Inch closer, it's okay. Closer, closer, watch your nose, there you go. Take a look at the linen-like latticework and the painterly watercolors of the roses and wood table. Notice the weathered edges of the household products improvising as a vase for the dozen flowers. Pretty good Photoshop work, right?
An editor asks if this was made using a texture filter in Photoshop. Conceivable, believable, but hardly correct. In fact, other than a few simple color corrections, there isn't anything Photoshop about this print. This is a DIY art project, pure and simple. First, a disclaimer:
To be creative in the newsroom, think DIY. Finding money to fund a conceptual photographic illustration is akin to the elusive search for water on Mars.
Having said that, when Features landed a story in my lap about household products that could be used to possibly extend the life of fresh cut flowers, I was afoot with ideas. The first concept was to build a flower out of the household projects -- fun, but a little tired since we've done a few of these build-your-own illustrations recently. Next, we conjured up a plan to document the life of a rose from its humble cut beginnings to the faded end by photographing a string of roses in different stages of life. Try finding a dozen half-dying roses and you'll quickly find out that this is a path leading nowhere. Finally, the night before the shoot, a quick chat with idea-magnet and fellow photographer Laurie Skrivan helped solidify a champ of a concept -- use the household products as vases for a dozen roses. Aha, why didn't I think of that? Lesson learned, my friends, always bounce ideas off other creative minds.
On the day of the shoot, we arranged a dozen roses in emptied bottles of items ranging from Listerine to Clorox bleach, and photographed them in the Post-Dispatch studio using lighting that closely resembled -- which was my intent -- that of a Flemish still-life flower painting.
The photograph looked great -- ready to run as-is, but in my mind, it needed more, something that would help transcend its beauty to another level, with the hopes of stopping viewers and capturing their attention. Here is where the DIY concept works. In the past, I've used microwave ovens, hairdryers, saltwater, and other household items to create organic processes on printed photographs. So, I pitched the idea of homemade processes to my editor, who seemed attentive to it, save for the string of "no" answers when it came to money for photo prints. Seems like I would have to find more things at the house for this particular project.
Borrowing inspiration from painters (I recently returned from a museum trip through London and Paris fresh with visual ideas), I rummaged my house looking for items that would help me create a painterly effect on the photograph. At my disposal, I found some linen paper, a spray bottle with water for the plants, and access to a new inkjet printer my wife bought.
Early in the morning, I skipped the drive to the office and instead embarked on the project. After making several test prints on the linen paper using different settings on the inkjet, I sprayed them with water from the spray bottle, and watched as the ink seeped off the page. The key was copy photographing the print while it was still wet. Once it dried, the ink pooled, making an illegible mess. With fourth print in hand, in a shaded spot on the deck, I sprayed the print, copy photographed it with my PowerShot G12 point and shoot, and then dried it before it stained the deck.
Once in the computer, I applied some basic tonal corrections like curves, levels, and color-balance, and voila -- one homemade conceptual photograph illustration.
The important thing to remember -- and I have to always keep this in mind since my thoughts tend to runaway into the land of digital manipulation impossible, is that some of the simplest tools are the best tools to realize your vision. Lastly, here's the most satisfying part -- normally a photo illustration doesn't tug at my heart, but this piece surely does, even to the point of making a small print for my desk. Plus, the rose that's pictured in front of the vase on the table -- yeah, it is still in my kitchen in a bud vase, almost ten days later going strong in nothing more than, guess what, water!
