Picture a’Day (…) 4 July 2010
The Mirror Conspiracy or Am I on To Something?
The Mask
Playing around with HDR and Tonal Mapping lately, I am revisiting many of my Namib Desert and Namib Naukluft images, which never made it to the digital darkroom. Not because they are just plain bad, but because mostly there is at least one thing wrong with them – exposure, tonality, contrast or the likes.
There is an interesting thing happening lately, I am suddenly “seeing things”. Playing around in HDR, enhancing contrast and increasing dynamic range, some of these images literally start coming alive. I love textures and “seeing things” is not new to me – the Boogie Man was all too real to me during my childhood, mind you. I am wondering, whether what I’m seeing in these enhanced images, is what made me take the picture in the first place.
The Aviator
Anyway, playing around with these images I had to think about Amy Schoeman and one of her exhibitions. Amy is a photographic artist, who inspired me ever since I encountered her and her images for the first time – thank you Amy, you are an angel. One particular exhibition was about images flipped and mirrored and blended in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, I remember staring at them for ever and ever, seeing all sorts of things only to eventually read the caption, revealing what she saw in it or meant to say through it. It was a wonderful journey through Fantasia and a welcome break from every day’s banalities and platitudes. I have to admit here – sorry Amy – that the very first thought that struck me was something to the extend of “c’mon Amy, you can do better than just flipping and mirroring”, a thought which went astray quickly though, making place for arrested admiration.
The Warrior
At some later stage and purely out of curiosity I had to give it a try myself, only to find out that there is much more to this technique than meets the eye. I realised that choosing and/or taking the right picture is only the start, I never really bothered again … until now.
Here I am, flipping, mirroring and blending tone mapped images … and I’m calling it the “Mirror Conspiracy” … I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think of it.
So long
Tommy
Category: Digital Imaging
