Several months after shooting the images for this series I am proud to say they are finally complete. It took a while, what with adding a baby to the family and figuring out the balance between two kids and time for my work. But they are finished.
It was so satisfying to try new techniques and problem solve as I went. I wasn't sure if this was going to work at all, and to some extent they didn't come out exactly as I envisioned. Part of this was because of makeup, etc., and partly because my photoshop skills aren't super awesome. However, the entire process was highly gratifying and I learned a lot.
The premise of this mini series was to see how timeless popular poses for selfies and other portrait shots would be when turned into statues. You can read up on my entire thought and purpose for the series here. As I was editing the images I realized how much more satirical the entire series was turning out to be. The unedited raw images of my models on their own were amazingly beautiful. The light was gorgeous and if not for the caked on white face paint would have made for noteworthy portraits. As I began to blend them into their busts and set them on plinths, changing colors and removing eyes they became more grotesque. But not in a bad way. But there was a definite sense of the surreal as they turned from beautiful, although sometimes silly (The Duck, anyone?), to these off-putting figures. Perhaps it was because of my mediocre photoshop skills. It may be that if these were done in real stone they would in fact still be beautiful. What do you think?
The majority of the film is video of the actual shoots because I found the process of getting my models into the popular selfie poses to be most interesting and I only added screen shots of how I created an image for only one of the shots (the process was more or less the same for each image and once I got it down with the first the following images went quickly). Some of the titles for the poses are actually what the pose is called and others I came up with myself. I hope you enjoy.