A Splash of Color
What is a diptych?
A diptych by definition is any object with two flat plates attached at a hinge. For my purposes, it was two pictures placed together to show an idea. The two images are meant to be different, but have an under the surface connection that is shown when they are placed side by side.
In design we created diptychs. We were instucted to take two lines from out personal poem and visual represent them. After brainstorming ideas we checked out our first cameras. We were told to take 30 pictures of each one of our ideas using different angles, lighting, aperature, ISO and so on. After compiling all 60 photos we picked out the best 2, one from each and set them side by side, thus was born my first diptych.
Artist Statement for my Diptych:
“The flowing rivers darkened by sorrow and remorse”
“Where the only captive is my creativity”
The first line of my poem represents how something lively and flowing like a river can be tainted and darkened by the feelings you have. I represent this with dirty motor oil. The oil represents the changes in life, and how some may begin their life clear and pure, but as time passes it can be darkened and contaminated by the bad things in life. Similar in that motor oil is clear when it is poured into a car but slowly it gets dirtier and dirtier until you need to replace it with something new and pure. The second line embodies growth and change. The same way you have to change the oil in a car, you have to grow up in life. The broken colored pencils on the street are a representation of moving on from the creative freedom of childhood and giving into the nine to five stencil of life. The pencils represent someone who is no longer taking care of the part of himself that wanted to be creative and letting it slowly be overcome by the traffic of work.
For the first photograph I chose pouring oil because it shows an emptying of the old and the introduction of the new. I poured onto a white plate because it was pure and added a contrast to the photo. Because I was shooting a pouring liquid I wanted to make sure I used a higher shutter speed to capture the oil the instant it contacted the plate. The second photo I took was complicated in that there were a lot of changes needed to get it just the way I wanted. I took this picture at night so it was a semi-long exposure. Along with changing the shutter speed I had to adjust to the cars passing since I chose to take the picture on the side of the street. The final result has a streak of white because a car drove through the shot adding the white line and a cool backlit effect that I chose to leave in. Lastly, I chose to make a little stack because I wanted to show a sense of organization in the chaos of the broken pencils.