Concentration Series Commentary

The main idea in my concentration series is the personification of the natural elements. I chose eight different elements to personify. I gave each element a male and female form to make each one more real and create a little story for every element. My personal connection to this series is that I like to view the natural world as an equal. The principles of design I used are texture, contrast, and color. I wanted to explore this idea because I wanted to experiment with elements and people.

When I was starting my concentration series, I was originally taking pictures of scenery related to that element, such as taking pictures of the ocean for the water element. Yet while I was doing this, I felt like my idea was really lackluster. I thought about adding a sense of fantasy to my photos, so I decided to merge the pictures of scenery with a model that represents a specific element. By having a male and female version of every element, I could create a story within each pair of elements. I originally planned to have five elements, but soon I added the elements of light, dark, and metal to increase the amount of photos I would end up with. Since I had to merge photos to create my elementals, I heavily used Photoshop to make my ideas come to life. I greatly increased the contrast on more than half of my photos to bring out the facial features of my models. I utilized texture in my photos because it would give my photos more depth to them and not make them look flat and boring. Adding analogous colors to each set of elemental photos further grasped my concept of making each element life-like. My series began as a way to see our world more clearly, but after finishing this project, I realize I allowed the viewer to see a different perspective of our world and that everything around us is our equal.

Week 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                This was such a hectic week for me. Unlike previous weeks, this week consisted mainly of me being on Photoshop, merging all the models I used last week with their corresponding element. I also had to get photos of myself taken so I could merge them with the element I chose for myself. I’m aware that we were supposed to have only twelve images, but there were some extra images I had to include in here. I made a few diptychs of certain elements because I thought that they would work very nicely together. Also, due to the large amount of elements included, having a diptych or two would allow all the elements I chose to be included. The order I placed them is set very similar to a spectrum. I started the series with the light elemental and ended it with the dark elemental. The elements in between have a closer spot to either light or dark depending on the characteristics of that specific element, such as fire being closer to light because it is luminescent,  provides warmth, and helps during colder times, unlike metal which is cold and sharp. Each model I chose shows an aspect of each element they represent like the models of fire are very young and full of energy, whereas the models for nature are very elegant and seem to be mystic, like forest fairies. I decided to only do one blog post this week because I wanted to showcase all my final pieces all at once and not have my final week split up into segments. I very much enjoyed working on this series, and I just love how I gave each of my elements their own twist with a bit of my own personal style and thinking incorporated in each one.