fauxtography

Category: dribblings

so my best pal, laura, once used the phrase, “chance favors the prepared mind.” to which i replied, “you know- wait. what?” and then she explained to me what that meant. i know, you guys think i’m really smart and all, but nay, i’m not. i just fumble through life stealing things my smart friends say and i post them here like they’re mine.

i just reread that and it sounds like we were having a convo and she just busts out all, “chance favors the prepaed mind” out of nowhere. it wasn’t like that. i said something about something, and that was her response. and then i responded with my, “huh?”

so she explains it like it means… look, i can’t explain it, i’m in a hurry and i’ve had ten cups of coffee. i can’t concentrate, and while i type this out i’m already 4 sentences ahead in my head. so it’s not a good day for explaining. and for that i’m sorry.

so now, when i see something or read something and that subject/image/word/song keeps popping up in my life (i usually say that something “haunts” me. like last year with Lillian Hellman. every time i turned around one of her plays was on TV or i’d come across her in one of the bios i was reading or blah blah blah.) hence, “chance favors the prepared mind.” (is it similar to serendipity? synchronicity? i don’t know. i just can’t concentrate.)

all of THAT to say that lately i’ve been “haunted” by tilt-shift photography. i came across an article (in something at the library, but i can’t remember what.) on it months ago and i thought it was quirky and fun. then i forgot all about it. but it seemed like a month after that i kept seeing tilt-shift photography in different places. There was this awesome collection, and it’s on some of the [adult swim] bumps. i’ve seen it on a few commercials (one is with nuns crossing the street), and it’s even on the opening credits of The Dollhouse.

i love that it’s a trick. i love any trick of the eye, really. i’m a sucker for clever, you know this, it’s my heroic flaw.

well, it’s ONE of my heroic flaws.

my MAIN heroic flaw: that i have multiple heroic flaws. ha!

shut up your face.

ANYway. i want to do this tilt-shift photo stuff. i do.
look, i know it’s probably taboo to admit that, but i’m not a photograhper, right? i’m a hobbyist type person. so i lose no cred for admitting that i want to do scammy/hacky photo tricks for kicks. i’m an artist. i’ll stoop to all kinds of lowness for an idea/concept/image… even if it means fakey photo tricks.

the problem with this is that i don’t even own a real camera much less the very expensive lens needed to create these images.  after looking as some of the pictures you can see what’s going on, they pick one focal point and blur the rest then they amp up the color saturation to make it look more fake then bam, your picture looks like it’s made of toys instead of real things. i figure you can do all that in photoshop, yeah?

well, i don’t have photoshop. and if i had it? i wouldn’t know how to begin to use it because there’s loads of bells and whistles in that program, and who has time for that? but hey, this is 2009. and in 2009 you can find ANYTHING on the internet! i found two fake tilt-shift makers that allow you to upload your own photos and manipulate them into what looks like a tilt-shift style. they’re not perfect, but damn, they’re free, right?

so i found an applicable pic i took back in 2004 when my father and i were painting the roof of the Holy Comforter House.

the first fake tilt-shift maker i used was the Tilt-Shift Generator. it’s easy to use but it’s actually an app for iphones. so it made the picture small and grainy- like a cell phone picture. still, free.

 

the second fake tilt-shift maker is tiltshiftmaker.com and it’s controls were more limited, but it made  a better quality picture. also: free.

that’s all i’ve got. for now.

Tags: , , ,

4 Comments