The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge provides the theme of Out of this World, which opened up a rather large dimensional portal for me…
The hard part is to decide on the images that I want to connect with this theme, as there are many! For today, I’m going to one from my Surreal Tales series. This series looks to expand imagery beyond what we may perceive with our eyes and rather look to unlock what we may find through our third eye. A significant portion of my abstract work is focused on this topic, as careful examination of all our senses may reveal something entirely new.
This image was one that hit me square in the chest when I looked into the room where I shot the main parts of the image….
Resisting Escape
As I said, the moment that I saw this old bathroom, I knew exactly what the image had to be; I felt the pull through the ceiling and where that pull might lead. The trans-dimensional rift is pulling at the fabric of our space-time continuum, and the stresses created by it overcome our normal gravitational inhibitions.
Hope you enjoy this image and have a wonderful day!
The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge has the theme of Temporary. If there is anything that might cause me to wax philosophical, this may be it 🙂
Floating on the sea of time, our lives are filled with crests and valleys, with which we can either struggle or accept with grace. How we spend this time shall determine our sense of completeness at the end. Live it fully, embracing the energy of the universe.
Without this, we can ever be filled with a sense of loss…
Sense of Loss
In planning this image, I have attempted to place lots of elements together that juxtapose one another, as the ethereal being follows the butterflies into the miasma… What do you sense in this tableau?
A quick glance at today’s Daily Prompt showed me an interesting one: Dream. Of course, if we look at the URL, it implies fairy tale.
Some of our most interesting and intense concepts come from dreams during that mysterious state during our sleep cycles when our brain provides stimuli, which generate visions of phantasmagorical character. Tales of mystery and imagination spring forth from these times, some of which have survived across the ages.
Resisting Escape
Most of us will have had dreams, in which we take flight, sometimes beneficent in the freedom that we experience during such times, while at other times the flight can be frightening, as we’re being pulled into a hellish nightmare…
Technical Details
This image was composited using a number of shots with a Canon EOS 5D Mk III using an EF 17-40 f/4L lens. When I saw this bathroom, I had an immediate vision of what I wanted to achieve in the image, with the woman being pulled into an alternate reality that she is trying to escape from. The cloud cover was shot about 4 months later than the bathroom scene, when I noticed the type of sky that I wanted to for the final image.
Nothing like starting a series of weekly posts and immediately breaking the rules…
Resisting Escape
Nothing like starting a series of weekly posts and immediately breaking the rules that you set for them! I posted a photo that I took yesterday, which was definitely my favorite of this week, so I thought that I might go to the archives for what actually is a work in progress; but more about that aspect later.
This week’s image is titled ‘Resisting Escape’ and it is part of a series of surreal images that I am putting together over the next couple of years. I shot this during a workshop taught by the wonderful, giving Brooke Shaden (Promoting Passion is Brooke’s inspirational blog). As you might imagine, this image was not captured in a single shot, but rather took a bit of visualization, planning and post-processing to make it come to life.
Brooke Shaden’s workshops give an in-depth, hands-on look into how she creates her amazing images; Brooke takes the participants from inspiration and techniques to set up the shoot all the way through post-processing. For any photographer who is looking to expand the artistic side of their craft, I wholeheartedly recommend Brooke’s workshops.
A little about the process that I used in creating this image.
We were in an old, dilapidated mansion in New Jersey for the shooting segment of the workshop. All of us took a tour of the mansion, so that we could decide on the rooms, in which we wanted to shoot. Each of us got to pick one room for each of the three shooting segments.
When I saw this bathroom, I immediately had an idea about how I wanted to put together the shoot, as I visualized the struggle against being pulled into the hereafter, even though it might be a release from an abysmal existence. The stark red served to me as an immediate indication of something wrong that affected the woman’s existence in this plane of reality. To enhance the effect of moving into the menacing sky, the shooting angle had to be low, so this is where I set my camera on its tripod.
After some test shots and locking in the exposure, I shot the master image, which serves as the background image for the post-processing. I explained to my awesome model what I was trying to achieve in the shot, so that I could get the right posture from her, as she was propped up in the air. As you can understand, hand position and body angle were key to get the desired look of fighting against what is pulling her into the sky.
The one element that I did not get at the time of the shoot, is the sky. It took me several months to find a sky that provide the kind of menace to fit the overall feel of the image. As there were many photos that came together in creating this overall image, the post-processing took a bit of work, about 8 hours of work. Even then, it was not until I started looking at this image a couple of weeks ago to consider it for a large format print, that I noticed a slight bit of imperfection, which is still to be edited. Extra credit, if you find where it is…
Feel free to ask further questions about this image or the process, as I’d welcome your comments.
Dutch goes the Photo! 