Our lives are full of tools, to the point no human being could exist without them. The whole civilization rely on them.
Depending on the History period, or depending on the part of the world, they can be rudimentary (rocks, wheel, spear, bow, hammer, ...) or very complex (washing machines, cars, cameras, computers, ...).
At first, we created them to serve us: easier and better food, more comfortable life, permit us to explore and adjust the environment to suit our needs.
I sometimes have the strange feeling that tools are now becoming more important than the human beings themselves: they often decide what you should do instead of you. What first was an help is now leading. How do you have to dress today? Ask satellites and radars, they will tell you if you must put a jacket and take that umbrella. What do you must eat? Ask those blood analysis machines. Who do you must meet and marry? Submit your criteria, the great Internet will tell you. On a side note, this is actually how I exactly met my wife. This is nothing virtual: a computed algorithm decided of our fates.
Note that I am not necessarily against this, I'm simply observing. It just looks like a very ironic step of our evolution: our hands created what is now more important than us, in some way. Is it good, is it bad, am I saying total nonsense? I don't care that much about the answer, but these thoughts were a good occasion to grab my camera.
Technically, these are all photos of my hands. I made 400 shots, and ended up using about 200 of them. I did not use any custom brushes: this method was not precise enough to my taste, so I just masked them all and organized everything on separate layers (around 570 of them). Each hand photo has been masked, resized, rotated, deformed when needed, (de)saturated, brightened and/or darkened, so that repetitions would not be too much visible.
In order to help preparing the hands shots, I actually made a normal self portrait, which I used as a background to be covered with all the hands. I drew lines on it, to create supporting shapes and flows, and also used its natural shadows to emulate the depth of the original scene using all the small hands.
All in all, this project took me around 30 hours of work, quite a lot to be done in one week in addition to my main job. The title is "The Tool of Tools", but I changed it for DPC, just to fit the challenge better and avoid some votes due to the fact the picture was not directly about a particular man.
Thank you all for your great votes and comments, including negative ones. I value them all very much. I'm very happy that this work won a ribbon!
[Sep. 7th, 2011 08:02:35 AM]
I'm delighted: the picture was published on 1X, and within a few hours, reached the status of most popular photo of the day, and most popular photo of the week. Comments have been overwhelmingly flattering, and coming from photographers and critics I absolutely admire. I think this picture really sets a milestone in my work.
Statistics
Place: 2 out of 47 Avg (all users): 7.3043 Avg (commenters): 9.2162 Avg (participants): 7.5714 Avg (non-participants): 7.2564 Views since voting: 8230 Views during voting: 559 Votes: 184 Comments: 114 Favorites: 43 (view)
I gave this a 7. As someone who dabbles in the visual arts, I know the skill involved to create something like this. Also, I think it has a mood to it, which is a good thing. And it benefits from the simplicity that this format forced you into. Some of your work tends to get a bit... baroque.
I didn't vote and certainly wouldn't have given a one - i would have marked it high - but i wondered if maybe the size is a factor ? for some reason the thumbnail seems to look at least as good as the main shot - in fact it gives me a feeling of depth and subtlety that i didn't get from the original - maybe just a little smaller so i could see it all comfortably on the screen ? i don't mean that it overspills the screen, simply that i tend to have to look up and down at this picture and if it were smaller i could see it all at once - if that makes sense
There are some real dumbo's amongst us on DPC. I mean who in his right mind would give this phenomenal piece of work a 1?
or even a 2 or a 3 or a 4? It's worth a 10 in every way.
You really need to expand your horizon ! Your imagination along with your photography skills and post processing knowhow really set you apart from the rest of us !
It's not a great shock that you came up with yet another brilliant concept and then executed it so well. You have proven yourself to be of incredible creativity and talent, and this is just the latest.
But I'm very, very happy for you about this statement at the end of your comments: "I think this picture really sets a milestone in my work."
I also like what you said about not taking up photography as a job. While I'm nowhere near as talented, several friends have suggested the same to me, and I give them exactly the same answer.
Christophe, I fear that people have started to recognize your fine work and vote it down on purpose. This should have been a blue for sure. Not to discount the current blue which is of course fantastic... I'm just saying that this didn't warrant any ones, twos or threes. The same thing happened on a challenge where you came in second to me so I guess I can't complain too much :) bien fait!
