Skull compositions

[LauriePriest]

Some relatively recent pictures I have done:
Again mostly darkroom, some major dotting work and dodging and burning ... edge fading and basic overlay done in photoshop. Enjoy, C&C is very welcome:

[Herriot]

I have been staring at this image for the past ten minutes and I am not completely sure where to begin. There is certainly a lot going on, I particularly like the hair and the different shades that you have produced. Is morbid the right word? I find that the background makes the topic unsettling but it is certainly a well produced piece of work!

Thanks for sharing, found it really interesting

Herriot

[gahspidy]

I think you've done well. A gruesome composition and work. I like the position of the subjects body and the clothing , the tones and contrast are very strong and good in this. I also like the background being tilted adding to the weirdness of this photo/art. The neck/shoulder area is looking very plastic and PS 'ed. I think your rendering the skull showing through the face could use some improvement, but this is still very effective.
This reminds me of an artist whose work is displayed in Union Sq. He makes b&w prints of subjects, and then airbrushes skulls and decay onto the prints for some very good effect.
Good work

[LauriePriest]

Yup, this is just rough print, i had to do some of the fading with my fingers in the darkroom where i usually would use assitate. The neack was way too over exposed so i just brused it away. I have some very very very shocking image to come hopefull involving a pigs head.

TY for c&c and I will take what you have said into consideration before doing my final prints.

[mtbbrian]

I don't know Laurie, it just seems too strange for me..
So I can't get past that.
What is your intent for doing this?
Brian

[PlantedTao]

Alright! A photo that has originality and could hold someone's interest (makes ya think) for sometime, even if it is morbid ;)
I really like this photo because it is so different from the norm. The bg goes very well with the subject and adds to a feeling of mortality. This reminds me of a movie I saw in college called Begotten...very disturbing but highly artistic. Very nice job.

Question: I will finally be taking a darkroom class in July on how to process B&W 35mm film. I don't know when I'll be able to take a class to learn how to develope negatives. How important is it to do your own negatives. Can labs do a good job of this? Is this a class I should be looking for before learning how to process and print B&W? Kinda confused. THanks in advance.
Cheers.

[LauriePriest]

Ummm your own negatives is less important, but its very cheap and pracitice makes perfect. Labs tend to charge extra for prining black and white prints so i tend to just scan them when i cant get access to my local dark room. If your going to end up paying alot of money just to learn how to process you can pretty much learn how to do it yourself, I mean you can pretty much learn all of it on your own you just have to go and buy the kit :S. I found i wanted to do it manually because I found the process interestig and relaxing, not for practical reasons.

Thank you for the very kind words Tao.

Mtbbrian thanks for the crit, i try to be as up front with my work as possible, I often simly start each idea from a very simple starting point and it just turns into the final pieces organically, so it takes me time to figure out what it means myself occasionally.

I was attempting to see if superpositioning the skull over the head was revealing of a person or not, in some ways its wat you expect to see under the skin but in other ways its compleatly not what we expect due to the grousome associations we have with the nature of decay and what lies beneath the skin. Other than what was going through my mind at the time i think this image can mean different things to different people....

[OldSchool]

Hey Laurie,

Good to see you back.

I've stared at your composition for quite a while... very intriguing. I don't have much to add in critique except that I think it is one of your stronger works. Thanks for posting...
Tim

[jar_e]

It's interesting, yet I wouldn't mind seeing it in a differnt subject then so zoomed in. Like the person just standing straight infront of a building or something would be a nice touch.

Interesting work,

Jared

[McMadCow]

Really nice work, Laurie. I'm really not a fan of images that have been overly worked in PS, but I think you've found a happy medium. I like the original image and subject a lot and your photograph is very dramatic. This is a very bold image the likes of which we don't see very often here. Nice choices, and really nice execution. If I could make one criticism it's that the background doesn't really jive with the subject in my opinion.
Overall, a very nice job. Congrats!

[LauriePriest]

Thank you again guys, i think ill try this method again in the future, but for now its just a tester for my theme at the moment. I also feel an issue is with the grass texture clashing with the texture of the skull imposed on the face, I may do some extra touch ups on this piece building on the C&C.

Laurie