Mechanics of Feelings
Nov, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
The picture is a composite. The model was shot in my home studio in a large piece of white fabric that was supposed to look like a dress for the shooting. The environment is composed of parts of mechanisms shot in one of the technic museums in Austria, during a trip to the country.Time
As artificial light doesn't require any particular time for the shooting, as well as the museum light is usually fixed, I tried to concentrate on the idea and the effect I wanted to achieve. The model was shot in the evening, the time of the day that I personally find the most inspiring for creative ideas. The great thing is that the model seemed to be of the same opinion then and we got a really interesting series of shots.Lighting
I often combine pieces of diffenent shots in my works, so there's often a question of making the work look like a whole piece, including the question of lighting. I wanted to use white as a background, which is generally not something I prefer or do often. I do not concentrate on remembering tecnical details of the shootings much as I usually try to get the necessary effect for each one, be it dramatic, lonely, melancholic, thoughtful, inspired or whatever, thus making changes in settings almost automatically. The white background could help me to use some half-transparent, somewhat barely visible shapes, lines and sihlouettes of the picture during the post-processing more easily, as well as to concentrate on some kind of "half-emptiness", while it could not be considered so at the same time.Equipment
I used Canon EOS 7D for shooting all parts of the composite. 2 studio flashes and the background were used for the portrait itself. The post-procession included using Photoshop CS6 and Wacom Intuous 3.Inspiration
"Mechanics of feelings" was one of my earlier pictures inspired by using complex technical parts, surreal technological worlds and the man-machine symbiosis ideas. I was working on the series "The Child of Progress" which was supposed to show the relationships of simple people of our days with the blazing technological progress. The whole series was intended to reveal numerous aspects of this symbiosis of man and technology in some interpretations that could also be perceived as some still-shots from surreal or futuristic movies. I wanted to examine and cover the question of the influence and effects of the phenomenon. As we can guess by the title, this picture was about emotional side of it, the influence of the modern and near future technification on feelings. My aim was not to show it as something "negative" or "positive", rather to depict some of the surreal and futuristic in some ways perceptions; trying to catch the specific beauty of each of the concepts instead. The girl is half transparent so that we could see the complex machinery she's part of, along with the part where we can see that she is still human, with real human feelings, that cannot be affected or changed too much anyway.Editing
The post-processing obviously made a great contribution to the picture. As I've already mentioned, it is a composite. As a rule, I use the technique which is something bordering on fine-art photography and illustration. That is, I do add some digital painting to most of my pieces as well. The whole process is rather long and depends on the picture. Some of my favourite tools are Liquify and mixer-brush, though. I used some PS tools and brushes for coloring and contrast parts, Nic ColorEfex Pro is also one of my favourite plug-ins, used here as well.In my camera bag
One of the most interesting things -- I mean my post-processing peculiar aspects -- is that sometimes I take shots for the pictures on my phone camera, in case I suddenly see something really great and inspiring but have no other equipment with me ). Of course it is not the best idea in some cases, but I think it helps to understand better that the greatest role is not played by the tools the photographer uses, but by imagination, inspiration or love to the subjects of shooting. Or, we could say, some luck just as well here).Feedback
Actually, I do believe that imitation in something concerning art might be a good way for some people just beginning to develop their own style and specifics and needing to understand something about the technical side of something better, but... I guess that depicting something already existing is a different thing, that is, right, a great diversity of things can make it look different and have different moods, angles, perspectives and other creative or attractive touches to it. When it comes to art, imagination and fiction, I usually like to say that it has no borders, schemes or fixed rules that cannot be intentionally ignored by the maker who really *has* something to show and to say, that it it.
