EX172 Auditioning
I was in a conversation with Suellen Saidee Cook and Brie Stockwell, while we were creating a new episode of ‘A Creative Affair’, (our podcast on creativity https://www.acreativeaffairpodcast.com ) and Suellen talked about how she auditions prospects to add into her photo montages. She basically tries them out to see if they will work or not. Often they don’t so she goes looking for another contender to audition.
I found this idea just lovely. And it has been on my mind since. So often we keep thinking we are looking for the perfect match. But really that is a difficult goal to achieve. Why not audition artworks or even looks to see how they are going? With looks this is really easy to do with presets in Lightroom these days, as you just have to hover over the preset and you get a full size preview of the preset applied to your photograph. I have taken to using my range of presets to process in this manner and have found it to be very effective. I use the preset as starting point.
In this exercise we have a few weeks to experiment and explore. Imagine you are working on a book, and you are making three double page spreads. You chapter or series needs a bit of a theme to hold them together. Perhaps it is by look or subject.
Take new photographs for this exercise. This always forces you to practice your craft from the beginning.
Once you have your contenders for your three double pages. I would suggest you need about twenty to thirty images as contenders to do this well. In my example, I have 500 contenders for my book ‘Tusche Trees’ (or abstract trees). Now you can start experimenting with your pairs.
For each double page spread include at least three variants with one common photograph between all three.
Repeat for each double spread.
You should be uploading nine images. You may also like to upload a grid of your whole collection.
Photo A & Photo B
Photo A & Photo C
Photo A & Photo D
Photo E & Photo G
Photo E & Photo H
Photo E & Photo I
Photo J & Photo K
Photo J & Photo L
Photo J & Photo M
As we have a few weeks, you may like to take this a bit further and actually make a book. But that is totally up to you and the amount of time you have.
We will discuss these in Len's Class on Tuesday 9th May 2023 at 9.30 am Sydney time.
Please post your works in the forum here. https://lensclub.discussion.community/post/ex172-auditioning-for-pairs-12607826?pid=1334901860#post1334901860
In my example bellow, I haven’t actually worked hard enough to resolve them.
