Circa 2013 to 2015
Like any good artist I’ve made my share of unsuccessful projects, but one of the amazing things that we photographers have access to today is that we can return to old work and make it shiny and new. Over the past few years, I’ve done exactly that.
The image below is an example of a piece of work that I created in my second year at the Academy. I had taken the image a year before and stored it for later use. A year later I made an attempt to edit the image hoping that something would look fit to put up on my website, but unfortunately, nothing seemed to work out, and the editing looked forced. It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth attempt at editing this image that I was finally able to find an aesthetic that fit with the look and feel that I originally wanted to create.
©AliciaM.BlairPhotography
My original concept was to make the model look like she was super imposed on a piece of paper, like a faded print. I’d say that I did succeed in finding that look, but I would also argue that it was the wrong finished process for that image in particular. The texture and color took away from the beauty of the models pose, which was the reason why I liked the image to begin with.
It wasn’t until a year later that I found the perfect color and texture that could make the image pop.
To me, this image is a soft, stolen moment. The model’s expression and body language are calm, but the fire and life come from the action and color of her fabric wings. The texture that I used for the image helped create a sense of depth, centering the attention on the model and gave me that aged, scratched looked that I had originally been out to accomplish. I don’t feel that the image is sad, but I like that the water droplets add a delicate quality to the image.
Thanks for reading!
Alicia M. Blair