For this project, Old is New, I wanted to do something pertaining to my dogs. I cherish both of them dearly and semi recently we lost one of the three. Bear passed in his old age and so now we only have Coco and Peanut. I wanted to make a somewhat humorous image to capture both of their personalities, Peanut is a very smart and independent dog while Coco is a terror and lives to spite Peanut. I wanted something that I could hold onto and look back at when my parents move out of state with them. I used two portraits from the Library of Congress in combination with two images of my dogs to create this. I grabbed what portraits I wanted to use first so I could try to create lighting that was similar to them when I took pictures of my dogs. In Photoshop, I used a variety of brushes and effects to distort Coco into looking like a ghost menacingly over Peanut's shoulder and also to make the border and destresses to mimic an old portrait.
The work above mine features two dogs, the one in the foreground being the central focus, spotted in a suit and tie, and the secondary dog in the background wearing an old fashioned gown. The dog in the background is heavily blurred. Both dogs are in front of a murky gray textured background. The obvious detail of the piece is that there’s a large crack running diagonally across the composition. The edges of the composition are faded and textured, and there’s a couple of white spots and smudges along the picture.
ReplyDeleteMy original interpretation of this photo is that the dog in the background is somewhat sad while looking at the dog in the foreground. This is supported by what I thought was a longing, saddish look on the dog’s face. There’s a sentimental element as it looks like the dog is ghastly or fading away (which may not be intentional as the wet collodion technique has that short depth of field as well as motion blur so it may just have been a stylistic choice to fit the theme.) Another interpretation I have of the dog in the background is that they’re glaring or mean mugging the one in foreground, the longer I stare at the dog’s expression, the clearer it looks that the dog could simply just be a bit angry. The way that the photo is laid out reminds me of a political photo where the dog in the background could be an assassin. I remember the last formal picture of Lincoln being mentioned having a scratch on it so this could be a satirical play on that situation but with two dogs.
This piece hits the wet collodion plate technique right on the head. The depth of field in this photo is short but gives the audience enough detail for the audience to form some kind of understanding of what’s going on. The dog in the foreground is also super sharp which further enhances this look. There’s a subtle texture in the background of the photo which came from the Library of Congress and there’s a few minor textures from adobe brushes that I could see in the background and on the foreground dog’s suit. For the most part, the real texture is on the edges of the piece that help show the imperfections of the wet collodion process. I assume there was a textured brush used on a layer and if the creator used black they inverted it to be white and to surround the borders of the photo. Lastly, there’s that glaringly obvious crack across the photo that helps tie the theme together.
The theme of this photo may leave the reader with more than one interpretation but is interesting to look at and dynamic in a sense of what it’s trying to replicate. Through the use of blurring, smudging, photoshopping elements, and adding textures; we’re left with some haunting imagery of two dogs. Additionally, those techniques were well acted on to help bring the story to life. The dog in the background is edited well and I find that my eyes can’t stop staring at it regardless of how sharp the foreground dog is. To sum it up, the wet collodion imitation process was spot on and the image looks cohesive as well as professional.