Statues...To Life

Introduction

Remember that any sculpture, no matter how masterful its construction, is simply a lump of solid when bereft of light, shadow, and perspective.

This past weekend at New York City, my mom and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts on 5th Avenue. The last time I was there was almost ten years ago, when I was a first grade brat living in Queens.

I never really cared for Manhattan (and the rest of the world seems to associate New York with Manhattan, even though it is but a small part of a small city in a large state). However, I've always loved Queens, with her factories, low income housing, and ethnically diverse neighborhoods...even more so than the other boroughs of New York City. The community that I lived in was made up of mostly international students with families. The streets were decrepit and the houses were gray, but it was still a fun place for a six year-old running to Dunkin' Donuts in the middle of winter.

Queens is also the home of JFK International and LaGuardia Airport.

When my mother graduated with her Master's degree, we decided to be tourists for a day and explore downtown. Leaving the car at the station in Stony Brook, we took the train and the subway from Long Island to Manhattan.

The Triplets of Static Drama

Statues are great subjects to practice portrait and candid photography. The setting is made for you by the artist, all you need to do is apply drama to that setting.

Good curators and designers at the Met know how to use lighting (artificial or natural) to the artwork's advantage...the choice is up to the visitors as to how to view the pieces and how to let the works affect their emotional states. Too many people go to art museums just to see, but not to feel. The former will leave the building thinking art museums are incredibly boring. The latter will be captivated and not realize an entire day has gone by and he/she has only explored 1/4 of the entire collection.

To translate the sculptures from 3-dimension to 2-dimension allows you more freedom to play with perspectives. An off-centered subject and uneven angles, gives the viewer a sense of uneasiness, and thereby heightening the drama. More contrast can achieve a certain dramatic feel, much like a silhouette of a figure giving the subject a mysterious and brooding look.

Marble sculptures are interesting to work with, because of the way the material scatters light. From computer graphics, I learned that rendering marble, for example, can be quite difficult due to the property of marble being both translucent and opaque. The specularity of marble is also quite different compare to a well polished glass sphere, the latter being easier to model in rendering algorithm.

All these quirks gives rise to difficulty in capturing marble in a dramatic light on 2-dimensional medium. By default, marble sculptures will rarely have sharp angles for the shadows to dwell, so I tried emphasizing the contours and smooth lines of the figure as well as the contrast within the sculpture itself, and also in comparison to the subject's surrounding. The result is that some of the marble sculptures, like Aphrodites from the Grecian History Collection, came out more like silhouettes.

Finally...

Of course, never be afraid to post-process. Consider post-processing as a method to overcome the shortcomings of your camera. Film or digital, good photographers have done some cropping and post-processing to their image, whether the tools be chemicals or software. The photograph is a coloring book for you to paint with your imagination. Don't be afraid to try.

Because I draw and paint way before I seriously went into photography, I have no compunction with playing around with my photographs. Photographers are simply artists working with existing events, creating templates confined by the moment of capture. They tweak their templates to their liking, and the final products ignite the imagination of the viewers...much like a sculpture or a painting.

No amounts of digital editing can turn a crappy template into a good one. Believe me, it is damn near impossible.