NOW LOADING; DESIGN PLAY 001

It was the end of a long and mostly unsuccessful shoot. The sun was mostly down and in an effort to get home quicker, we took a shortcut through the back alley behind our house. The sky started doing that really beautiful thing where it morphs through dark and vibrant shades of color right before the sun fully sets. I tried to capture a few images in that light but it was already pretty dark for the lens I was using, and anything taken at a higher ISO than 1600 just gets obnoxious.

I was feeling pretty unsatisfied with the images I had taken that evening. And as we walked to the back alley, I already turned my camera off and put my lens cap on and was ready to call it a night. That was until Maureen, who was walking a couple feet in front of me, stopped and turned waiting for me to catch up.

I couldn’t have positioned her better myself if I tried. She stood perfectly illuminated in an eerie green fluorescent cast of a nearby patio light. The trees fell in an even shadow backdrop behind her, and the slightest tinge of deep purple filtered through the treetops from what was left of the evening sun. I quickly threw my lens cap to the ground, adjusted my settings, and started firing off shots.

She stood to the side, beautiful. She faced the camera with prestige, beautiful. She faced away from me and let the androgynous silhouette of her recently shaved scalp become the focus. I mumbled some directions at her, and when she turned to me confused, reflex, I snapped a photo.

Her pure expression of exasperation and confusion was authentic. It was the first photograph I flipped to as soon as I uploaded the images to Lightroom. I thought it was stunning, and almost surreal, both in quality and an execution. To capture such an intense emotion so candidly, and in that setting. It was the perfect blend of spooky surrealism and intimacy I strive for in my work.

Staring at the washed out raw jpeg on my screen, I felt like it could be more. Even after the color correction took the pasty cast of the patio light back into a vibrant shade of chartreuse, the scene felt strangely sci-fi. I decided to take advantage the single colored light source, and see what different hues would bring out of the image.

I landed on this beautiful shade of venetian red; and from the moment I first applied the color I knew it was the direction.

It had a unique harmony with the purples and dark green tones in the top third of the image, I loved the way it complemented and worked in tandem with the natural pink tones in Maureen’s skin. And I think it gave the read of her facial expression a more mysterious twist.

It felt unearthly and dream like, yet somehow still natural and authentic. Surreal enough to be transfixative and almost haunting; but close enough to relative reality that the photograph could have been taken right there in front of you.

Now that I had my photo, I was ready to see where I could take it and develop it in the realm of virtual design.

I wanted to continue following this aesthetic intuition; so I knew I wanted the design to be another level of that spooky surrealism.

I experimented with different variations of occluding and obstructing her face. Painting over or mixing it with the background; morphing her image into a kind of extraterrestrial blank being. Removing her face feels like removing her identity, and removing her identity transforms her into an interesting kind of other.

I experimented with repetition, clone stamping variations of what was left of her anamorphic figure or the background. I wanted to see if a stylized repetition could contribute to the otherworldly feeling.