Two sides to every story

This is one of the more complex images I've ever created.

It began with two different photographs of the same woman, taken on the Boston Tee many years ago. (As I recall she was part of a group of nurses or nursing students who were going into Boston for the marathon.)

Anyway, I was struck by how the two photographs showed very different sides to the same person -- not a novel revelation to be sure but I thought it curious nonetheless.

So I brought these two images into Photoshop, and then added several stock images of textures and objects. Many layers later and after numerous manipulations I ended up with what you see here. One of my most favorite images as well.

Belleville, 20th arrondissement, Paris

This is a very lightly retouched/manipulated photo of the Laurent family grave in Belleville cemetery, Paris. The central object is so compelling that I couldn't bring myself to modify anything other than the tonal values.

Calvaire

This is a good example -- well, good to me at any rate -- of a simple photograph with minimal filtering in Photoshop.

I took this photo at Calvaire cemetery, near Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, Paris, on November 1, 2006. The cemetery is only open this one day out of the year, All-Saints' Day, and there was a line of people wending their way through the tiny burial ground trying to connect with the distant past, trying to fathom these Parisians long-dead for several centuries. In fact Calvaire is one of the two remaining church burial grounds left inside historic Paris, that is, inside the 20 arrondissements. (The other is Charonne in the 20th arr.) Shortly before the revolution in 1789 the king ordered all the church burial grounds closed (for health reasons) and the remains removed to what is now the famous catacombs in Montparnasse, in the southern section of the city.

For some reason, only Calvaire and Charonne were left undisturbed, more or less.

Anyway, following the closure of the old church burial grounds the city began creating cemeteries to the east (Pere Lachaise), south (Montparnasse) and north (Montmartre) to prodivde a more tidy and elegant repository for the remains of Paris' "departed."

Anyway, this photo was shot in one tiny corner of this very tiny cemetery.

Framed

These are two stock images -- actually royalty-free images from the DigitalVision Geometry series -- used in tandem to create the germ of this image. In fact, this was one of the largest images I every created, nearly 1.5 gigs in size due to the sheer number of layers I used in creating the depth and richness I think this image possesses. Then again maybe it doesn't.

What do I know? I'm just the schmuck who spent hours tinkering with tonal qualities and duplicating layer after layer in hopes to achieve . . . what?

This.

Paris Holocaust Memorial 2

This is a variant on the Mémorial de la Déportation, or rather a portion of the memorial. Unlike yesterday's image this one has been heavily manipulated. Also, the perspective is almost 180 degrees from yesterday's image, with this one facing the river, which is just beyond the grating.

Basically, I duplicated the base layer, and then using the transform tool flipped the copy horizontally. After modifying the tonal values I added a sky image and then a stock image of metal objects (the ball in the sky and the metal plates below), and then a final image of a billboard on another layer as an overlay.

Paris Holocaust Memorial

Located at the very tip of the Îsle de la Cité, in the shadow of Notre Dame, is the French Memorial to the Holocaust (called the Mémorial de la Déportation). Built in 1962 on the site of a former morgue -- quite appropriate since nearly all those deported went to their deaths -- this haunting space remembers the 200,000 French men, women and children shipped off to die in Nazi death camps in the East. Claustrophobic, to be sure but incredibly powerful.

This particular image is at the base of the memorial with my back to the tip of the island and looking up the stairs and in the direction of Notre Dame. Aside from modifying the tonal values to enhance the starkness of the image, little manipulation has otherwise been done.

Iron

There are no "schools" of art only tendencies, leanings, inclinations, predispositions, susceptibilities to one style or another at a given moment. As the moments change so do the styles.

Lights

This was a straightforward creation: single photo of car headlights of cars shot at slow speed, rotating camera as shutter is released. Image then hevily manipulated in PS.