I haven’t shot much the past couple of weeks, not since I played around with the plastic bags, but I had a half hour or so one Sunday morning and took the opportunity to play around with the C.L.A.M. and see if I was on the right track.
Well… The C.L.A.M. does what it was designed to do, but without some sort of vision from me, it’s not worth much, and may as well sit in a corner and gather dust. Anyway.
So the Marilyn Minter paintings and photos that inspired the C.L.A.M. all involve water, so I found the old spray bottle I picked up to discipline Olive and Ivan, and added a fine mist to some of the glass and started shooting…
Almost immediately, I knew I had a problem. First, the plan of focus is way off. Second—and far more importantly—just water droplets (and bubbles left from the bit of soap that was added to the water to help cleanse some plants) are not sufficient for a subject. Marilyn Minter knows all about this and so she positions subjects and/or projects pictures behind the wet glass.
So I looked around for something, anything, to put behind the glass…
Almost looks like something photoshopped, but it wasn’t. I jacked the color around a bit in Capture One Pro, but mostly just a simple bit of play around with levels. I kept looking around and looking around, but didn’t really find anything, and I was running low on time, so I just shot the C.L.A.M. itself for a bit. Most of if was junk, but I liked these two for some reason.
One blurry:
and one sharp:
Then, with only about two minutes before I really needed to get back to my chores and my darling, adorable wife, I realized I had a decent enough subject right in my hand.
The color’s there, the composition is almost there, the subject is sorta obvious, sorta, and I pushed the color just enough to get something almost natural, but not quite. But there’s still that plane of focus problem, and that vision problem.
And that’s why I haven’t shot anything in almost a week, now, aside from the junk I put up on the #lunchbreak project, and why the cameras are just sitting around, even when I carry them around. May Allah guide me to some better ideas, some better ways of moving through the world, some better ways of worshiping Him and remembering Him in all that I do, Ameen.
