# MARE (be as brutally honest)



## lordbaca (Jun 13, 2018)

This was my first take on directorial photography. I really like the work of Gregory Crewdson and Didier Massard and attempted to create a similar aesthetic based on my childhood fears of aliens. please be as open and honest and give CONSTRUCTIVE criticism.


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## Jeff15 (Jun 13, 2018)

Interesting concept.....


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## chuasam (Jun 13, 2018)

I love it. 
Would have liked the UFO to seem more unearthly.


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## Derrel (Jun 13, 2018)

Not too bad, really; the collection makes these stronger than would single. The last shot, the hose coming out of the garage, has some unused space camera left that hurts the composition a bit and make it off-balance. I like the street light/alien spacecraft,and I think it is very well-composed, with excellent use of the frame. The girl holding the stuffed animal is, I think, the strongest shot compositionally and thematically, but I'd like to see just a smidgeon more detail in the bottom of the frame. The prefatory statement helps these, I think, quite a bit; had they been thrown out without any explanatory text, I think the groups of pictures would seem weaker, and less interesting.


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## smoke665 (Jun 13, 2018)

Would have been helpful to number them, but here goes. I like the first one (T/L) for it's simplicity. The second (T/R) looks like one of those big street lights you see in parking lots. The third (B/L) I like. Maybe a tad more shadow on the wall from the blinds. The last (B/R) I suspect I would really like but the resolution is to small to see much of the detail. Overall I applaud your thinking outside the box. You always hear how images should tell a story, and I believe you've done that!


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## lordbaca (Jun 13, 2018)

chuasam said:


> I love it.
> Would have liked the UFO to seem more unearthly.


I agree, the ufo was a street light near a freeway exit lol


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## lordbaca (Jun 13, 2018)

Derrel said:


> Not too bad, really; the collection makes these stronger than would single. The last shot, the hose coming out of the garage, has some unused space camera left that hurts the composition a bit and make it off-balance. I like the street light/alien spacecraft,and I think it is very well-composed, with excellent use of the frame. The girl holding the stuffed animal is, I think, the strongest shot compositionally and thematically, but I'd like to see just a smidgeon more detail in the bottom of the frame. The prefatory statement helps these, I think, quite a bit; had they been thrown out without any explanatory text, I think the groups of pictures would seem weaker, and less interesting.


I had never really thought about the negative space in the tool shed shot and I do see where you’re coming from but I feel that if I were to add anything there it might make the composition noisy and a little distracting. And yeah I get what you mean about the bottom of the frame of the girl photo. Great input, much appreciated!


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## chuasam (Jun 13, 2018)

lordbaca said:


> chuasam said:
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retake that one.
i love the rest.
i want to see more of your images.


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## lordbaca (Jun 13, 2018)

smoke665 said:


> Would have been helpful to number them, but here goes. I like the first one (T/L) for it's simplicity. The second (T/R) looks like one of those big street lights you see in parking lots. The third (B/L) I like. Maybe a tad more shadow on the wall from the blinds. The last (B/R) I suspect I would really like but the resolution is to small to see much of the detail. Overall I applaud your thinking outside the box. You always hear how images should tell a story, and I believe you've done that!


Ok so the second shot (TR) is in fact a street light lol and the last shot I did lose some detail because of a few factors the main one was that I did a stack exposure which will cause a loss of detail when blending the multiple photos. Unless someone has some tricks on how to bypass that?


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## lordbaca (Jun 13, 2018)

chuasam said:


> lordbaca said:
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Lol I will have to think about how to create a realistic ufo and photograph it in a real world context. Check out more of my work at 500px.com/philipbaca although most of my work isn’t so cinematic nor do I use much production as I did in these. Or you can follow me on Instagram @king_philip_thefirst but that is my all around art posting place


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## rosh4u (Jun 14, 2018)

Loved each and every shot you shared!


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## Tim Tucker 2 (Jun 14, 2018)

I'm not really feeling any fear here.

