I found some dilapidated slides in the trunk of my car (the fun of used cars!) and combined them with some vegetation and a drawing on tracing paper, with a wooden bench underneath. The light is natural setting sunlight.
This effect was created by putting shadow/highlight on a layer, blending that layer with "Hard Light" at 75% opacity. Then some levels to lighten and increase contrast. Plus extra levels just on the slide film so you can see how gunky it is. And selective color on my drawing to make it blacker. Then I flattened the whole thing and sharpened it with USM.
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I think this is the artsiest thing I've seen of yours, Don. Or maybe it's just the artsiest thing of yours that I like. :) Either way, it's an intriguing shot that invites me to explore for a long time.
Don - you've been shooting some very interesting subjects lately. I actually thought this was possibly Christian's (Xianart) while voting. I also had the thought that this looks like a gallery piece. So keep on shooting, my friend! Great work indeed.
This is quite lovely! I didn't look through this challenge just saw this image in the "posthumous ribbons" thread and thought it was wonderful. Come to look and it is yours!
The appeal is strange and I can't put my finger on it. Just great!
This makes me sad. You took these poor slides you found in your trunk, against their will no doubt, and arranged them in this Victorian horror show? How dare you! Sorry I'm just upset that you didn't shoot what was inside your trunk, slides and all. :P
The design is rather orthogonal and lacks kinetic imbalance. The filigree of the grass rather gets lost in the fuzz of the background felt or paper. Heavy duty watercolour paper as a background would have revealed more of the interest in the foreground objects.
A reaction (since you asked in the reaction club): Something about this made me feel sad, almost profoundly so. Some of it was the subject matter, something that obviously once held memories for someone, something important enough to shoot on slide, yet now gone, forever, unrecoverable, lost. The way the damage appears, especially in the film and the left slide, increased the strength of that reaction in me. The use of the plants and the drawing brought me back a bit, making me feel the slides were not so lost; why give preference to the originally captured image? Just because it had the luck of being first in time? Maybe this is how these slides should be used, not holding some out of focus image of a model on a car hood or darkness because the photographer had his finger over the lens, but interacting with life and beauty and making art. There was still something, though, that pushed me back toward sadness, and until I read the comments, I didn't realize that it was the space in the lower left corner. Compositionally this works for me, great lines and flow. But given the subject matter and its arrangement, the lower left space adds to the feeling of sadness for me. There's just something . . .
P.S. If you can't tell, I like it a lot. (edited for clarity)
This should have been in StillLife. :)
Terrific art piece. I think it probably has more impact as the actual piece than a photo. Still intriguing piece, love to see if you have of the same type of art in your back pocket.
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