This week’s 52Frames challenge was “Inspired by a Photographer.” And the extra challenge was to use the 52Frames random generator to pick the photographer to use as inspiration. Since I was in an extra challenge mood I tried the generator. The photographer it suggested was Berenice Abbott, a photographer that I wasn’t familiar with.
I searched for information about her and her work and found a photograph of hers that I loved, Hands of Jean Cocteau. It was so interesting that I couldn’t resist trying my own version of it. And from that experiment came today’s post…
Hat Tricks
With the somewhat grudging cooperation of my sweet and ever-loving Jon, yesterday I created Hands of Jean (Jon) Lamoreux.
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
[MovieMaker Magazine #53 – Winter, January 22, 2004 ]”
―
I began by placing a dining room chair beside the dining room window so that the light streamed in from the side. First I placed the hat on the chair to test my camera settings and whether the lighting was falling as I hoped it would.
Then I posed Jon with the hat and coached him on where to place his hands. There was some finger waving and middle finger flipping that I ignored and we proceeded to pose his hands in different positions. I made about a dozen images and downloaded them to my computer, then looked at Abbott’s image Hands of Jean Cocteau again.
None of the first images I made really pleased me.
So I asked Jon to pose again and made the image above along with several others that I liked. Jon eventually lost patience with me and called a stop to my camera play.
A Small Time Investment
Making these photographs took less than 15 minutes.That’s all. Of course I spent a lot more time working on them in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to create the final images. But the thing I’m getting at here is — doing something creative doesn’t have to take a long time! Even little spurts of activity can inject joy into your day. For me, committing to a challenge like 52Frames helps encourage me to try new things.
You know yourself well enough to know whether a challenge will spur you to effort or simply make you dig in your heels and say, “No.” If external challenges don’t inspire you, figure out what might inspire you to exercise your creativity. And then do it. Life is too short to procrastinate away.
“Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.”
― To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
You can see from the image above that keeping the photographs in color was less than impressive. So I converted them to black and white and tried several different tints, sepia, coffee, ambrotype. All in all I am happy with my experiments and I like some of the final images a lot.
What will you create this week?
May you walk in beauty.
0 Comments