‘THE INCONGRUITY’ – a reflection about our environmental paradox
It hits me all the time.
It hits me when I’m in the forest and see that shiny container sticking out from the green moss. Or when at the seaside and that garbage bag is waving back and forth between the sand and the water. Back and forth. Back and forth…
Like that plastic, glass, or metal ever would decompose.
It strikes me all the time. The incompatibility between our ways of consumption and our will to live environmentally friendly. The way we are using up our Earth’s resources even though we all know that our way of living is utterly unsustainable. I know it. You know it. Yet we all still together don’t do enough to change it. Not. Enough. We should not fool ourselves. Only we can change it. We all live with it. Act on it. Dress in it. The environmental paradox. The incongruity.
A late summers day I gathered a fantastic team to make an image for my conceptual portrait series ‘Parallels’. I had been inspired by Rania’s (previous studio portrait) dreadlocks and her dark features for some time…
“…I wanted to create a portrait alluding to greek mythology characters and their features, like Medusa and her hair and the sirens and their manipulative powers. Being from the windy southwestern parts of Sweden the image was created on the concept of the ocean and storm, and the power to control it.“
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Photographer | JENNY JACOBSSON Make Up Artist | MARTINA SÖDERLUND Model | RANIA RÖNNTOFT Assistant | ANDREAS SKOGLUND Behind the Scenes footage | JENNY, MARTINA and ANDREAS ____________________
Martina got the task of keeping Rania’s natural beauty but at the same time turn her into a vicious sea creature. I had the task of making Ranias dreads stand up like they were floating and moving by her powers. To do this I needed to twist steel wires round every one of her approx. 40 dreadlocks and then sew sewing threads to the tips that we later connected to a wire ring crafted by Andreas.
We attached the wire ring to a long stick that Andreas used to lift up the dreadlocks above Rania’s head. Thank you so much Andreas, for patiently performing the odd task of standing out in the cold wind holding a stick attached to hair.
A huge thank you to you Rania for your radiantly positive attitude, even when getting wet and cold. And to Martina for your creative vision and also shooting BtS footage. We sure had a fun time, fighting against the sunset!
MY TIP FOR FURTHER READING If you enjoy the Behind the Scenes videos, you should take a look at this freeeeeezing one…
I was happily surprised, and proud, to have my piece “The fall” chosen as Picture Of The Day (October 19th) over at the fantastic One Eyeland! Not everyday that you see yourself next to a portrait of John Malkovich…
MY TIP FOR FURTHER READING A great way to learn more and see selections of images, and if you’re interested in me getting fried for answers, is to check out the features and interviews in the Features & Publications category!
First of all it’s been the coldest start of a winter I’ve experienced since I moved to Gothenburg/Göteborg. With weeks of -10°C (already in November) I lay in my bed at night thinking about maaaybe putting on a summer’s dress and make good use of that cool tree a few blocks away… but then again… naaaah… let’s do that when the weather gets warmer… AND when there is a greater amount of snow. AND when both those things happen on a weekend so that I’m off work and can actually perform the shot in daylight. Yeah, right, like that combo was gonna happen any time soon.
“This weekend, it did.”
-1°C and two days of snowing. Off I went! Can’t let myself down now can I. This time I had my beloved Andreas with me as an assistant. Like he said: “How could I ever miss an opportunity like this, to watch you walk around barefooted in snow with a dress on in December, and with a chance that someone will see you!?” Aaaww he is nothing but helpful.
So trudging through knee high snow to get to the tree, setting up the equipment and trying not to get the tripod to fall over and drown my camera in wet snow, waiting for some curious people to walk away (no way I’m starting with them there), taking off my warm comfy clothes behind the tree hoping no new people would come by, climbing the tree in a pink and really short dress and big fluffy winter boots, placing my behind on a big snow covered branch and ooooooh my little hiney that was cold!!!!!! Quickly pulling off the fluffy boots and placing them behind the trunk, posing crazily to quickly get a behind-the-scenes-photo and then WHAM. Seriousness. Pose. Pose. Pose. Move flowers around. Pose. Pose. Flip the hair around. Pose. No, not like that, stretch the toes. Pose. Pose. Tilt head the other way. Pose. Done. Quickly pulling on boots again and crazy out of happiness getting stuck on another behind-the-scenes-shot. Jumping down from tree and get dressed quicker than Superman. And then I get the good news that another couple had very intensely been studying us from the road….
Ah, well *shrug*. That’s another day in the life of a “52 weeks” photographer 🙂
Welcome to my very first Behind the Scenes! “Broken Wings” derives from a summer’s day when I was taking a walk and my eyes got caught on these semi-decomposed bird wings among the leaves on the ground. And my instinct was of course that I had to wear them! Even though they would only fit a person 40 cm tall…
But since I’m a very stubborn girl I resisted the terrible stench reeking out from them, poked sticks under the “armpits” of the post-bird, and walked around the forest to find a good location.
Luckily it didn’t take long before I ran into this tree stump. The stump was big enough to fit me in it and also it provided a good spot for a levitation trick. Even though the wings were broken I had to at least try to fly with them.
Below, I’ll take you through both the SHOOTING PROCESS and the PHOTOSHOP PROCESS
SHOOTING PROCESS
So I needed three shots to be able to create a girl with wings trying to fly from a tree stump.
1) THE UPPER BODY AND ARMS I put my camera on my tripod, climbed the stump and flung around it in different positions, shooting myself using my Canon RC-1 wireless remote control. Climbed back down, ran to the camera to check on the poses and angles, and ran back to the stump to create better ones. This kept on until I felt like I had been through a tough yoga session and I had a shot I was happy with.
2) THE LEGS To create that levitation look I needed to lift my legs off the stump, not touching it at all with my legs. So back up on the stump I let myself into the same position as in the shot I had chosen, held my body up with my arms and released the legs.
3) THE WINGS were a lot trickier since they were so small (and also very fragile and risked of falling apart any second). Still having the wings on sticks, I first tried to get the correct perspective by putting the wings in the proper place behind the stump with the aim to increase their size later on. Although, I wasn’t happy with the details so instead I tried to lift them in front of and close to the camera. For this part it is very important to keep the same focal length even if the subject is moved around. I was happy with these images and I was done shooting.
“Let me make a note that all this was going on with people walking by… looking like they were going to call the police for them to come get that crazy bird woman running around in the woods with wings, looking like she would need a strait-jacket…“
PHOTOSHOP PROCESS
In Photoshop I combined the two images of the girl in the forest by using the first shot as a main layer, masking over “the wrong legs” and letting through the levitated legs from underneath with some modifications.
After that I cut out one wing at a time, pasted them on the forest image, corrected their positions and angles and let the arms and body of the girl in front of the wings.
For me the story is sad and moody, so I wanted the tone and color of the final image to convey that feeling. I worked with blues and darks and decreasing the yellow in the greens. Some more tweaking and adjustments and VOILÀ!
BROKEN WINGS
A lot of work, full of aches, and marked as a crazy bird woman, but at least I got to wear a dead bird’s wings…
