The Levitation and multiplicity

 𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖

Levitation

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 In 1948 artist Philippe Halsman took photo called Dali Atomicus.

The portrait was inspired by Dalí’s painting Leda Atomica. Photographer had to take 26 takes before the artist was satisfied with the effect. The painter was souranded by his own work, chair, cats and water.

Irina Dzhul comes from Russia. I could not find any interesting informations about her, therefore her work inspired my enough to write about some of her work.
Mostly she is photographing females with a fantasy feel within the photo. They are mostly kept in the sepia tone which makes them feel warm and calm.

She produced one piece that was very inspiring to me. Liking quite creepy and magical photographs, I was interested in her photo capturing a girl, being hold in the air by mysterious creature. The work, in comparison to the other ones is kept in a darker and colder tone. It is quite witchy and mysterious which I really like. The photo also contains a smoke which reminds of spells and magic. The fact that the photo was shoot probably in the woods, makes it more fantasy-like.

The largest inspiration to produce this ghost photograph was Christopher McKenney who specialises in horror photography. I abolutely adore his photographs. They are very incomfortable to look at, thay make you watch them cerefully and think about them and their meaning. I like art that shows things that we would not normally think about or look at. Things that people do not talk about. Horrer is a great way to show that and to get some kind of response from people.

To produce such photograph I had to use my camera, placed it on the tripod and take two photos. One of the background and second one of the character.

When editing I had to place both photos together and get rid of the things that the character was standing on to make it look like they levitate. ( i followed the proccess mentioned in the video under multiplicity).

Those are the takes of the character. There is meany because there were leaves falling and I wated to get the best position of them on the camera. The last photo is the background. The camera did not change the position.

I edited the photo in a couple of different to see which one i like the most. After choosing my favorite one I decided to edit it by making it more creepy. I was able to achie it by making it more dark. I also made sure that the tone of the photo was cold. At the end I  also added vintage camera effect to make it look like old ghost photographies.

Natsumi Hayashi is known as the "levitation girl."
She says that it is her self-portrait project. She was inspired by the idiom "to have one's feet firmly planted on the ground". She wanted to show her true self. She says that nowadays we are forced to follow some social rules and that we expected to e certain way, which makes even more sense if we rememer that she is from Japana, country where most people feel like they need to be perfect and organised and not to distrust others with their own lifes.
She also wants the photograpgs to answer the question "What is truth?" or "What is untruth?" as photographers can show both using the magic of modern photography.

Her images are very causal. They show her everyday life, which makes some of thm funny and entertaining. I like how in the proccess she had to take the photo many times before it was perfect, but the finall outcomelooks very natural, taken from everyday life. It shows perfectly her life, what she was doing at that time. She does not have to blure the backround or take a closeup photo of herself. The levitation catches the attention even in a crouded background. It makes the photos more funny.

Gabe Tomoiaga creates surreal worlds through his fantasy like portraits.He is mostly capturing a little boy who in comparison to the word is very tiny. He meets with dangerous animals like they are friends and he has amazing adventures, that tell a story of the huge imagination that children have.
In some of his work, Tomoiaga used the levitation.
I really liked his work, because of the story behind it. It had a deeper meaning and represented the never ending imagination.

 He was the inspiration to create the photograph of a hero with the cape, next to the tree.

Using this technique I wanted to experiment with two more ideas. One of them was flying next to the tree where I was standing on a chair and I was wearing a cape to represent the movement. The second one was with hands on the tree. My friend and I were holding the tree with both our hands, and later on in editing poccess we get rid of all of the background but the tree and our hands on it. I do not like this photo. I does not look natural at all and for me the key in this photography techniwue is to make something hat does not exist look realistic.

This phot again was inspired by Christopher McKenne. I followed exactly the same proccess as I did for the ghost photo.

I absolutely love everything magical or creepy. Anything to do with ghost, things that do not exist or something witchy will be a thing that I'll like. Taking those photos was a brilliant experience and I wish I had more time to take more photos like that. The process of editing those photos was very easy and I would love to try to do soemthing more challanging in terms of the shoot itself but also the editing part.

I will definitly do those kind of photos again for my personal portfolio.

𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖𝄖

Multiplicity

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For this one I did not really find any interesting Photographers that I could actually talk about. Therefore I found a couple of photos that were a great inspiration for me.

 

Those are dark and creepy, which I like, but most of all for me they illustrate the battle with mind. For me it represents the mental illness. 

