Recreate or Re-imagine Presented
The Club meeting on 20 th April was for members to present and elaborate on their choice of photo entries for the challenge “Recreate or ReImagine”. The brief for this challenge was basically to emulate a photograph or work of art which inspired you and either try to copy it or add your own interpretation to it.
This was a very fun and interesting evening with 10 members submitting entries, including myself. Most of the entries involved some element of interpretation or re-imagination and I was very impressed by the different photographic and post-processing techniques used to achieve the end result.
These are some of my favourites:
Helen Castle submitted two entries, one of them entitled “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” inspired from the 1665 oil painting by Johannes Vermeer. Helen’s interpretation caused some amusement as she photographed herself in the same pose.
Lee Odell went to great lengths to recreate this image of smoke falling from above and dispersing around a strawberry placed on a spoon. It involved considerable ingenuity and I think he has made a great image, even adding an extra strawberry.
Belinda Wilson took inspiration from the photographic skills of Pep Vendosa who uses a technique called “in the round” to take a number of images around a central focus to create an image made up of multiple layers. Belinda used a tree for this assignment and, after a few efforts to perfect the technique, came up with a stunning image.
I also submitted a few entries but the one I was most happy about was an attempt to recreate a photo I had seen on the internet showing the reflections of St Paul’s Cathedral in the glass windows of One New Change.
There were also fantastic entries by both Gina Tayler and Peter Rees, both recreating a subject (a tree in blossom, and water lilies on a pond) in the style of Impressionism. Paul Wilson was inspired by Andy Warhol’s screen-print of 10 flowers and, after photographing his flowers, used a range of Photoshop techniques to create his final image. Ben Peet used an existing studio photograph of a model to recreate “Le Violin d’Ingres”, a tribute to Man Ray. Again, this involved considerable post-processing skills.
Overall we had a great and very insightful evening, learning a lot about photographic and processing techniques which can be used to create an image which either replicates an original or creates an abstract interpretation, looking more like a drawing or a painting.