HALLIE
TUTALUK
ARTIST ANALYSIS
Hallie Tut (also known as Hallie Tutaluk) is a photographer located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hallie tut says that she has been "working with digital camera's since the age of seven" advancing her skills and developing her own personal style. She focuses on fine arts, portraits and fashion. One of the main features of Tutaluk's work is her use of bright neon lights. She uses neon lights to control the mood of her images, capturing youth culture and the euphoric side of being a young adult. Tutaluk follows the theme of Identity as she works around the aspects in life that shape our journey to finding our own identities. An example of this would be through the way that she depicts social media. In many of Hallie Tut's photographs, she depicts technology and social media as an addiction. This corresponds with my concept that I have chosen ( youth culture ) as social media and technology shapes and influences many young people to day.The theme that I see most prominent in her work is dystopia. In many of her photographs, Hallie Tutaluk uses the theme 'dystopia' as a way to show how mental health and different medias affect the way that you see yourself and your Identity. She also 'deforms' people's faces or makes others look as if they have entered a different dimension by using mirrors and lights.
The setting in which Tutaluk usually produces her work in is either in her room or outside. When shooting outside, she travels around different areas searching for any form of neon lights and then incorporates them into her photography. Tutaluk usually uses a vibrant light to create a ''spotlight'' on the focus of her photography and then shoots them at night or in a dark setting to highlight her models and their 'euphoric' behaviours or poses. Her main focus in all her photographs is always the model that she is capturing. I think that this allows her to explore with more different settings and makes her work unique. Hallie Tutaluk shows others that everyone can o photography, no matter your supplies or location. She even posts tutorials on how she edits and takes her photographs on different social media platforms. I believe that this promotes and highlights her work for being inclusive. This has allowed her to collaborate with huge brands like Nike.
When I first saw her work, I was amazed and fascinated by her use of led lights . I was intrigued by her use of different techniques such as overlaying and long exposure and how she uses them to make her work unique and different. I was also fascinated by her use of different textures such as glitter, stickers, plastic and fabric. I think that her work projects a lot of different messages but the message that I first 'received' when looking at her work was the addictiveness of technology and the impact that it has on others mental health Including beauty standards, fashion standards and the overall use of phones that has been normalised in today's world, making finding your own Identity one of the hardest things for a young teenager to do.
In my opinion, the euphoria and dystopia that Hallie Tut uses in her work replicates the feelings of young adults and teenagers, taking us through a journey of what goes on through others minds by using photography. Her work is easy to distinct as her use of lighting highlights her focus in the images that she creates. I believe that this makes her work successful as a 'trend' in youth has been captured through her use of lighting, this gives somewhat of an accurate perspective and look into youth culture. 'Euphoria' has been one of the main themes that I have noticed in her work. Euphoria - a state or feeling of intense excitement or happiness. One characteristic that makes me think of euphoria in her work is the way that Hallie Tut uses glitter to express and show a journey that the young adults and teenagers are taking themselves on. Just like euphoria uses glitter to express the emotions of different characters.I can see that in her work, Tutaluk uses different hues of purple, pink, blue and green to create that euphoric feeling of happiness in her work. I can also see how her use of colours, lights and glitter helps project the story that she is trying to tell.
What makes her work stand out for me is the use of vibrant colours. This makes the photographs that she produces captivating and interesting to look at. Tutaluk's work shines a light on the impact that technology has on mental health and young people, constantly depicting phones in her photographs as addictive. This instantly stands out to me when looking at her work.
Overall, I think that her work is captivating and exciting because of her use of different lights and textures. Although there is not a wide range of this, it created a pattern of consistency in her work. I love the way that this is used to project a message that is meaningful through her platform towards youth.
PHOTOSHOOT INSPIRATION PHOTOGRAPHS
Contact sheet
In this photoshoot, I will have 2 different parts incorporated into it. Unlike my other artist, I have chosen to do this because I not only want to challenge myself but I also want to take more photographs in the different styles that Tutaluk uses. I will use long exposure photography and digital zoom. My plan is to show the different ways that mental health can affects young women but for this first photoshoot, I am going to focus on self imagery how social media and phones can affect the way that young women see themselves and their identity. The objects/materials that I will be using are led lights, glitter and stickers. I will use these to set the mood of my image as well as add different compositions to it. I will also be using a canon camera to capture my photographs with so that I can create a better quality than a phone when zooming into the focus of some of my images.
