Plan:
To produce my own version of work inspired by Jerry Uelsmann, my plan is to take a picture of the trunk of a tree, then use the studio to photograph a models hands holding a skull. To make my photo look like something from a nightmare, I intend to use some scary Halloween decorations as props for this shoot.
Reflecting on how Uelsmann creates his images (using photo negatives), I have decided to take photos of each prop individually and then layer them together in photoshop.
Shoot:
I used a digital camera to take photos of the trunk of two different trees outside, and then took pictures of a models hands holding a skull Halloween decoration. I chose to photograph the Halloween decorations individually as well and made sure to keep the light coming from the right in all the pictures I took.
To edit, I combined a photo of the model holding the skull alone, and an image of the skull with a skeleton hand in its mouth. I layered one on top of the other (erasing the parts I didn’t need), which I’m glad I did as it saved me having to use another model to hold the hand in the skeletons mouth while I was taking the pictures. I then added the lower part of the tree trunk, making sure to alter the size to match up with the models wrists. I erased the top part of the tree in a way which made it look like it was blending into the hands, used the paintbrush tool to colour over the parts of the arms that were showing behind the tree and finally, I added a black & white filter to mimic the style of Jerry Uelsmann’s work.
Overall, I think this shoot, including editing, went very smoothly and was more than successful, as it turned out better than what I visualised when I first decided I was going to attempt this sort of thing. I feel it was made better than what I envisioned at first because of the hand coming out of the skull, which was an idea I had just before shooting.