Tag: Black and white

How to Make a Faceless Self Portrait (With Dog)

Tobias M. Schiel6 Comments

These miniature scenes do not happen out of the blue. I am an amateur photographer. I love wearing that type of cap. People have to wait for my while I take a photo. And yes, I have photographed shop windows before.

Scanning my photos for proof, I found some pictures that fit the bill. Looking back even made me realize I hid my face in my real-life self portraits as well.

I think when we photograph we always do it with thousands of pictures in our heads, even if we do not have them all before our inner eye in the moment we release the shutter.

Left: “A Picture With Me in It” (2012), right: “Junk” (2009)

Party of Five

Tobias M. Schiel8 Comments

Lens-Artists Challenge 312: Sense of scale. Photographing 1/87 scale (H0) worlds is in itself playing on our sense of scale, maybe even aiming at the viewer questioning her or his sense of scale for a moment. At the same time, most of the elements of a photo are applied in this small world, too: The objects in this picture, along with the camera position, should give a feeling of depth here. By employing these means, I hope to give the picture a real-life immediacy … a touch of streeet photography at best.

“Faceless Self Portrait”

Tobias M. SchielLeave a comment

“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.”

Secrets

Tobias M. Schiel7 Comments

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.

Let Me Off Uptown

Tobias M. Schiel6 Comments

When I photographed the Jazz series last year, I felt I should also include some pictures of the band playing on a small stage, in a jazz club rather than a ballroom or a concert hall. However, I never really felt like building the diorama I needed.

While I was making some other pictures however, the frustration about what felt like I was missing out got so strong that I finally I built this 1/87 scale model of a club I remember from 40 years ago … vaguely. Welcome to the Downtown!

Continue reading “Let Me Off Uptown” →

Réserve

Tobias M. Schiel13 Comments

LAPC #265: Black and White or Monochrome | Black and white is a preferred choice when I photograph miniature toys. It seems to add another layer of abstraction to pictures which already show abstract depictions of reality – these toys and models have to be abstract due to their size (and my building skills). I feel that the additional layer of abstraction sort of distracts from the fact that we are dealing with tiny plastic toys, but I still cannot grasp why I would think so.

As for the procedure, I firmly believe that shooting color and only creating a black and white picture in editing is not the best way to go at it. A black and white picture is not simply a ‘normal’ picture minus the color. I feel that we pay more attention to light, develop a keener eye for slight nuances as well as stark contrasts in brightness when we are not distracted by colors, and can’t rely on contrasting colors. But maybe that’s just me.