarkable skill and power, and how much i am in awe of it. Interestingly enough, some of the composition was not conscious but my practised and acknowledged reliance on automatic input from whatever its source is within my brain.

050: Who is the fairest of them all?

Who is the fairest of them all?, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Spot the Difference / Diptych

Todays group themes were 'spot the difference' and 'diptych', but instead of the normal one image lacking things that appear in the other I decided to change what appeared in the image.

Two shots was all it took, other than the couple to make sure I was getting everything I needed in shot and that the lighting was OK. The editing was remarkably easy, although I experimented with a new-to-me function on Gimp to blend the images. I can tell by looking at the images which one I did first, so I must have improved :)

I pulled my sweatshirt tight to make it body-hugging, and so created the feminine image, while the shirt seemed to work quite well to produce a masculine image. Working with mirrors is hard, though, especially in the tight space of my hall cluttered with the step ladder I had used to mount my rather low tripod on to get the right height.

034: It's In The Mouth

Farewell Kiss, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Today we jetted off to New York from here in Poland for a week. Hugo the ginger cat is a mischief, you never know what he will be doing or where he will be in thirty seconds time. "That was then, this is now," is his motto.

The symmetry in the original image was too good an opportunity to miss, but I partially concealed this by offsetting the image. Like using the things one finds around oneself as props, one should also use the potential one finds in the image - it is your image and your art after all.

19: Tribute To

Kaptain Kobold, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Today we had to choose someone in the group who had inspired us, so I chose 'Kaptain Kobold' as his work was similar in some ways to my interests and he also encouraged me by comenting on my images.

I had to select one of his images and re-shoot it. I enjoyed the opportunity to hand draw the background and the boxes, as it gives photography more flexibility when you can actually draw in your own content. On the flip side, it is a lot more work to design the strip and then to take all the pictures and then render them down to a useful format.

17: Failed Photographers Club

Failed Photographers1, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Yesterday I had to reproduce an accident, today it was the work of a failed photographer. After much thinking around for ideas, I came up with this one. But how should I make it the work of a failed photographer while still being a good example of my own work?

I find that it can help not to try and control too many variables, and to be flexible to new ideas as the process, well, proceeds. For example, the shot of me fully dressed turned out to be out of focus, but rather than retake it I decided the focus - out-of-focus contrast between image elements added to the failure effect - as did the bedding in the background I would normally cropped off or otherwise made disappear.

I am tempted to reshoot the out-of-focus element, but I know that doing so would be a statement of craft rather than art, or the achievement of a different kind of art, depending on how I handle it.

16: Beautiful Mistakes

Swing Your Camera, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Today's task was to produce a mistake, as if you were about to press the shutter and something changed the image to create a different kind of beauty. Fine if it happens, but how do you achieve accidentality within any particular 24 hour period?

Thinking about the camera, I realised that using the timer could help as you are less certain about when the shutter will operate, so if you play around in front of the camera you might eventually create a suitable image. Secondly, I remembered a group I found on Flikr that was about creating shots by throwing one's camera in the air.

Finally, I just held the camera in my hand, pointed it in roughly the right direction and pressed the shutter. I had to do this a few times in different locations before I came up with this one.

Other people used my suggested timer and throw techniques, which in a way puts an element of my art in their images, as it is my thought that directed them to produce their images. I think this area of idea creation needs further investigation.

12: Mono Photography

After having a series of specific subject using any techniques, today was a specific technique but any subject. I toyed around with the idea of photographing myself on the company's grey gravel parking lot leaning against the wheel of my silver Citroen C1, but today we woke up rather early and decided to have a bowl of cereal before going back to bed. As Ania was finishing up, I headed for the bathroom and noticed the light on our bar and her sitting at the other end. Of course, the classic Cuban bar scene!

At half past five in the morning we were setting up for the shot, Ania using the floral dress as we thought it would show up well and be appropriate for the style, while I took my leather jacket and cap as an old whisky drinker. The camera I positioned to look down the length of the bar, with us far down it, although I had to zoom a bit to ensure there was enough apparent separation between us - but it was that low down on the bar shot combined with the Havana theme that decided the direction and the props.

6: What Mood Are You In?

I really need to get out and go somewhere, shuttling between work and home is no life if you are looking for inspiration. It is also a struggle trying to do the simplest things with a program you are as yet unsure about, such as Gimp, which would not let me draw a simple circle.

I started with a green background with just the facial parts, but then decided to dump the green and go for this cartoony image, reminiscent of the kind of drawings I have seen made by inmates of prisoner of war camps.

5: Scary Doll Whores

Today's problem was what to do when you do not have access to the required prop, a doll in this case. I decided to approach the issue by not showing a doll, but another stage of the process that must be part of eventually meeting a 'scary doll whore'. To achieve this I knocked up a fake communicator interface with a controller of the right age to be interested in dolls. To help everything fit, I chose to wear a cap on backwards to help narrow my face as well as to increase the silliness of my expression - one of fear of the task I was being asked to do.

I spent about 40 minutes building the mock interface, 2 minutes taking the pictures and another 60 minutes post-processing the images, partly because the contrast between my face and the screen was so way off. In the end I divided the image into three layers: everything outside the screen, the screen and the image of 'Weronika'. Because the image of Weronika was so poor, I imported the original image of her into this picture.