Captive Influence

Here is a little something different. Inspired by refusing to mow my backyard (i mowed the rest of the yard though..thats good enough for 1 day lol). So I broke out the camera and this old looking jar in my basement (which had some kinda poison all over it (weed killer maybe) that made my fingers itch after touching it. The things i do for a photo lol)

Anyway.....Ive been working on this for 5 hours now...and it just doesnt feel right. Maybe cause its really busy...i cant tell. Maybe nothing is wrong with it at all???

Captive Influence

I'm not really sure whats going on actually. Did you put the flower on the jar? And if so, what was the point? Why is it in color and everything else is black and white. Good photo but I'm not sure what was the point of the manip..

tom

Image Details:

yeah...the flower is a composite. Also the jar is heavily painted (it was incredibly dirty to begin with) and a whole lotta masking, color correcting, light matching and bunch of other stuff (hopefully i pulled it off convincingly. It was pretty tough to match color to black and white. Even if i matched b&w to b&w..then artificially colored the photo...would still be as difficult.)

The meaning behind it:

The flower represents...well a lot of things (its also open to interpretation). Basically though it represents life in a way. The flower is simple...healthy..colorful..youthful..different (etc.). Its full of life. The background represents the rest of the world. Its complex..its boring..its bigger than the flower is (etc.) The way the two interact is...the flower wants to influence the rest. It wants to make that difference, turn everything back to color ...and make it as beautiful as it is. Its almost as if it wants to be noticed. But it cant. Its stuck in the jar. And in the jar it sits.

Not everything pretty has to have reasoning and logic behind it. I like the concept, it's very "poetic". I actually didn't read your meaning, too many words. Although you are right, there is something off with the flower. I'm not sure what... I guess it is kinda hard to tell if the flower is in the jar on it or what... I'll check back, maybe it will come to me.

Maybe its the simple fact its in color??

Maybe its too clean? I just noticed this. The glass is a very thick..kinda dirty......yet the flower is completely clean. I have the highlights over the flower...darkened the flower in certain spots but there is no dirty glass over it. Maybe thats throwing it off.....

Ok here is a different version. The problem with this is trying to find the balance between "dirt" and "color". Too much dirt...even though it looks good kills the color of the flower. Not enough...well looks like my first pic.

http://www.geocities.com/t_bucket454/captive_influence.html (same as above link)