APS Behind the Lens: Isolation
I am a member of St George Photography Society in Kogarah, NSW.
While my photography interests mainly cover portraiture, architecture, macro and street photography, I have probably spent more time capturing creative compositions in the last three years.
After COVID, I wanted to create an image reflecting the impact of the pandemic on our society, but in a creative way.
The image is a composite which consists of three images. Buildings from Canberra, a cage from Angel Place in Sydney’s CBD, and an image of myself in shadow, with my hand raised up to represent a sense of struggle.
Three images were imported into Adobe Lightroom Classic. I first adjusted the Tonality with the aid of the histogram, before transferring the images into Photoshop CC.
From here, the Canberra buildings were converted to black and white, and a motion blur filter was added to give a turbulent effect. Compositionally, the cage was put on the upper right-hand side to balance out the buildings, and the subject was ‘locked’ in a cage to reflect isolation. I used a variety of dodging and burning techniques to draw the viewer into the image.
Finally, I added grey clouds in the sky to create a dramatic atmosphere.
I deliberately wanted to guide the viewer to view the image from left to right, therefore only the cage and subject are in focus. In total, nearly 30 layers were used in the image’s creation.
The image did well in our club’s monthly creative evaluation and went on to win first place in the Creative Digital category at the Warragul National Competition 2022. Since then, it has also done well in national and international competitions.
