The 2022 500px Global Photos Awards serves creatives operating with photographs and offers them a possibility to showcase their ability and be rewarded for it. The second model of the competition consisted of six categories: Technical, Storytelling, Industry Content material subject matter, Documentary, Great Paintings, and Landscape. In this day and age on the blog we’re talking with the winner of the Great Paintings magnificence, Elena Paraskeva, as she tells us additional regarding the image.
Hi Elena, please introduce yourself.
Believe it or not, my masters was once as soon as in finance, and my profession in america was once as soon as first as a Director of Analytics and then as a Promoting and advertising and marketing Govt for Nestle Waters.
I am completely self-taught, under no circumstances attended a single workshop, and fast-forward a decade later, my artwork is lately on exhibition at the Ecu Parliament in Brussels.
I am a faithful Adobe Teacher, teaching hundreds on my process, and I’m a judge for one of the vital world’s most esteemed photographs competitions in conjunction with for the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.
The successful image: “Maintaining the Distance”
What made you gravitate to this style of pictures—pushing the bounds of representation and creating artwork additional conceptual in nature?
I imagine myself to be a complicated explicit individual, and as such, I would really like my interaction with the viewer to occur in a additional complicated, contextual house where the that suggests and function is not directly available to grab. A additional involved conversation of the minds should happen for the unraveling of the original considered attained.
Can you tell us the best way you planned and finished the shoot for the “Maintaining the Distance” image?
The appropriate image is part of an 8-image assortment that has been featured broadly in magazines around the world. The problem was once as soon as actually created right kind after our lockdowns ended. It was once as soon as a surreal time in case you consider it, the fear, and the need to distance ourselves was once as soon as so intense, all folks went via a never-before-seen stage of social deprivation. The problem explores society’s awkward makes an try at re-integration, the use of humor and colour.
There are such a large amount of portions inside this image. Was once it an issue operating with such a large amount of portions of colour, props, and models?
I have a process when I create a series, and it all starts with me writing down the storyline and the message. I then scout for puts and take pictures of each frame inside this location. After I’ve honed in on the particular frames, I elaborate on the composition, writing down the poses, the props, the garments, and, finally, the correct lighting to be used. The entire thing is predetermined means previous than the day of the shoot, now not the rest is left to probability. In that sense, it is easy on the day of the shoot, I know exactly what I’m going for.
Do you might have a favorite image for your 500px Profile and why?
I’m at all times additional emotionally hooked up to a series quite than individual images, as a result of the intrinsic message at the back of them and the time investment. Alternatively If I had to make a choice an image or two, I’d say the “Cubist” (I & II) because of they are so marketing consultant of my conceptual style and sensibility.
All photographers have their most well liked apparatus. What is yours, and what apparatus did you employ to create “Maintaining the Distance”?
I’m a Nikon photographer, so all my apparatus (virtual digicam and lenses) is Nikon. I don’t have a favorite lens to be fair, because of I find that each lens has its non-public price depending on the type of shoot involved. If I’m doing an amazing paintings portrait, I take advantage of a longer lens, but if I’m doing some way shoot, I take advantage of a wide-angle one, and I actually love the distortion.
This particular assortment was once as soon as environmentally based and all the portions inside the frame needed to be in point of interest, so I used a wide-angle lens fastened on my tripod. Lights was once as soon as the an identical for each image inside the assortment, as I like to have light-cohesiveness, and as it was once as soon as a harsh and truly bright day, the serve as was once as soon as to use the sun as the main provide, and the strobes for the reason that secondary provide that got rid of the tough shadows. As a result of this, I used huge octaboxes for even coverage.
Framing and taking the shot is only a sliver of what it takes to make a strong image. The other in a similar fashion very important section is editing, how did you employ editing apparatus to lift your image?
This is very true, editing plays an important place in my artwork. For this particular assortment, I used Photoshop to merge all the different exposures I created for each scene since I was operating with a single genre. I moreover carried out with colour to make certain that the color-blocking I envisioned would be the equivalent for each image. Color grading for me is the remaining step of the process and it is what separates a good image from a very good image!
When submitting your artwork to the awards, how did you select from your a lot of portfolio and decide on the best images? Curation is typically a fight for creatives so do you might have any tips on how you’ll be selective and intentional in terms of submitting your artwork to competitions?
It all comes the entire method right down to which competition you might be submitting to. Research earlier winners to see what the competition gravitates in opposition to. Is it realism, rawness, documentary-style photographs, or very stylized, pop, vibrant, or surreal imagery?
For instance, the Lensculture and Sony competitions require very different imagery from say the ICA, Chromatica Awards, IPA, FAPA and plenty of others. The main competitions love and recognize additional documentary style photographs and provide issue-based imagery, whilst the latter award the surprising and the additional technically based.
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