Leaving Your Emotional Baggage Behind

So...it's that time again. It's time to blog about my process and new work! Recently I completed a personal shoot based around the idea of "emotional baggage" and took this concept literally into the physical realm. The idea started out pretty vague and started forming as I searched for luggage generic looking enough to hold little cultural value. After a month of two of casually perusing Winners and thrift stores I ended up finding this suitcase in Klyment Tan's garage. Apparently he saved it from a near trip to the dumpster and I am truly grateful for this. =)

This is the type of writing/scribbling/scrawling that started and kept the idea going through the pre- visualization process.

After securing the proper luggage I contacted the YYC airport in Calgary to ensure that a shoot could go down safely. Surprised to find a page on their website dedicated to this exact need, I shot them an email, and received a response quite quickly. This was too easy..and way better than getting kicked out half way through the shoot, especially since I would be shooting this on a larger/"slower" camera.

Figuring out how I could get closest to the look of two faces emerging from the suitcase was probably the most time consuming issue. I went back and forth between a direct photo composite and a more sculptural technique. Following my recent body of work based in craft, I ended up finding two different shaped blank masks at a local costume shop. Using these as base facial shapes for the luggage, I was able to use cardboard, tape, and paper-mache to sculpt the final product. These two "morphed" faces were then adhered to the suitcase with duct tape. This was probably not the prettiest way to do this, but the tape was color neutral and had the ability to hold enough weight..so it worked.

Stefanie Villeneuve took these photos of me at work on my phone. WAX ON, WAX OFF~!

Finished sculpture (pre-paint) under a hot light to dry.

Mask sculptures taped to the suitcase.

The final image(s) were shot with a Cambo WRS-1000 using the Schneider Digitar 47mm lens and a Phase One P25+ back. The file is so ridiculously sharp that working on post-processing at 300x-500x was a pleasure rather than a pain. Instead of discussing all of my post-processing work I figured I'd make a fun GIF so you can play eye-spy. It's just more fun that way, but if you have any questions (like "why did you waste this much time?") I'd be more than happy to answer.

I'm currently still figuring out which crop of the image I prefer so I will put up the final two. Perhaps a vote is in order? I think right now each serves a different purpose in print...and I can't see the value in really picking one over the other for strictly web use.