Lydia's Documentation Blog

NYUSH IMA documentation blog

Comm Lab | “SEE”, Photo Diptych Final Documentation

by

Lydia, “SEE”

 

Concept

  • See through eyes
    • Humans are visual animals–seeing and viewing forms so big a part of our daily experiences and the construction of self. Everyday we use our eyes to find more about the world, but in my first photo, I turned the camera around to photograph the eye itself. The point I want to make through the photo is that eyes are delicate organs. It searches beauty and meaning outwards, and it also conveys feelings and emotions inwards. And that’s the reason why I use contrasting eye shadows to paint the eyelids: human eyes are vast and complex, like a sea or a universe to explore. 
  • Sea of vision
    • For the digital collage part, I wanted to create a sea of vision. Natural figures like flower, brunches and coconut tree forms the shape of an eye, and I use the dusk sky and the tranquil sea for the background to indicate the broadness of world outside and inside our eyes. The camellia can also be seen as a setting sun, by which I wanted to convey a sense of inverted size.
  • Communication
    • Symmetrical composition
      • I implemented a symmetrical composition for the two parts, and altogether they formed a pair of eyes. One is shooting straightly into our own eyes, one is formed by natural landscapes that are usually seen by the eyes.
    • Color
      • The color tune for the two parts are coherent. I drew inspirations from the color of dusk seaside: red and blue are generating contrasts, but with orange, they reach to a balance.
    • Meaning
      • There’s a pun in their names: See or Sea?

Process

    • Contact Sheet

      mostly natural landscape; used in the collage part
the original contact sheet, gave me the inspiration to shoot my eye
  • Photographing the Eye
original shot of the eye; photographed through my circle-shaped lights and by use of my glasses/ eye shades/ eyedropper

 

  • Color Correction

    I increased the color contrast of the photo, to make the color richer; also cut off the white frame a little bit
  • Digital Collage
used a bunch of my landscape photographies to form the “sea of vision”

 

also experimented with other possibilities of collage…but finally decided on the other one

Conclusion

  • Improvements
    • If I’ve had more time, I may add more details or visual contrast to the diptych. As Professor Ian pointed out to me, the photo of the eye left a blank part because of the white frame, and the collage work also has a relatively empty bottom. So if I have more time, I may spend more energy making the frame richer.