Christophe, as usual, OUTSTANDING...please tell me your day job revolves around photography...if not...you should seriously think about it...you are one of the best i have seen on this site...and there are some damn good photogs on here!
Thanks for your kind words. No my job has nothing to do with photography. However, I don't really want to change that: I love photography because I am totally free in it. Should money come into the equation, this would probably change, which I do not wish.
Christophe, as usual, OUTSTANDING...please tell me your day job revolves around photography...if not...you should seriously think about it...you are one of the best i have seen on this site...and there are some damn good photogs on here!
As for my drawings, they are absolutely awful, believe me: just some basic shapes in the frame, to have a rough idea of where things are positioned and how large they should be, but nothing recognizable.
.. and bizarre! :) Congrats on all the recognition you are getting. You are well on the way to the photographic stardom. It is great to watch. Good luck with the next stage! Margaret
This one will be fun to send in for validation.
Another great concept, well executed.
Fully agree. In defense of the weak dpc server I suggest you burn DVD's and Fedex those 200+ originals (have it stamped by a notary public)
ETA: Dear SC members , please make sure you DQ Gyaban's image if you do not receive any of the 200 originals, and also if you do not have a chance to verify, one by one, those are the images he used :-)
I don't think ironical is a proper word. Or rather its a superfluously conjugated word. Just thought you'd like to know. Ironic is sufficient and correct.:-)
I don't think ironical is a proper word. Or rather its a superfluously conjugated word. Just thought you'd like to know. Ironic is sufficient and correct.:-)
Congrats on 1x! Ironical comments. Normally things that do well here wont do well on 1x. I like how you questioned whether something that did really well on 1x would do well here. I'm glad I did. And also glad I read the comments. Very interesting.
fantastic
who besides you could be insane enough to do this?
only 200 out of 400 shots taken?....you disappoint me this time Christophe. My guess was no less than 2 thousand pics.
All the dedication you have for dpc and your photography actually made me think that this is your main job, or that you are a retired rich man who is simply bored so you took photography as a hobby.
Thanks for spending time here on dpc. Your work inspires a lot of us here to do better.
I doubt my old laptop would keep up with 57 layers let alone 570.
It probably would: using smart objects, you can create "sub PSD files" inside the project, so that you don't run out of memory. The group of layers is stored on the disk, and only the global image of them is actually loaded in the memory. Handy.
I doubt my old laptop would keep up with 57 layers let alone 570. The question remains of course: is this a photo? Unbelievable dedication to the craft. 10.
Although the strenuous effort of this image bears ribbon territory reward, frankly I find the effort to make friends with this image just as strenuous. I would anticipate an image of hands to provide some sense of connection, but the primal almost stark darkness of expression disconnects me entirely. I guess the lesson is that I don't have to connect with this image to hail it as a remarkable and memorable experience.
Wow Christophe, I did'nt look hard enough at this, the first time around and never realised it was your hands in this photo, shame on me. Deserved of a ribbon, due to the hours you must've spent producing this master piece, congrats on the 1X as well.
Very creative. I tried to count how many unique hand shots this must have taken, must have been quite a bit of time in pre- and post-processing. Knowing the DPC crowd, this is likely to be the blue.
Knew this must be you but I had assumed you had made some custom brushes. I had already given you a 10 but now that I have read your notes on 1x, I wish I could give you 11!
Amazing! I assume you took some pictures of the hands and made some brushes. It is really cool and all the hands added to the pose and the look on the face give it an interesting emotion.
At first I thought this was weird, then I realized that this entire thing was made out of hands and I realized just how awesome and fantastic this is. What hard work! The fist pupils just put the icing on the cake. 9
The most artful and unique image I've seen on DPC in a while. I have a hunch on whos this might be. Aren't many I know on the site who could pull of an edit like this. Good luck in the challenge. Though I don't think you need it ;)
Wow, this must have taken you FOREVER. Probably took a lot of pre-planning too. Very cool. I just think that the title isn't as strong as the image. With a picture as cool as this, I think you could have come up with a more striking title. Not docking you for that though.
Wow... please please please please post a tutorial of this when the voting's over! I almost skipped through this until I realized what I was looking at! Magnificent! 10
Oh... my... gawd! Can't wait to hear how many photos you took for this - validation might take a year. And no doubt this will require validation as all ribbon winners do. :) FANTASTIC! I also can't wait to hear the photography purists gripe and moan about it. :P
The Artisan
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