Pink Challenge

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Have you heard of RedBubble.com? It's a photo forum and social community for artists. They have various groups dedicated to specific interests. The Fine Art Composite Group announced a Texture Challenge. Members post their work that meet the rules. In this case the moderator of the group posted four textures. Entrants had to use at least two of the textures when creating an image.

I'm not good at assignments. One of the reasons I chose not to pursue a career in photography was the understandable directive, "He who has the gold makes the rules." And since most of those "he's" were really "she's" who were brides... well it got old reeeeeely fast for me. Ditto the photo editors at newspapers and magazines. And then the art directors. Look I can follow orders and have no real difficulty with authority. But the reason photography seduced me was the creative outlet it offered. But my ideas of creativity were only rarely the same as those of the folks with the gold... so I finished economics school and never returned to photography directly for pay or at least to pay the bills.

Which gets me back to the point, I'm not good at assignments. It's rare that my interpretation of the assignment's the same as the assigner's idea. But every now and then the folks involved get get me interested. And textures are fun to use to crack open ideas.

Problem is, most textured images are dark, evocative, and moooooody. And I know that there are a lot of RedBubble artists who can probe into those concepts deeply and with a bunch of power. Sooooo.. I decided to go in an entirely different direction. Surprised? Of course not, right?

I decided to go high key, bright, and whimsical. So I grabbed three photos I took of a perky young girl, and went after everything that was NOT moody, dark, and deep. Which means, I think, that I will get no votes in this challenge.

If you study textured images, generally you'll note that the texturing is usually applied to the setting of the primary feature/person/object. Okay, so using one texture of plastered wall, and a second of an icy crust atop snow, I used the extrude filter in PhotoShop to alter the backgrounds so that they dramatically set off the child's personality. I simultaneously altered the palette so that the background picked up the blues in the child's objects. Hence everything set off the pinks of the girl's outfit and her skin tones.

Comedies never get Academy Awards, even though comedy is at least as hard to do as tragedy. Hopefully you'll smile at this young girl's play. I did. I want to communicate joy. I think I have. But joy, like comedy, rarely get the big awards, or even serious consideration.

This image does what I wanted it to do. The texture is not the star, but it makes the star burn brighter. I think that's what artistic texturing should do. I also think that I'll be lucky to get even one vote as viewers choose a winner of this challenge. If I could vote for my image though... I think I would.