There are two reasons for this and why it's difficult in still images. In movies you can use devices to tap into your audience's generic fears, and this is key. Not everybody is scared of aliens and it's difficult to show a shot that will make them so. What they do instead is tap into our generic fears, they show aliens that have echoes of our earthly fears. They resemble spiders, bugs, slime, they kill with no remorse as in Alien etc. these are the way that movies tap into our fears, fears that we have in our general life. Another way is something that's used a lot, audience awareness. You make the audience aware of the danger *around the corner* where your character obviously isn't.

The other reason is that you are using visuals that I more associate with films such as "Close Encounters" and "ET" where the character is in the darkness and the light full of colour and warmth is really indicating something of wonder beyond. Many of the shots indicate more fear from where the viewer is standing, you're really drawn towards the light. It is in the dark spaces that our fear resides because they are far more unknown.

Classic movie making usually does the opposite, where you are drawn into a darker space. "Psycho" does this on a grand scale in the first 1/3 of the film as it takes you on an journey from bright sunlit normality to dark and raining. But it also employs another very clever trick that you don't notice. This is the *morbius strip/significance of the mirrors* analogy where Hitchcock transports you from the beginning to the same world in reverse, like a negative. When you show two things that are similar we sub consciously concentrate on defining the slight differences. This is why photos of identical twins can be oddly unsettling, the same with clowns. The key moment is when the character "Marion" is driving into the night. Many things happen and change that you don't notice, such as the fades between shots, and that Marion looks at the camera and smiles in exactly the same shot sequence as Perkins does at the end of the film. From then Hitchcock very cleverly presents a mirror image of the beginning of the film and the significance is that you find it vaguely familiar but don't know why, which is unsettling. It's like the staircase shots, a familiar item from an odd view, but extended over the first third of the movie.

Again, you show us a very familiar view. If you had the opposite, shot from outside with the girl straining to see from the safety of a lit room into a darkess that held a hint of malice... Then you allow the viewers imagination and generic fears to take over.


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## zombiesniper (Jun 14, 2018)

Great idea.

First I did not read any of your post prior to viewing the images. I do this for an obvious reason. With a group like this I expect there to be a theme and want to see if I get that theme without being told.

I got image 1, 3 and 4 were supposed to be creepy/horror related and had no clue why the street lamp was there. It led me to wonder if this was a group of images for a book and would the context of the story explain the street lamp? At no point did I get a solid alien abduction feel.

Some things that may aid in pulling the theme together.

All of the Alien light sources should have the same colour temperature to help the viewer connect them together.

Don't show the street lamp. Find a street lamp that has the longer horizontal section to hang out over the street. Wait for or create your own (don't endanger traffic with a fog machine, find a safe place for this) fog to give that light cone that comes down to the ground and shoot that as your Alien craft. You don't need the ship to give the illusion.

Process the scenes in a similar way. Your first image (elevated feet) has a different colour feel than the last two.


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## chuasam (Jun 14, 2018)

lordbaca said:


> chuasam said:
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Painting with light


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## lordbaca (Jun 14, 2018)

Tim Tucker 2 said:


> I'm not really feeling any fear here.
> 
> There are two reasons for this and why it's difficult in still images. In movies you can use devices to tap into your audience's generic fears, and this is key. Not everybody is scared of aliens and it's difficult to show a shot that will make them so. What they do instead is tap into our generic fears, they show aliens that have echoes of our earthly fears. They resemble spiders, bugs, slime, they kill with no remorse as in Alien etc. these are the way that movies tap into our fears, fears that we have in our general life. Another way is something that's used a lot, audience awareness. You make the audience aware of the danger *around the corner* where your character obviously isn't.
> 
> ...


You bring up a lot of good points but the point of the images is to represent what MY fears were as a kid. Though I didn’t explain it but these images were to show glimpses of scenarios that played in my head. It’s hard to make anything that will scare everyone. Just like scary movies, not everyone will be scared. But the point of these photos isn’t to scare people but to Tell a story, whether you get scared or not. Gregory crewdson creates these unnatural scenes and the viewer gets a sense that something is off, but they aren’t necessarily scared. That’s kind of what I was going for with these.


