Girls - Image Heavy

Phoenix

All-Pro
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Name
Phoenix Gonzales
A bit of background first

I have been very busy (and still am) for the last 6 months, and at the same time I am still undergoing therapy, part of my therapy is to do some volunteer work, which I do on my spare time. I volunteer at my local community arts centre teaching photography with beginner, intermediate and advanced sessions, in the last month or so the director of the community arts centre I volunteer at took a lot of interest in what I do and has asked me if I was willing to show my work in an exhibition as a form of gratitude for my time and effort.

I have politely declined at first, citing that while it is quite an honor, I am doing this as a form of therapy to help myself. But after constant requests, which now included the people I taught I had to relent, if anything just to get back at that annoying dude in my intermediate class who said "he's just too chicken showing us his work that's why he hides by teaching" the snotty little bast....anyway I've decided to have a specific theme for my exhibition and I thought I'd just keep it simple and call it "Girls".

It's just pictures of girls in different expressions, scary, funny, beautiful, wacky, gentle, strong, etc..and have emphasised these by the lack of colour, giving the viewers no choice but to concentrate on the emotion, I am also keeping it clean as it is a community event.

The exhibit has opened yesterday and will run for 1 week, and these are the images printed and displayed.

These are not new images, some of them I have already posted before.



Girls

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Phoenix, there's some tremendous stuff here. It's a body of work to be proud of, and to be displayed not hidden. There is a cohesion in your images as presented here which emphasises your empathy with the subjects. You are depicting them in their environments without disturbing the essence that made them photogenic in the first place. Bravo.
 
Hi Phoenix, what settings for b&w do you apply?.....like your shots........
Cheers.
Thank you

My sincere apologies for the late reply.

I used to spend long time when processing my photos, I think it was when I was really concerned what other thought of my photos and I wanted them to “like” my shots.


Nowadays I really couldn’t care less what other people thought of my photos, as long as I like them, I’m happy


It takes me about 1-3 minutes post processing my photos. It’s fairly straightforward but also hard to explain


-I shoot in RAW and convert them in Lightroom, I also do the minor adjustments like straightening the image, cropping out elbows, etc..


-I have Silver Efex as a plug in and load them into Silver Efex and apply a filter. This is where it becomes hard to explain, the filter I use is a mixture of different settings I have bought from various sites and forums, converted into Tri-X film simulation in Silver Efex, remove all the grain additions (I let the natural grain from high iso act like film grain). Simply put, I have made a filter based on experimenting with various filters based on Tri-X film.


-Export it back to LR and save as JPG.
 
Phoenix, there's some tremendous stuff here. It's a body of work to be proud of, and to be displayed not hidden. There is a cohesion in your images as presented here which emphasises your empathy with the subjects. You are depicting them in their environments without disturbing the essence that made them photogenic in the first place. Bravo.

Cheers mate


Sorry for the late reply, between 3 jobs and house chores one doesn’t really get much time to play with the camera, unless I do some urbex when cleaning the house or portraiture when doing my laundry, hahahaha!!



Though not posting often doesn’t necessarily mean dead, I am working on a project at the moment, it should be done in a month or so, and although it’s probably not something people would ask me to display or to do an exhibit on, it is something that I enjoy doing .


Stay tuned ;)
 
I echo what Bill said. This is a tremendous piece of work and the power is emphasised by the simplicity....the ordinary every day; of the lives displayed. I'd be proud to have shot any of them.

(By the way, I'll be in Melbourne and; later, down at Blairgowrie/Sorrento some time between July - September)
 
I echo what Bill said. This is a tremendous piece of work and the power is emphasised by the simplicity....the ordinary every day; of the lives displayed. I'd be proud to have shot any of them.

(By the way, I'll be in Melbourne and; later, down at Blairgowrie/Sorrento some time between July - September)
Let me know when you are in Melbourne, I'd pretty much like to share a pint or two :drinks:
 
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