[wulinka]

As many of you know I love small stuff.
Today I was working with a bunch of tiny clay figurines, each no more than half an inch or so in size.

I was playing around and at some point came up with the pictures you see below.
I find them very interesting to look at, but believe that they are not everybody's
cup of tea at all. Not seeing someones face in a portrait is extremely irritating.

And with the guys in these pictures, they do on one had seem quite lively to me,
you can imagin that they are talking to each other,
but there is something going on we don't understand.
there is this weird look of their faces and we don't know what it is, are they wearing some sort of mask?
Or are they aliens? are they in the process of dissolving, or maybe just materialising this very moment?

These pictures reminded me of a series of portraits I saw at the Mannheim Kunsthalle (Museum), where the photographer had blacked out the irises of the subjects eyes, very irritating.
But also reminded me of a series I did in 2005 with siluettes of people ...

Anyway, here you go. You don't have to like them, but any comments will be welcome!

Uli


1


2


3


4


5


6


7


8


9

Thanks for looking!!

[Irma]

Uli, I like very much the idea of making a series with this clay figures. I think it is very challeging as they are very small, but I see a lot of potencial.

About the topic... I see lots of feelings involved in your pictures, Uli. The pose in #4 and 7 is very sweet, #3 too. I really don't need to have all detail to imagine and feel what you want to express here.

I see your presentation clean, and I like the light.

My suggestions in this series are:

The post processing looks a bit to hard for me. I am missing some depth in the background and also a bit of noise. If the background was painted in post processing a bit of noise and using your colors with gradient as you have in #3 would look better I think.

Have you thought about giving some reference to show what we are really looking at? I mean, if you place in the background or around this figures something were we could relate the size of the figures, that would make them look even more interesting. I think about placeing them in a setup with small dry leaves and maybe a dandelion, mushroom or a clover just to give the hint of the size or something else you think that fit the idea and feelings you are expressing ...

If they were warriors I would suggest to place them on one of those cards/boards from the computer with lots of cables and colorful bottons to relate the size. But as they look so tender, as a couple or a family... I think something in relation to that would be great. Maybe a path of rice?

Hope this helps...

[matthew]

I'm not sure I like these. Technically, I find the masking / blurring around the faces a little too abrupt, and might prefer them to be feathered in a little more. But ultimately that doesn't really matter; these photos are interesting and unlike anything else that I've seen. Even if I don't like them, they're different and have something to say, which is a rare and valuable thing.

(I do find #4 in particular to be very effective, and I feel like I'm seeing exactly what you want me to see.)

[wulinka]

Thank you both!

Irma, there is some valuable advise (as always from you), I'll see how I will follow up with this.

Acutally, for both of you, these pics are almost straight from the cam. very slight curves adjustment in a couple of them.
I used the 5D with one of these +1, +2... macro "filters" (magnifiers, srew onto the front of the lense) and it creates this effect. your DOF becomes virtually zero and drops very sharp, thus the abruptness that Mat mentions.
the blur is very soft and a bit shiny/glowy.

The backdrop is also real, I had a brownish one first (you can see it in the no. 1), but once I saw the red one, I liked it much better.
so Irma, there is no depth, if I wanted to I would have to create the impression of depth digitally.
I could try close the aperture a bit, but with that magnifier screwed on, it would have minimal effect anyway.

Mat, thanks especially for your honest opinion, I think this is a bit out of the ordinary range of things we look at. I am not entirely sure I like it myself yet
Naturally, as any photographer, when I started out, I was trying to have the focus exactly on the eye of at least one of the figurines, and there were some cute shots, but as I tried further, I found this interesting....





Uli

[Irma]

Now I see Uli. They are really small!!

I was sure you had blured some parts of the picture, but after you comment telling that you used a converter I can understand the blurriness. I also have one of those converters. I use it with my 85mm with f11 or closer sometimes trying to get the OOF not too blurred.

Actually, I used this combination of lens/converter in this dandelion picture. I added a bit of texture in the background masking the flower just a bit. The blurriness with this converter is indeed as you say, shiny.

[wulinka]

Oh yes, Irma, I remember that dandelion. The problem with the magnifiers is that even in focal plane, things are almost not sharp anymore. so we use them as a toy and for effect rather than for actual magnification.
I like the glow around edges that they can produce.

Pondering over how to continue...

Uli

[Don Schaeffer]

Interesting experiments. The differential sharpness is very expressive. The highlighted figure islike the main speaker in a dialog. Keep working at this is my suggestion and when you get enough of them, you can arrange them in a dramatic sequence. It would make a great YOU TUBE slideshow with music.

[wulinka]

huh, thanks Don. See, I would have never thought of You Tube as a home for these guys! Good to get your input.

Uli

[Keith Alan]

I just wish there was something that was sharp in these.
It's hard to justify intentionally blurred faces when there isn't a strong enough sharp zone to balance it.

Like you say--it's as if they are fading out of reality.
But I would like to see them without any tricks because they are very interesting little figures.
Personally, I would ditch the close-up filters, stop way down and add flash to get some DOF, then play with blur in post for more control over the finished product.
Leaving this to chance isn't my way of doing things.

I imagine your autofocus spent a long time trying to get a lock with such a shallow DOF. ???
Anyway, they are interesting images.

[wulinka]

ok, I understand people need somthing to be in focus in order to look at a picture, I guess it is human nature to look for the subject , which they want to recognise from what they know in the real world.

What if these were aliens though, and their bodies were say liquid, semi-liquid.... :o thoughts going astray ..

Keith, I naturally prefer using mechanics over using bits and bytes for effects where I can, somehow I am more intrigued by what glass can do than "faking" it on the computer. Which is a personal preference and I know the line between what's real and what's fake is all blurred in photography.

I have some ideas for these, thank you guys for your input so far!

Uli