All original photos belong to Melissa Hamersma Sievers, Sieversma Photography. Linked images as reference will be cited.

Prints of many of these images are for sale.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Dandelions

I don't remember how this idea got in my head. Seeded out dandelions are such a nuisance, but visually they're interesting.

I thought that it would be cool to try to use them in a photo illustration. A tiny figure came to mind. I think that I was imagining illustrations that I've seen regarding Le Petite Prince (vaguely). Follow this link to learn more about the story.. Sidenote: We read bits of it in French 101. I have a copy in french, but am unable to read it without having a dictionary by myside. I would like to acquire an english copy sometime so that I may read the whole story myself.

Anyway, I imagined a small person on something like a dandelion head. It is a subject that seems other worldly. I also wanted to use my self constructed holga lens - it distorts an image and creates a soft photo.



I used to have two holga 120 cameras. I kept one whole. I ripped the lens off another after seeing that someone else did it on another website/blog.

I already had a body cap that I had used to attempt pinhole DSLR photography. That didn't work, so I hot glued the lens to the cap.

The camera has to be about 10 ft away from the subject for it to sort of be in focus.



Photo taken at approximately 7:30 p.m. I imagine that the lens is set to be about f8. That's what the diameter looks to be anyway. Since it is a toy lens, I can't change the aperture. This causes a bit of a problem. I would like to have included some light from the setting sun, but it was too much light and I couldn't work fast enough to not contribute ghosting in the image.



After twenty two photos I got one that I really liked. It was tricky to get the stencils placed just right. I would prefer that the sky wasn't so blank. I may try the photo with a different lens. Then I can frame it differently and have the ability to add more elements to the image. Having the option to change the f-stop would be very helpful too.

Still, I do like the blurriness of the image due to the lens in this particular case. The only tweaks that I made in Photoshop were to boost the levels so that the grass would be a little more visible.



Thanks for looking.