PHOTOSHOOT PLAN
Material and props:
Colour Scheme:
CONTACT SHEET
for this photoshoot my intentions were to capture disorted photographs based on self imagery and how social media can make you insecure through platforms like instagram, snapchat ect. i enjoyed making these photographs as i found that creating the same lighting and mood that hallie tutaluk uses in her photographs was easier than i thought it was. i used led lights and a computer to project different colours into the room that i was photgraphing. in order to create the colour i wanted i also had to make sure that the room was dark so that the lighting was most prominent in my images.
the only material that i used in this photoshoot was flower stickers that i stuck to my face to create a look where it is like flower were growing up my face, linking to the growth and blooming of femininity. what i found most difficult about this photoshoot was making long exposure photgrphs. it was particularly hard to make my face visible when taking the long exposure photographs because o the shutter speed that my camera was set to. however i am happy with the amount of photographs that i took as i believe that it will give me a lot of material to work and experiment with.
overall, i think that this photoshoot came out successful and i am excited to try out new composition techniques. in the future, i would have liked to capture my photographs in different angles to create more contrast between my photographs. i would also like to try incorperate wider shots into this type of potoshoot in the photographs but i am happy with the outcome of the photographs i capture with the materials that i used.
DEVELOPMENTS 1
DIGITAL ZOOM
I decided to edit the photographs that i took in led lights as simple as possible, only accentuating the colours that were bieng photgraphed and used. i find that the most successful factor from these developments was the coherency of the colours and additional images, something that i struggled with before. i also enjoyed creating compositions where i captured different emotions and experimented with self imagery and changing poses to correlate with my artist. i would say that experimenting with colours and poses in these developments pushed me to think about the smaller details that are incorporated into larger compositions, therefore making my developments most successful.
DEVELOPMENTS 2
LONG EXPOSURE
these images was fairly easy as the contrast between the dark and the colours made it simple to edit. I made these developments by using the contrast layer on photoshop and accentuating the colour in my photograph more than in my raw image. I think that this was most effective because it allowed for there to be a good range of different shades and colours in the background whilst allowing the focus of my image, which was the model, stay prominent in each of my photographs.
For these developments, my goal was to create a range of disorted, long exposure photgraphs that represent the way that social media can disort your self image without you knowing. I think that I achieved this as the way that I posed in the images that i captured almost made it look as if my model was disintegrating into the air. I believe this made my developments successful because it allowed for there to be a small amount of 'noise' in the background of the photograph whilst keeping my developments interesting and 'messy'. I think that the angle that i captured my photographs in made some of the images that I used very repetitive.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
EXPERIMENTING WITH OVERLAY
To further edit my photographs, I decided to add strips of different photographs using photoshop. it used the technique of overlaying to my advantage and created multiple images ontop of each other seem as one whle image. I chose different photograph because I believe that it makes my photographs look neater and also highlights the lighter colours that are shown in my developments. Overall I think that my developments turned out really well as choosing the overlaying technique as a main component made my photographs look neater than without one. I am particularly happy with the outcome of these developments as i believe that the colours and composition techniques that i used complimented hallie tutaluk's work and also added a more creative and personal element to my photographs.
EXPERIMENTING WITH COLLAGE
To further edit my photographs, I decided to collage my photographs and lay them on top of each other. I found creating these challenging to do as the process was complicated as i had to test out different ways that makes my developments coherent. I chose to collage because I believe that it creates an element of messiness in my collage, similar to the flow and composition of my photographer hallie tutaluk. I am not particularly happy with the outcome of these developments as i believe that the collage and ripping techniques that i used did not represent the artist how i wanted to. however i did find that making developments more of my own experimentation, although it did not link directly to the photographer, made my final developments a more fun and interesting process to make.