Story telling with art...
The Moonlight Sonata
Moonlight sonata is a classical piece of music composed by the great Ludwig Beethoven and is known to be inspired by the moon shining over a boat in a still somber lake. This fine art concept is based off that piece of timeless music.
When i first laid my eyes on the elegant dress at the designers studio i was immediately reminded of the luminescence that the moon bestows to its observers, i knew that i had to incorporate that into my vision. The choice of my color palette ended up being white and blue to create the perfect blend of contrast whilst creating a harmony that is natural to the world as we know , blue has always been considered as the color of the night in the world of cinema and hence fit perfectly with the concept i wanted to explore.
The Mirror was the last edition to the final concept, and was more of a homage to Beethoven's work, and hence depicts the reflections one would see in the lake
Queen of the Damned
Queen of the damned is a 2002 film that encompasses the idea of flesh eating vampires with rock and metal music, one of the major scenes in the movie was when the queen feasts onto a heart with a song by Johnathan Davis (Lead singer from KORN) playing in the background. For some reason that scene stuck with me, in addition to that KORN was one of the first metal bands i had discovered.
As a musician and former forensic scientist myself the idea of creating a fake heart and using that as a prop in a photoshoot was always a concept i longed to do. I stumbled upon an artist named Jugita on the internet in my city who specialized in SFX makeup and was working on creating a fake heart just for fun, i immediately shot her a message explaining to her how real the heart looked considering i had my fair share of being around real ones, and she was absolutely on board with doing the project, she hence not only did the head gear and all the makeup but modeled for the shoot aswell.
Whilst the shoot was around the idea of being messy i wanted an element of symmetry highlighting
precision and the systematic nature of human biology just to kind of bring me home to what i initially intended to do in life,
Pastel Loungewear
Comfort, cozy, and clean were the three words i wanted to use to create this project.
When the designer showcased the collection to get my inputs on the creative direction we could take with this , i was immediately inspired by the silk that was predominant in the the entire lineup, i wanted to convey exactly what i felt when i touched the designs.
Pastel and muted colors are perfect to evoke an emotional response in anyone, and when you have minimalistic designs it is perfect to use as a base since it does not over power the overall look and does a fantastic job to make darker colors stand out more.
The Cocktail Amalgamation
Conceptualizing in reverse is the key to concept photography when it comes to building a story
around a theme or a subject.
Here we had a Coconut Cocktail created by a super talented mixologist that needed to convey the subtlety and elegance that went behind in creating the drink.
The white dress seemed the perfect way to go about it to replicate the look of the drink itself, the classic blue and white palette screams elegance especially when you have the perfect model and out for it, in regards to the direction, the high end looking sofa was my inspiration for the pose and once i had my lights set up everything fit together like puzzle
The Silent Assassin
The Silent Assassin is a concept inspired by years of cinemas. Action and spy films with high stakes always seem to depict the antagonist more often than as someone who is a power and wealth hungry villan liviing a luxurious life style, in either expensive mansions, or doing some sort of an elite activity or hobby.
This long elegant dress made me think of those films and hence i decided to take this direction, the makeup and hair were done to give a "boss" look, the use of red gel was to evoke feelings of danger and power, the mirrors helped it bounce around creating interesting patterns, dramatic key lighting and a power pose by the model was exactly that was needed to bring the whole story together.
Elements - Monochromatic Palettes
Fire
Water
Earth
Based on the concept of Elements of the universe, the idea was to project the colors associated with Fire, Water and Earth in a slightly different way from what they are
usually portrayed as.
I decided to take the direction of creating monochromatic tones (or atleast as monochromatic as i felt right) for this, however i did not want to use primary colors for this,
to give a unique spin on the world around us. Time and time again science tells us that the perceivable universe is very subjective, "my red is not the same as your red",
even if we observe the same wavelengths of light, which made me sway away from the natural colors of these images.
Triad Color Theme - Cyan based
fThe concept of triad colors revolves around using three more or less evenly spaced colors on the color wheel, the hues are usually very contrasting and create a rather
dramatic and vibrant theme, it works best to play with luminosity and saturation values and using one color as a base so the image does not look jarring.
Here i went with a cyan, yellow and pinkish magenta tone to give a more high end fashion look to the portraiture, the pink plant was added the last in order to provide a little depth to the shot
El Professor - Self Portrait inspired by Money Heist
Money Heist's (aka La Case De Papel) Character : Professor, was the main inspiration behind the shot, the shows cinematography and story telling has to be one of the best in years of television cinema.
This was a rather challenging project for the sheer reason that it was a self portrait shot during quarantine, other than the fact modeling for shoots is outside my comfort zone, the act of lighting the scene and using a remote to taking the photos and compositing elements into it ended up taking hours to get the job done, however the post processing coloring is what really brings the image to life from the color grade to the crushed blacks to give it a film look.