“A lot of people don’t quite understand how little control people can have of their own thoughts and emotions when they suffer from a mental illness. When dealing with someone with depression and anxiety it can require a considerable amount of patience, but these diseases can be dealt with, despite how helpless things may seem."  Christian Hopkins

 (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mental-illness-photos_us_56f57db4e4b0143a9b482461)

Christian Hopkins always prefered to capture the emotions rahter than the events.

He decided t focus on depression, which he suffered himself. 

His work is very personal and I think that it is the reason why I like it so much. In my own work I am capturing my own self.

 

Hopkins himself used the multimplicity in some of his photographs. They are all very cold and uncomfortable to look like. He did it to allow people to at list imgine how it might feel like to suffer from depression. Hands under your skin make you feel uncofortable. You do not like the idea of something else touching you especially from inside. Meaning you do not like your body and who you are. Disapearing in empty room in a very uncofortable positions, meaning how empty you feel and how painful it is. Like you disapear and stop existing. It is terrifiying. Or all those different faceless creatures trying to get your attention, saying things to upset you. I think he managed to really show what depression may feel like. 

It was a great inspiration to create the piece where my friend was multiplied into 3 different characters. One that could not speak, one that could not see and the other one that could not hear. It represents the inability to do those things, to have some kind of a disability.

During the editing process I kinda went for this rusty look. I made the lights very light and the darks very dark. I wanted the image to capture the attention, to look creepy and to provoke to think about its meaning. I think that those unnatural colors and intesity of both light and dark do the job just fine. 

The next idea was to make something more personal, more witchy. This photo was not taken by me however I edited it so I thought that I should include that here.

I edited them in a couple of different ways because I could not decide which one I liked more. One of them shows me holding the cone like it was on the orygianll photo. I did that to use the oryginal "prop". That was the only reason. Here I only worked with multiplicity and the colors. They are kinda green/gray. because I wanted it to look mysterious and a bit scary. The other ones look like I am holding a light which is more magical. 

Later on I did even more editing. I added more hands to the drawing. The multiplicity of them reminds me of ancients goddesses such as Shiva, Vishnu or Lakshmi. In those religions the gods hold different items in their hands and those represent different things; things that the God takes care of. 

For me it repesented the Goddess(moon), so everything that links to the nature and its energy.  

Adding more hands made it more distinct. 

I edited them in basycally the same way as I did with the other photos. I did not necesserly went fo any of the researched artists' style. I just did what felt right for each photograph. Some of them felt like they should be in a red tone with lots of light and contrast, where the other ones felt like they should be pale with lots of contrast. The main idea was to make them look like the character is real, but its presence makes the location look uncral, creepy, uncomfortable to look at.

There is another photo of me that I did nottake but edited.
 

First of all I only went for two multiplication of myself. I thoguth it would be an interesting image, where one of the characters tries to hide and the other is watching them. For me this image represents lonliness.One person here is being alone and they are sad because of it. They are hiding their face, so we do not know their identity; and this is pretty much how it is with being lonely. We are invisible for other, they do not know us. Th other person is the same person, but it is more like a guardian. They stay by this lonely person and even they are invisible for them, they keep their comapny. It shows how lonely people have only themselves.

I edited them in a kinda rusty tone, because I really liked how the photo of my friend looked like in this kinda style. I gives this uncomfortabele feel and it provokes to look at it and wonder why it is presented tat way. I did not like the bright one as much so I brought up a lot of the contrast up. Added lots of farm filters and darken some of the parts. 

For this one I went for all of the three poses. Heer the middle character emphesises that we do not know who the lonely person is and that they are in fact alone and the two other characters are only imagined; they only are there as a representation of the feeling of lonliness itself.
The first attempt to edit it was to make it very pale, ghost like, but it did not look great. I made it much more darker with more of red and blue tone. Yet it is not my favorite. I much prefere the two characters one. I guess it is because of the russty tone that I used there.

Those are very similar to the ones I took before, however I went for close up. I wanted to make this cool face on face effect, where I would just place all of the photos on top of each other and change their opasity to make them all visible at once. It would make them look very creepy and uncomfortable to look at which seems like it become a theme for this specyfic project.

First of all I edited the photo to be black and white, because I thought that it could be the good choice as it is already creepy and dark. The lack of colour would only emphesise the mystery and creepiness.
Leter on I went for even darker tone, but I changed the black and white into more blac and brown tone. It felt more serious and "strong". The image represents the mind itself and how many emotions we can feel at once. Ye it also shows that they can be hidden and sometimes misunderstood.
Since the multiplicity was gathered in one point I thought that the reflection could make it look even better so i idid try a couple.