A figure of a man that's been in my mind for a while. A new creation I enjoyed trying myself at and that was fun doing. It's always rewarding to put on paper a creation you've been thinking of for a while, even more when it's a teamwork.
The idea
This picture doesn't reinvent photography in any way. Nor is it telling a story that's never been told before. However, it's important to me.
It's important to me because I've been wanting to do this one for a while now, for a few years actually. I love the aesthetic of the image of course, how the faces fade into one another, and how small features of each different poses stand out in certain areas to reveal what's behind. The agitation, or the magical disappearance of part of the body, is quite appealing.
A man tormented by something, who seems to be smiling, crying, screaming all at the same time. Or maybe not, maybe he is thinking, meditating, and observing, or maybe he is in pain, at peace, and yearning for the past. His torment may just be the mix of very contradicting emotions. Many people deal with very consuming thoughts of contradiction and find themselves feeling like they are one person at a moment and become another the very next.
It's also important to me because of what this figure expresses. Psychological torment is, much like religion, a very commonly depicted subject in art. Artists often suffer various forms of psychological disorders since their minds work so differently. I, luckily, am not a great artist, thus, I do not suffer from any psychological disorder. But I do know how it is to think differently sometimes and to be suffering of some form of over-complication/over-thinking. Your brain flies in so many directions, it becomes hard to grasp on to reality, and you often can't get rid of the astronomic amount of ideas swarming your mind. The only thing that would help me as a child was to draw. So then, I became the quiet kid, and the ideas started taking more space.
My art helps me. It's shared with others, not because I want to share my story, but because I want to share my vision of the world.
The technique
The two important factors of the image was the repeatability and the environment.
First, it was important to capture multiple takes of the same figure in slightly different poses. The first time I tried this, I thought it'd be a good idea to get a long exposure shot in which the subject would pass from one pose to an other and stay a few seconds in said poses to print them onto the sensor. This would've created more contrast on the three facial expressions I wanted, thus making them pop out. But, it turns out, my shot was over-exposed, and trying to stay still made it quite difficult to realize the picture in such a way. That's why I call it a teamwork, we discussed it, adapted and moved on.
We instead took multiple shots of the same three expressions while making sure the bust stayed in approximately the same place so as to better align the shoulders and the marks of the t-shirt.
Secondly, I had to make sure the environment was appropriate for the type of picture I wanted. The white background was crucial, not only to make the subject pop out as I overlaid the different versions of him, but especially to keep a constant setting that would allow me to more easily lay the surfaces on top of one another without getting artifacts.
Once the preparation was complete, it was down to the editing room. Everything was a question of managing to contour the masking object of the person with enough subtlety that it wouldn't be obvious I had to mask him out (although it still is because of my lack of skills). A mask, or masking object, is, as its name implies, an object linked to a layer made to block or let through parts of said layer. The objective is to color in the parts you either want to hide (colored in black) or want to show (colored in white). It's a subtle job of paint work mixed in with proper feathering of the brush.
Then, I placed each "version" of him on top of one another while blending in the different layers with some feathering of the masks. Once I was satisfied with it, I went into editing the colors and contrast, trying to make the facial expressions clear and yet somber.
Choosing to go black and white was for three reasons. The first, it's technically easier to blend in multiple layers together when the differences are only based on values and not tones or hues. Second, the lack of color for me conveys the idea of something past, or an unreal sight. Compressing time with black and white is, in my opinion, a great way to stamp your photo in the past and to give it a nostalgic look. It's mostly too often used, but well done, black and white can be very beautiful, and in this case, I thought it relevant to convey a nostalgic feeling. Lastly, the reason taking such a direction made sense for the photo was that the dark grey skin would better denote from the white background, and the overlapping of these figures helped create more contrast, enabling the eyes or the teeth to stand out more than if I'd kept the original tone of the skin color.
Tools
Camera: Canon 1300D
Lens: 18-55 mm
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