 |
If you haven't viewed the gallery yet, I highly suggest it before reading this page! |
Overview Here I'll explain the mysterious subjects in the various galleries, and give a little background information about their creation. In some spinouts the subject is more obvious than others, due to the varying distortion the subject receives from the spinout process. The images chosen for each gallery are the cream of the crop, but by no means the only ones. I have many more spinouts patiently waiting for their time to shine. Several of the images are, in my mind, vertical pieces. However, computer monitors are rarely built vertically (for good reason), so all of my spinouts in the gallery are portrayed horizontally. Thankfully, prints can be placed horizontally or vertically without restriction, besides wall space. But since there is no defined top or bottom to the images any alignment will work, it really depends on taste! Below are statements about each gallery, along with one vertical example that works particularly well. If you click on the image, it will take you to the gallery being described. Enjoy! |
 |
Gallery One: An Awesome Accident (2008) This cleverly titled gallery earned its name from the origin of my first spinout, which was, simply put, an accident. In certain cases, the less you know the more you can do, merely because if you don't know the correct path (putting the scanning back in horizontally or vertically), both the correct and incorrect paths are available to you. If I had previously learned how a rollout works, or thought more about it before putting the insert in the camera vertically, I would never have stumbled upon spinouts. During this first year of discovering spinouts, I played less with imagining the result prior to capturing the image and used more of a guess-and-check method since I was still grasping at comprehending what was happening. Fortunately the Better Light's prescan feature proved exceptionally useful as it allowed me to see what the result would be before committing a large amount of time on a final scan. I tried using a variety of subject categories during this year, seeing how various subjects reacted to being spun out. I don't want to make it TOO obvious about which image is which subject, but look for little hints and clues in the colors and textures present. The title often provides a fairly large hint as well, although not always. Subjects Presented Rubber Bands |
|
|
Gallery Two: Twisting the Tropics (2009) After a school year studying photography in college, I came back with a slightly different perspective. Instead of taking final scans of everything I did (because the year before everything was new and exciting), I aimed more for quality over quantity. Control of the result was my main focus, and at this point I was able to roughly predict the result, or at least realize how altering the subject or angle would alter the spinout. I also focused heavily on how minor alterations to the subject will effect the spinout, tips I mostly picked up from watching Larry Guyer's photo shoots. I took many many many prescans, where the only difference would be a small amount of putty (stolen from Larry's tool cabinet) underneath one side of the subject to slightly tilt it, or various other tiny alterations just to slightly nudge the end result. Larry was using a pineapple for a photo shoot (a real photo shoot) but when he finished the shots he no longer needed it, so it became my primary subject. To practice control, I focused on this one subject in order to discover different ways of expressing one object, while still maintaining a pleasing design. Eventually the pineapple was nearing its limit in age, so I gave it back to Larry and I never saw it again. I named it Joe. At that point I turned to a second subject, a koosh ball from my youth. I have fond memories of that koosh ball, either playing mini tennis or as a projectile against my older brother. It never was very effective as a weapon. Good times, though. Subjects presented: Pineapple |
 |
|
|
Gallery Three: Galactic Plastic (2010) At this point I was a self-proclaimed expert on spinouts, and was seeking a new subject to twist into a spinout. My eye caught on a small sculpture my father made: several dozen plastic box pieces of varying colors glued together into a sturdy shape. Its transparency and various colors caught my attention most of all. My father reluctantly let me use it, and I promised that I wouldn't break it. I took a few spinouts of it and got results that I thought were incredible. The variations in color and depth created an entirely new reality, a new world. This genesis inspired the gallery's name, Galactic Plastic. Inevitably, because I told my father that I wouldn't break it, I broke his plastic sculpture while trying to balance it upside down. I felt terrible of course, but this actually opened up the subject much more, and allowed me to arrange the broken pieces in ways of my choosing, to arrange things in my own fashion. I acquired more boxes of the same style, but of many colors, shapes (all rectangular) and sizes. There were many challenges to overcome - lighting was a huge pain, because if the boxes were lit wrong there would be specular highlights everywhere or if they were lit wrong another way the colors would become flat, or the light would be shining directly into the camera, etc. Positioning was a huge variable as well, because the tiniest nudge would shift the result in a small but significant way. The colors also have varying qualities of light absorbtion, which came with a whole host of problems. But I managed, and learned. From there, I had what I needed to create my own worlds, all in the back room of my father's office. And so I did. And I saw that it was good. Oh, and if you were worried about my father's sculpture, he glued it back together. This actually made it better, because he got to clean out the insides that were loaded with dust and spiderwebs. Subjects Presented: Small transparent colored plastic boxes of varying shapes and sizes |
|
|
Gallery Four: Its Elemental, My Dear Watson (2010) After enough practice with plastics, I decided to envision the result and have an objective before the shot, and then attempt to create that goal, rather than my main technique of "something different". Since I've been playing with spinouts for a while by this time, I decided to aim for mastery of the basics. Symbolically I linked the basics to the four primal elements, earth, fire, water, and air, as these are the basics of our existence on this planet. As a person who plays video games, the elements are a common theme, especially in a fantasy setting where magic is abundant. Captain Planet was one of my favorite childhood shows, one of the few TV shows I watched, where the natural elements fought off villains with blatantly evil names. And this life thing we're a part of tends to have the four elements all around as well, so I drew inspiration from a variety of sources, some fantastical while others are a little more down to Earth. Because I was entranced with the plastic boxes at the time, and knew their adaptability and expressive colors, I continued to use them as my primary subject. I mixed and matched their various colors to fit the theme, aiming to emulate the four elements in both color and design, following one common interpretation of the element. Its difficult to express all of an element in a single image, as earth is both solid as a rock and loose as dirt, so I chose to express the part of the element that most related to me. The pieces in between the elements were less consciously created for the purpose of this gallery, but they are transitional pieces between the four basic elements, in some way representing the shift from one element to the next. Also, in regard to the gallery's name, Sherlock Holmes is a badass. Subjects Presented: Small transparent colorful plastic boxes of varying shapes and sizes |
|
|