I have seriously always been a fan of mood shots, when you look at the image it evokes a feeling, a place, or a person. Generally speaking I don't think that is something my work normally relates, there is usually a bit more simplicity in my offerings, but this particular piece is magnificent in how it transports you to another place. Looking at it even now I am teleported to my favorite spot on the roof, with the beach towel my ex gave me and a stack of comic books.
Initially I was a bit confused at how I captured this shot because it looks like it was shot from above, but then I looked closer and realized this was shot near the front part of the roof where it curves at like a forty-five degree angle. It was the part of the roof where the buildings met and their was a small raised part which made for a great arm-rest.
The camera on it's mini-tripod was positioned on the no-longer-in-use chimney. I angled the camera down a bit to flatten out the subject in the view finder, and match the angle of the roof. Albeit I don't really use the view finder for these kind of shots, I mostly feel out what is in and out of the frame. This was one of my one-and-done shots. The trickiest part is always with the timer, hitting the shutter button and getting in a good position in the ten seconds you have before the shutter closes. I think that is the most amazing thing about a lot of my self-portraits, they're usually shot with a timer, so whatever distance I am from the camera I had to transverse in ten seconds, and get into whatever pose I was trying to capture, it's trickier than you think.
Otherwise I didn't really stage this shot, this was just the set up I had for the day. Staging isn't really my thing. I prefer to shoot what I see, as opposed to curating the image for the viewer. My curation comes in which images I select to edit and post.
In one of the other Series Favorites I think I may have mentioned how I thought most of the Tar Beach series was monochromatic, this image reinforces that feeling. The color of this shot just wasn't working for me, I wanted to neutralize the background pieces and dial the focus up on the subject, me. I knew that my skin-tone alone would help me to stand out from the lighter colored rooftop and fading beach towel. Ergo I desaturated the image, and dialed up the black, contrast and shadow. The contrast is really apparent in my facial hair and pubic area.
I don't usually crop in post, I attempt to frame the shot as I want it, so that is one aspect of editing I don't need to do. I love how the top of my head and a bit of my leg are a little cut-off giving the feeling of closeness and intimacy to the subject. The framing doesn't feel constrained but roomy and personal. The biggest illusion is how casual I seem focused on my reading and my hand gently caressing my belly.
My posing, I think is the strongest part of my work. Making sometimes very unnatural situations look easy-going, perfunctory and like happy accidents. This is where I think the artistry is under-estimated. Albeit I have been shooting myself for decades, its always a challenge to attempt to find something fresh and not derivative of previous work.
This like the other Series Favorites was also an image I was considering getting printed and framed. It mirrored in some ways this ceiling series I had done in my apartment and one of those images was also under review for being bought to life, but when thinking about creating any new artwork the problem remains the same, where do I hang it?
My walls are already crowded, my few nooks and crannies are already filled with artwork that can't currently be on the wall. Sometimes I wish I had walls like the TARDIS that would scroll up and down into infinity so I could hang as much as I would like, and when I wanted to change things up just swipe up or down. I am enjoying this little writing project, its giving me an appropriate forum to discuss process a bit more, something I loathed during my exhibition year. Not because I don't have a process, I was so new to my art, I didn't really understand how, or why I did what I did, I just did it. With the time passing I have settled more into who I am an am more comfortable talking about the minutiae of my artistic process.
