For a full index of posts in this series, check out the "Behind the Images" page - here. Be sure to follow the hashtag #JoeValencia_BehindTheImage on Instagram and Twitter to learn of new installments.
Behind the Image
The COVID-19 pandemic is still dominating the news and our lives; I am beginning my fifth (sixth?) week of working from home. It's been almost as long since I have been to a park or photographed a sunset, instead venturing out to my yard looking for something to catch my eye. This has given me time to go thru some of my older (some forgotten) images and look at them thru "new eyes." I have also decided to use this time to work on my black and white processing skills.
As I go thru the images I am reminded of the circumstances that lead up to making it - it's funny, I find it difficult some days to remember why I got up from the couch or even the name of someone I've known for a long time. When I look at a photograph it is like I was there just yesterday. Art, like music, can evoke memories lost since forgotten. That is one of the things that is so attractive about the medium of photography to me; there is no better "high" than when when someone says that one of my images brought back fond memories.
I decided to create a new series titled,
Behind the Image. Each post will be a single image (well... maybe two or three in a series) with the story of "what", "why", and "where" with a little bit of "how" thrown in now and again. I will create an index page with links to all of the posts in the series for easy reference - look for it in the tabs with the other pages.
Behind the self-portrait
The image I used here is a self-portrait that I shot a number of years ago when I had my original blog. I used to participate in challenges where a theme was presented and we were to post images representing it. The theme for this particular challenge, if you haven't guessed, was
orange. We had a good amount of fresh snow in the back yard so I put on my orange fleece jacket and orange backpack before heading out. The camera I am holding is my old Canon A1 35mm film camera fitted with a Sigma 400mm f/5.6 lens. I used a selective color technique to turn the background monochrome and help accentuate the orange.
I was happy with the image, overall, except for the prominence of the fence. I would have liked to have a clean background to make it look like I was "in the field" instead of the back yard but I wasn't. Could I clone to fence out? That's possible I suppose but I don't have that kind of patience. I am also not that good with Photoshop, yet.
I hope you will enjoy the series as much as I enjoy reliving the experience of making the images. The first post should be ready in a few days, I hope. The image will be a recent black and white conversion of the last sunset I shot at Manasquan Reservoir, just prior to the state shutdown. Stay tuned!
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