April Photo Features
Revised: April 6, 2007I am trying to make this a monthly regular where I post a selection of my most favorite photographs on deviantart. I tried this back in February and it seemed quite popular with people on msn and surely gained those I featured a few extra hits so it is now back and better than last time as I am to provide some in depth critique on each of the photos I feature.
How to Feel Wanted by =tweeny, on Dec 29, 2006.
Upon first laying eyes on this photo by tweeny I knew it was going to be a favorite of mine for certain. It’s an emotive piece of work as stated in the artists description, and I tend to agree that although there are fetishes out there that this would fall in to, this isn’t so much a fetish photo than it is an emotive photo. The depth of field lends the eye to the sharp focus and detail of the top thigh which is really well lit to give a good contrast gradient through out the photo.
The crossing of the legs is in itself emotive, to some it means “no”, or it can be used as part of a sexy pose to connotate feelings of lust. The title is an interesting one, because it brings up the question of how one makes oneself feel wanted. In the case of this photo it could be to strike a sexy pose and publish it, people looking will tend to lust after the subject and thus make them feel wanted. With a little more thought on the subject maybe the photo in this case is the eye of the beholder, such as the person they want to lust after them. Not an online audience which is the case here, but within the photo someone else, a special someone whom they want to make them feel wanted. As with a lot of photos there are many stories which could be made from this one photo and so I shan’t elaborate on any more and simply let you check out this fantastic piece of art.
Sunflower by ~splucy, on Feb 19, 2006.
I had in mind another one of Lucy’s photos for this months features one she had shown me a while back when we kept in touch after first meeting at the London Devmeet. It’s nice to see how much she has improved since then as a photographer. This photo out of all those I have looked at with the eye as its subject is miraculous. She already had a yellow pigmentation on the inside of her eye and chose to use a little photomanipulation to give this effect; a sun flower design on her eye.
This is a pretty flawless photo and as such most defiantly deserves this months feature even though it was shot early last year. The clarity of the photo which is provided by the wonderfully sharp focus, works with the colour and tones within the photo to provide a very enticing photo. There are emotive connotations here but none which could be seen as purposeful by the artist, although I could go so far as to provoke thought by saying the expression on the eye could be providing you, the on looker with something to work with if you where going to comment on any possible meanings. Simply put, this is a beautiful eye, from a beautiful person. Go check out their gallery!
Fin. Last Breath by =Dejon, on Mar 31, 2007
Fin. Last Breath by Dejon is a mind boggling photo, one which you might simply look at and pass off as a really good painting or illustration. However although it is hard to tell what is real and what isn’t in this photo, that is what makes it an all together fantastic photographic illusion. I can for one say that the flowers, himself and the rope are all from the same shot, captured with an 11mm fisheye lens, while the fog is also real, produced from 15 pounds of dry ice! There are obviously edits done on this photo, and I can’t say wether it has had a little or a lot of photomanipulation because either way the artist is obviously incredibly talented. The texture of the walls, emphasis of the fog and some modification of curve function on Photoshop is all that has apparently been done to this. From a fellow photographers point of view I can see how this has been done to produce the effect shown here, and what a fabulous effect it is!
Moving on from the techniques used to produce the illusion, this is a very creative photo and as such the illusion produced expresses feelings to those who study it. “Fin. Last Breath” in itself is a pretty expressive title for a photo, the last breath shown here could be one during entrapment denoted by the rope attaching the figure to the wall (a pretty basic deconstruction I’m sure). Wether you don’t believe that this could be a photo or not you should still be amazed at the artists skill, I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time and every time I do it’s a sign of a very talented individual, if your a member of deviantart I would watch out for this deviant and check through his gallery, its spectacular.
This Is Called Living. by ~investigation, on Mar 30, 2007
I decided to browse deviantart this morning in the search for the last installment for this months featured artists and this immediately jumped out the screen at me. The shot could have been better composed and captured with a shallower depth of field but I feel that penalizing such a nice photo on such technicalities would be unfair as it is otherwise a very nice photo and one could even say that the composition adds to that by framing the subject with a lot of negative space.
Due to the nature of deviantart and the artist deciding not to make a higher resolution version available it is difficult to make out what is and isn’t in focus, however giving the benefit of the doubt I would say that it looks like a pretty crisp photo. The fact that the entire scene is in focus gives the photo an extra sense of space but also takes the focus of the photo off the subject and more on the background. The colour contrast between the subject and the background helps counter this and, I feel, adeptly balances the two to make both technical flaws obsolete as in the case of this photo they actually add to it as a technique rather than detract from it as a mistake. This could be a “happy mistake” or the photographer actually intended it to look like that. Having seen a lot of investigations other work in her gallery I would be more inclined to state that it is a technique purposefully utilized to write emotive denotations into the scene. With that said, after viewing the rest of investigations gallery I can happily recommend that you go and check it out because there are many more photos there of this quality.
Conclusion & Thanks
To conclude I hope you have enjoyed this months little photographic feature,
I have tried to give good quality reviews, although these shall improve as I get more practice in writing them. I would also like to thank those deviants featured here for giving me permission to feature their artwork here on photogabble, it’s thanks to their permission that I am able to provide a quality article such as this and I hope that my readers will check out a couple of them and even add some favs and/or comment.
Next month I shall focus more on new artists and those who have yet to get member status on deviantart.
Tagged: 2007, april, deviant, deviantart, feature, female, illusion, legs, male, photo, photographic, photographs.
