A. Aronsson's WeBOLLog

As you might have noticed contests do motivate my creativity. This time it was the annual contest of Tenimages.org that seemed interesting, even though I got into it quite late and was very stressed out because of my planned trip to Japan. I was actually leaving the country on the deadline for submissions! In spite of this I managed to submit an entry, though sadly it did not even make it to the 142 finalist posters, but I’m happy anyway :) It was fun to participate!

The theme this year was: labels

A label is any kind of tag attached to something so as to identify the object or its content. Labeling means naming. It is human instinct to group things with what they are most similar and name them as a whole. We live in a world filled with labels antagonising each other to win our preference. There are labels associated with consumer products and fashion. People voluntarily label themselves in order to have a sense of belonging to a group, but there also labels that people use to categorize others stemming from feelings of racism and xenophobia, political and religious discrimination, etc. What is the role of these labels in your life? How can a label describe the world you live in? Can a label give the infinite set of experiences, beliefs and desires that summarise each human being?

I had a number of ideas, but with my limited time and brains I only managed to realize one of them.

Recursive Labeling

re·cur·sive
–adjective
pertaining to or using a rule or procedure that can be applied repeatedly.

la·bel·ing
–verb (used with object)
to affix a label to; mark with a label.

As you can see I had created labels in different sizes and tied them together as a chain of labels that labeled each other… it’s a bit abstract, I guess. The picture with the black background also looks a bit dark, but I guess that depends on it being next to the other picture.

The process was quite straight forward. I printed a bunch of labels in relative sizes, cut those out and used them as templates to cut the actual labels out from table placement cards I had bought at the book store. Then after deciding in what order I should put the different colors I made string holes that were supposed to fit the scale of the different label sizes. Lastly I glued the labels which I had grouped together to create the final labels and then I just tied them together with pieces of string!

The harder part was to get them to look good in a photo. I messed around with many flash configurations, mainly because I’m a newbie strobist with little experience, but after two sessions I had to be satisfied because I really had no more time. The pictures themselves had to have a high resolution so they are both made from three pictures each stitched together as panoramas.

Again, the entries did not fare well in the contest, but perhaps next time! If you find a creative contest you figure I should participate in, send me a message! That was how I ended up creating something for this contest! :o

I’ve been following the terrific blog of David Bicho, a Photographer who shares very nice information of how he works and facts about photography! April the 18th he posted a contest where you could win a Canon lens, and naturally it was a photo contest. The theme was “a potato in a bathtub”. I found this very funny and instantly decided to enter the contest :)

After some brainstorming and juggling ideas with a few friends I had formed a plan. The day before the deadline, last Friday, I went to a toy store and bought a doll house bathroom set. I used this bathtub to let my potato get some relaxation time! He got hot water and soap bubbles, while being monitored by rubber ducks. A disappointment was that the ducks were molded solid and did not float, but at least they look cute!

The location was at a friend’s place as I had been invited over that evening; and because I would have no other opportunity to make the shoot that week I brought all my gear to her place! Preparing and shooting took all in all around 1½ hours. This was the first time I tried using my eBay flash equipment, and I have to say it makes working with a scene way more interesting!

Up top you can see the image I submitted to the contest, and below are a few behind the scene shots!

Oh, and the result of the contest? This Saturday I got an email from David himself with the message that I *shock* was the winner!

This is actually the first photo contest I have ever won, and I have lost count of how many I have participated in. Though often the theme of a contest is very broad, like “summer”, “motion”, “pets” or “Christmas” which can be just about anything. The theme this time was much more specific while still leaving many parameters up to creativity, I like it!

There was a few questions in the email and I couldn’t help myself so I just wrote down everything I thought of in my response; it was received so well that the reply was hacked into a fake interview and promptly posted! You can read it in Swedish or in English translated through Google.

All in all I thank Mr. Bicho for a fun contest and I greatly look forward to future contests that he might host :) I hope they will be of the same inspiring nature!

Update: Today, May 6th, I finally got an adapter to use the lens I won on the GF1! I have not had much time to experiment yet, but it fits quite nicely on there :) I can’t wait for Panasonic to release an official adapter, perhaps with more functionality than the one I got now, which does nothing except being a solid lump of metal. See pictures below!

In an attempt to win a Lumix GF1, which I had actually already bought, I spent quite some time taking night photographs for the contest over at Mintur.se with that very camera. I did not end up winning but I got a nice collection of random pictures collected over numerous late nights! The image titles explain what you are seeing :)

The equipment I used were different stroboscopes, flashlights, extension cords, LEDs soldered to batteries and various other things. The shots in the factory were done with my older brother, and as to not waste his time I was jumping around like crazy in many shots, retaking them repeatedly. Afterward I was drenched in sweat!

I have been really busy for quite some time now, which sure has affected my blogging performance. Personal projects has been put on hold and media gathers up on my machine, being photos and video recordings. Previously I have mentioned that I will try to post interesting pictures on a more regular basis, but evidently that plan failed. It was actually when I was sorting out pictures for this post that I managed to collect photos for a couple of events which had so many pictures themselves that I deemed them worthy of their own post, which delayed this publication instead.

The below collection consists of random pictures taken during the last seven months, from May this year until last week. Image titles will give you a good hint of what is going on in each picture. They are listed in a chronological order displaying the oldest first, naturally.

On a side note; it feels a bit funny that the previous post was a ton of text, while this post is… well, a ton of pictures. Cross-post content type balancing!

This is my graduation picture from 2002.

I made this after graduating from my gymnasium studies (senior high school). In Sweden it is a tradition to wear a white hat when ending your studies and escape into the free(?) world of grownups. Taking the photos involved carrying a whole car-full of furniture into a photo studio and close co-operation with the photographer.

Something I have been asked quite a few times is how we made the water pouring. It is really quite simple, I poured the water into a bucket and then held the glass where the photographer said I would. He compared the picture he just took with what he saw in the camera. In the end it looks like I held my glass under the stream of water.

This summer I was asked if I could help out with a graduation photo for a friend, and I was happy to oblige. The idea was to make something along the lines of my own graduation picture, seen above, with clones of oneself.

We spent some time sketching out a few concepts and quickly decided what to do. As she loves her car, and the fact she graduated in health care, a montage of her running over herself while trying to save herself with her own car seemed like a good idea.

To stop the car from leaning this way and the other, due to its’ suspension, we elevated it with three carjacks. She then posed for all the different characters while I snapped the pictures via a radio remote. People were constantly biking or walking past us, between the camera and the car, but we managed to take the last shot just before the clouds broke up and we had full sunshine. Phew!

The work in Photoshop went very smoothly. After correcting the gamma and position of all photos I simply cut her out from the different layers. There are hardly any overlays where she covers herself in another picture so it was a straight forward process. The slightly more challenging part was the heart massage, and the very funny part was to add the blood splatter… which surprisingly was accepted for the final version which was used for printing!

In the end all parties were happy with the result, I think :) hopefully this little project made the experience of graduating even more fun, I enjoyed it at least!