I really enjoyed creating these photos for this assignment! For this project, I decided to imitate a beautiful Belgian photographer I found on Instagram called Aneta Ivanova. I fell in love with the way she uses black and white photography layered upon silhouettes, I think it creates such a beautiful image and meaning.
When approaching this imitation assignment, I wanted to focus mainly on the shapes that Ivanova uses in her photograph. She creates beautifully rough and interesting edges with rooves and birds which is something I definitely wanted to carry over into my work also.
When setting out to take my landscape photographs I had a few places in mind and a few final products I wanted to achieve before heading out on my shoot but also found myself just wandering around looking through my lens to find any interesting shapes that I may not see with my naked eye which seemed to actually work the best in the end. I was pretty happy with my shoot and felt as though I had a wide variety of material to work with, and was very excited to head into the editing process.
When selecting and pairing my silhouettes and landscape photos together, I realised I had taken the photos with the subject (boats, buildings, flowers, etc) in the incorrect third, which rendered a majority of the photos I had taken useless. As you see above in the third photo, the houses are at the top of the image (back of the head) with the dead space down the bottom (towards the face). I really wanted to create the raw edge the Aneta created with those rooves, however, as I took my photos with the houses down the bottom of the image, it meant there wasn’t enough of the image left to fill out the rest of the space.
In spite of this issue, I still feel as though I was able to imitate the essence of her work and am very proud of the way my photographs turned out. I played around a lot with the opacity of the pair photos just to see what worked best which I think is what made the photos look the most like Aneta’s. When comparing mine and Aneta’s photos against each other, they are similar, however, I now notice how much she emphasises the expressions on her subject’s face, and it seems as though she edits the photos so that these expressions are highlighted. I feel in order to do this I would need to really plan ahead with the photos I’d like to take, including the shadows and the highlights, and also practise my photoshop skills a little more.
Something that is very important to me and that I carry with me throughout my life and into my work is to always look deeper within others and ourselves and I believe my photographs parallel that well. I want my work to inspire those who view it to look beyond the facade and find a deeper meaning that is unique and personal, that also encourages kindness, sensitivity and empathy.
“I don’t care what’s in your hair, I just want to know what’s on your mind.” – Twenty One Pilots, We Don’t Believe What’s On TV (2011)