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## lordbaca (Jun 14, 2018)

zombiesniper said:


> Great idea.
> 
> First I did not read any of your post prior to viewing the images. I do this for an obvious reason. With a group like this I expect there to be a theme and want to see if I get that theme without being told.
> 
> ...


Good call in the light cast. I didn’t even take into account the variation color casts


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## smoke665 (Jun 14, 2018)

For future reference in planning your shots, check out Dark Side Gallery here in the TPF. Be aware that some of them are pretty graphic. I wish I could remember the name of the member who used to post composites on here, that I swear I wouldn't look at before bedtime, because I knew I'd have nightmares. Point is there is a lot of good information to be gleaned from past posts.


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## Tim Tucker 2 (Jun 14, 2018)

lordbaca said:


> You bring up a lot of good points but the point of the images is to represent what MY fears were as a kid. Though I didn’t explain it but these images were to show glimpses of scenarios that played in my head. It’s hard to make anything that will scare everyone. Just like scary movies, not everyone will be scared. But the point of these photos isn’t to scare people but to Tell a story, whether you get scared or not. Gregory crewdson creates these unnatural scenes and the viewer gets a sense that something is off, but they aren’t necessarily scared. That’s kind of what I was going for with these.



I totally understand what you're saying. It's one of the greatest problems. You can easily show images that show your fears, but to represent them as your fears you then have to communicate fear to your audience and the only way to do that is by resonating with their fears.

But as Hitchcock said, it's in the detail.

Consider, in light of making things look slightly out of context, that the light in the 3rd and 4th images is emanating from the ground and pointing up. It's not as weird as it sounds because although you associate alien attack from above both "War of the Worlds" films made considerable milage by having the martians attack us from below, they came out of the ground from under our feet. Many *un-earthly* lights from sheds in fields emanate upwards rather than the normal downward from a standard light fitting simply because it's not the normal or expected direction...


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## lordbaca (Jun 14, 2018)

Tim Tucker 2 said:


> lordbaca said:
> 
> 
> > You bring up a lot of good points but the point of the images is to represent what MY fears were as a kid. Though I didn’t explain it but these images were to show glimpses of scenarios that played in my head. It’s hard to make anything that will scare everyone. Just like scary movies, not everyone will be scared. But the point of these photos isn’t to scare people but to Tell a story, whether you get scared or not. Gregory crewdson creates these unnatural scenes and the viewer gets a sense that something is off, but they aren’t necessarily scared. That’s kind of what I was going for with these.
> ...


Oh dang I never considered that!


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## DanOstergren (Jun 15, 2018)

All of these are interesting, beautiful, and clever in my opinion. They each tell a story individually, but the series as a whole also tells a story. All of this is tied together with great moody lighting with clever use of colors to further enhance that mood, and well thought out compositions. Really well done.

Also, uh, we can all count to 4. No need to number them.


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## lordbaca (Jun 15, 2018)

DanOstergren said:


> All of these are interesting, beautiful, and clever in my opinion. They each tell a story individually, but the series as a whole also tells a story. All of this is tied together with great moody lighting with clever use of colors to further enhance that mood, and well thought out compositions. Really well done.
> 
> Also, uh, we can all count to 4. No need to number them.


Hahaha thank you! I think it would have helped to number them for reference. I’m glad you appreciate the images but some other members have pointed out some minor things that could really help the images even more. But for a first attempt I feel pretty confident in these images even with the flaws.


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## DanOstergren (Jun 15, 2018)

lordbaca said:


> DanOstergren said:
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> 
> > All of these are interesting, beautiful, and clever in my opinion. They each tell a story individually, but the series as a whole also tells a story. All of this is tied together with great moody lighting with clever use of colors to further enhance that mood, and well thought out compositions. Really well done.
> ...


Achieving perfection is going to sterilize your photos. Take some time to appreciate the flaws and try to see how they positively effect a photograph. At the same time, I will always agree that there is always room for improvement.


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## lordbaca (Jun 16, 2018)

DanOstergren said:


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Dude you rock!


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## Sil (Jun 16, 2018)

very very nice...


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