tobias m. schiel
The current Lens Artists Challenge is perfect pairs (or diptychs), and reading this prompt immediately reinded me I always wanted to pair these two. They were taken in 2023 but I never really got around to continuing this series with things I see in museums. So this was a very welcome reminder.
“A field day for deconstructivists: Is it really possible to speak of a ‘faceless self portrait’? Isn’t a person’s face what we believe to be the essence of their portrait? And doesn’t – on the other hand – the abstraction called for by a ‘faceless portrait’ defy the purpose? Couldn’t anyone hence claim that this self portrait was more accurately theirs? Must, therefore, any faceless self portrait incoporate some irony? And if so, with all différence lost and some irony thrown into the mix, what does it show? Me? Nah.”
An entry for this week’s lens artists challenge #304: Behind. The challenge is about backgrounds, and so is this picture – in a less literal sense, too.
Initially, I only wanted to make a picture of a bench, a tree and the old man on a hill, in silhouette. Then I saw the potential for a short narrative – with a very similar, epic story by Christophe Chabouté, The Park Bench, at the back of my mind. So this is also a homage to one of my favorite graphic novels.
Continue reading “A Bench”
Lens-Artists Challenge #298: To Be Young Again
Like “Lovely Rita” a couple of weeks ago, this one is based on a Beatles song. Though I am not a big fan of their music in general, I think the “Sgt. Peppers“ album is a work of genius, and I always wanted to do a series of pictures based on the entire selection of songs it features. One day… For now, here’s an entry for the Lens-Artists Challenge # 297: Music to My Eyes.
Another entry for the lens-artists challenge: Of the many composition factors in photography, this challenge focuses on shape, form, texture, and light – and I think those are exactly the means I used in this photo.
I was making these pictures for this year’s Bingo Challenge over at the Toy Photographers blog – the cue is ‘secret’ – when the Lens Artist’s ‘sound’ challenge popped up. Having posted so many sound-related pictures last year, I thought I’d go with the whispered words, the hushed voices a secret requires.
The first picture shows the original idea, the second resulted from trying the same in a more noir style.
“What have we got?” – “One dead joke, sir. GSW to the punch line. Timing seems a bit off, don’t you think?”
An entry for this month’s toy photography challenge: dad jokes. And since the picture is also a bit dramatic, this might also be a fitting entry for this week’s lens-artists challenge.
empire of lights 