Challenge Take Angelica's grabshot and make it impressive: express your own ideas!

Angelica Oung was looking for her subject in downtown Taipei and instead took some grabshots. One seems to me to have potential for much further work.



So here's the challenge. Use this image and take as ambitous far fetched or conservative steps to derive for this a work of art the uses the legs of the manequin, the round base, the plastic bucket and faucet, the tiles and so forth in a context that is captivating.

So let's see your best work!

Don't be inhibited! Download the full resolution image here .

Asher

The link will expire in 7 days, just let us know if it needs to be renewed! Include, as usual, © 2007 photographer on the derivative picture you post here.

This scene was screaming to be stylized. When I first looked at Angelica's image I imagined a tragic scene, maybe a drunk leaning over a sink or leaning against a wall in a filthy public restroom, maybe something far worse... To help convey an even grittier feeling I added harsh contrast and stronger color with Photoshop through some adjustment layers, mostly with a steep curve. An orange Photo Filter layer added the punch to the tile color and I used the water color filter selectively to remove some of the smoothness inside the bucket and on the leg to better match the other surfaces. The jpg compression and small size softened those details somewhat but it still looks homogenous. The colors may be out of gamut for many uses but it suited the image for a digital presentation. I don't know if that's a typical concern when posting manipulated images here in a challenge.

I found the circular shapes interesting when cropped as well as the diagonals of the tile and leg. The faucet might have stayed had there been more happening on the surface of the water in the bucket. The shot didn't appear to be a likely candidate for doing much with at first glance.

Paul

Thanks for kicking this off! You have made a greatv start in recognizing and using the several circular elements well and then excluding what was unimportant to you.

Wehre is your title? Otherwise you let us think of anything! I want to think more in tune with what was in your head!

Asher

Here is my rendition, I flipped the photo fist I don't know why I just did. I opened the photo in Lightroom for some color tweaking to my liking. Then I opened the photo in for some selective blurring with a focus on the feet.



© 2007 Angelica Oung

One more

OK, here is one more rendition with a different more artsy look to it. This was done in PSCS3.


Enjoy,

Brian


© 2007 Angelica Oung

Brian your work is a delight too!

The mood on your first is reminiscent of a hard core drug area of town.

The second is bright and delightful. I like the very abstract looks we are getting from paul to your work. Thanks.

Asher

Wow. This has been a treat to see how an image can be 'stretched' in totally different direction through post-production! Thanks so much for those who participated in bringing out very different aspects of the photographs.

Paul went for gritty and I am astonished by how effectively he captured the urban grot -- for instance in the handle of the bucket and the area near the cigarette butts. I would be love to be able to do that. I'm not as sure about the tight cropping...the foot, already somewhat lacking in context in the original (it is a store dummy...can you tell?) becomes even more isolated. But the abstract elements are strong.

Brian's first one, however, really played closely to the feel I was trying to get at when I made the shot...finding an odd moment of beauty in an unlikely setting. I like the use of selective focus to bring attention to the area of the picture that is the most important...the foot and the cigarette butts. Two things that are important are emphasized -- the fact that the foot is black plastic and at the same time the oddly human gesture of the foot tentatively reaching outside of the circular base, just touching the dirty tile of the street.

Also, I don't know why it works better once its flipped, but by gum it does. I'm guessing it's because our eyes are habituated to 'reading' a photograph from left to right. Once you flipped the picture, the sense that the plastic dummy is about to step off its base becomes more palpable because it is 'heading' in the same direction as your eye is sweeping? I don't know.

The third one I'm not as sure about. Interesting technique, but I would not have really known what I was looking at if I didn't already know about the original. Still kind of cool looking though.

Angelica,

I got rather obsessed with the potential of you quick snap shot of the manequin and the bucket. I think that this shows that work starts when the shutter is tripped. The file has potential!

I'm thrilled you like what has been shown, so far. I felt it would be like that.


Asher

Angelica,

Here's one idea of mine



"Girl in a tiled Shower"

I hope more will follow!

Asher

I hope you don't mind me giving it a go as well. Unfortunately I missed the deadline for downloading the original image so I had to use the one in the post. And I also apologize for not putting a real copyright symbol instead of the one I put together with parentheses but I did not know how to do that.

Image copyrighted (C) 2007 Angelica Oung
edits by James Newman

Thanks for the contribution James!

Good try! What was your idea for what you did?

To add the © information just use the T text tool on the left side tool column in photoshop and simply type the text you want. You may have to select the text and change the size to be large enough to see. click another layer and then use the move tool at the top left of the tool colmn and you can put the © notice wherever you want. When you save as jpg the layers will flatten,

Does that solve your issue or is it something else?

Asher

My idea, if you want to call it that, was to just see if I could make it look more like a painting, a watercolor, or maybe even a pastel sketch, than a photograph. Nothing really more particular than that. I do a lot of experimenting with my own images using the different filters and such in PS and really enjoy doing it. I have actually taken a number of my images that I was going to delete but after working them a bit in PS I ended up with images that I liked and kept, for myself of course. I have a hard time deleting anything but the absolute worst of the worst that I am fairly certain could never be salvaged. Other than those, I have learned that usually I can come up with something pleasing enough for my own consumption.
Thanks for explaining the copyright thing. I believe I have it now.