Francesca Mari
ANTON OSTLUND.
ARTIST ANALYSIS.
My first impression of Anton Ostlund's work was that his photography depicts a sense of misery and despair. It also evokes feelings of longing, which has connotations of death and grief. This is evident in the facial expressions of the people he uses to photograph, as shown in the picture below, the girl is not smiling and is aimlessly staring into the camera which evokes a sense of melancholy. It is interesting to see how he can capture emotions, and how he focuses on what can be known as negative emotions. For example, emotions such as sadness, anger, stress can be identified throughout his photography. Looking at his work, he explores double exposure to display emotions that people hide inside themselves and do not showcase in public. For example, Anton will photograph a person with a resting face then double expose the same person with a different emotion. I find it extremely interesting because I believe that you cannot always know how someone is feeling by just looking at them. People tend to put on a front and a mask, some people do not like to show off the emotions that they are feeling especially if it is a "negative" emotion. Therefore, I also depicted Ostlund's photography as that of emotions that people are made to mask due to societal pressures. For instance, women are held to be nurturing and submissive, which in turn means that they are not expected to show feelings of anger and dominance. This is due to stereotypical gender roles forced upon them.
In Anton Ostlund's photography, he experiments with lowkey lighting in order to allow the person he is capturing to appear more striking. The imagery of his work, is very somber and allows for the viewer to feel emotions for sympathy for the person he captures in his work. Also, the facial expressions he tends to capture are mainly negative. The facial expressions with the background to creates quite a dull imagery. However, the use of double exposure allows the image to appear more intriguing and have a story or a lesson you might learn from behind it. For example, How you cannot also know what a person is feeling based on their expression in that moment. I believe Anton Ostlund shares a good message to people who view his work. I relate his photography to the quote 'do not judge a book by its cover', I think that is the message Anton wants people to learn or be expose to from his work.
contact sheet.
contact sheet analysis.
Attempting to recreate Anton Ostlund's work, I used a Canon camera to capture my images. I took photos using a lowkey background and long exposure to replicate Anton's photography as he seem to capture his photos at night. As my three first pictures, I captured were too overexposed, I made sure the lighting was not as bright so it wouldn't be to overexposed. When I altered the lighting, my pictures were what I wanted to achieve, so I could then edit them later in photoshop. I captured pictures of movement in order to create a double exposure like effect.
To recreate the double exposure like effect, I made sure the person I was capturing pictures of, to move around with quick and frantic movements. This made the photos quite chaotic and erratic, I was really pleased with the way the photos came out as i wanted to illustrate feelings of panic and chaos.
developments.
To edit my pictures, I began by making the image into black and white images. This is because Anton Ostlund's pictures tend to be in black and white, as he rarely experiments with colour. I believe that making my photographs black and white would replicate the work of Anton Ostlund the best. Then I reduced the contrast to about -60 to -70 as I really wanted the face to stand out, so when looking at the images it would appear very striking. I also added adjustments to my developments, such as the altering curve If I believed that the photographs were incorrectly framed or I captured something that wasn't the black background, I would cropped the image so the black background was only visible.
development analysis.
further developments.
development analysis.
To edit my further developments, I used my previous developments and experimented with double exposure. To do this, I used the rectangular marquee tool to copy and paste each photo onto another development. I then decreased the opacity so the first layer would be visible as well, or I would select one of the blending options provided on photoshop. I also used the rubber tool to further blend the second layer with the first layer, so it look like one picture and not two pictures onto of each other. Finally, once I was happy with my edits, I flattened my image.
redraft contact sheet.
redraft contact sheet analysis.
For my redraft photoshoot, I decided to experiment with different compositions and capture images closer up. I decided to focus on a different style of Anton Ostlund's work instead of just capturing long exposure images. I decided to do this because I felt as though taking images in the same style as my first photography would be too similar or even look the same, I believe the variety of styles made my photos appear more interesting. I also, experimented with a variety of poses, mainly ones that portrayed a sense of sadness, paranoia or stress. I thought that these emotions would be the best to capture as Anton Ostlund's work focuses on the emotions that people normally hide or do not like talking about.
In order to capture these pictures, I went into a dark room without any natural lighting and then I used the torch on my phone to shine light on certain parts of the face, this would cause the face to appear more striking in the image once edited. I believe that I replicated the simplicity of Anton Ostlund's work successfully. I used a Canon camera to take my photos as I believe the use of the Canon camera would be more successful instead of using something else, for example using a phone.
redraft developments.
development analysis.
For my redraft developments, I applied the basic edits of increasing the contrast and curve and decreasing the brightness. Through applying a monochrome filter to the pictures, I was able to replicate the simplicity of Anton Ostlund's work. I experimented with different compositions, I wanted to take photos that were more close up, in order to focus on the specific details that depicted various emotions. I also cropped images closer up this allowed me to move the focal point of the image to a certain facial expression.
EXPERIMENTING WITH double exposure.
development analysis.
For my further developments, I experimented with double exposure to create a surreal feeling, similar to Anton Ostlund's work. This technique of double exposure allows for layers of deeper meanings within the photograph to be hidden in plain sight. Experimenting with double exposure allowed me to discover and explore a new creative element to photography when depicting emotions in a different light. Anton's work heavily focuses on illustrating what society deems as negative emotions; sadness, anger, etc. Double exposure explores the chaos of emotions within the art, which I recreated in my edits. Also, for my further developments, I kept the images monochrome, as I wanted the chaos of the double exposure to juxtapose the simplicity of the colour palette, in order to directly imitate Ostlund's work. Furthermore, the black and white filter highlights the melancholy mood of the photo, which is made more intense with the presence of the shades. The contrast between the monochrome shades allows the facial expressions to take the main focus of the photograph, without any additional distracting elements.
process log.
To begin with, I selected the rectangular marquee tool, this allowed me to selected the whole image so I could then copy and paste it on top of the other photo. This would create another layer.
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For the second step, I mirrored the image. I did this by holding down the ctrl button and C, this allowed me to copy and paste the image.
Once, I mirrored the image, I decided the best way to double expose the image would to be by selecting the lighten effect. This allows the picture selected to become more transparent and blend the the first layer better. I believe that this technique allowed my edit to be more successful and it came out the way I wanted it to.
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After, I held down the buttons ctrl and T, this allowed me to move and transform the image to my liking. (I rotated the photo slightly diagonally). In the image beside, I moved the duplicated picture down (the layer where I added the lighten effect) because I believed that it made the picture more interesting.
Then I lowered the brightness because I believed that the highlights where too bright. After doing this, I burnt the shadows of the image so they became even darker. I wanted the picture to blend with each other more so it didn't just look like two images that had just been copied and pasted onto of each other. After this I was done and I was really happy about the outcome of this edit.
HIGHLIGHTING SUCCESS.
I believe that this development was the most successful as it captured my idea the most. As Anton Ostlund main focus was on hiding emotion and blending to "negative" types of emotions together. It also capture the somber mood that I wanted to achieve.