Inspired

Once I got my head down and did some research yesterday, I came across some amazing photographers. First of all, I found a slideshow by Wayne Liu containing the most obscure, beautiful and mesmorising images:

http://www.foto8.com/home/content/view/994/136/

I wasn't sure how he had managed to make them look like they did at first, apart from that a few were double exposures. Then I read that he uses out of date photo paper, and uses a very high filter when printing them, to get a high contrast. Genius! I've always wanted to try using old paper to see how it would come out, and now I'd really love to try it. My most favourite photograph I've ever taken, was apparently taken all wrong. Wrong light, wrong exposure time, etc....but I think when the routine isn't followed by the book, you get the some really magical outcomes. I will post this photo soon.

Werner Branz also caught my eye...


The top one reminds me of Egyptian wall paintings! I love images that you have to look twice at. At first, you can't tell that it is taken of real people, it looks either painted or drawn, then you look again and realise they are real models and are just concealed behind a screen.

As for the others, I love how he's played with shadow and tried to disguise his subjects. I have looked at similar things in the past, ways to make things look different to how we are used to seeing them, and this has always been an area of interest to me.

Distortion is the word I'm looking for, and this photograph taken by Michele Clement shows exactly that...

I seem to be going down a pretty specific path, so my next aim will need to be to decide what method(s) I'm going to use to distort my portrait. I'm going to investigate into where you can buy out of date paper, but if that fails I'll need a back up. In the past, I've already used a broken wine glass in front of my model's face, and also photographed a friend who's face I projected a photograph of my own face onto. They both worked really well, but I obviously don't want to repeat myself, I need to think of new ideas.

A last little dose of inspiration...

'A bit spotty', I found this on wired.com, on the Top 10 Readers Black and White Photographs page. It doesn't give the photographers real name, just his screen name, Whiffleboy. It's just quite fun, and shows use of camouflage in a portrait.