Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Legolas Baxton’s photostream is a collection of stunning headshots, portraits of people revealed by skillfully and artfully revealed light. “I took a pill in Ibiza” caught my eye because it breaks one of the most-followed rules of composition -- having the subject look into the frame. By having her look out, there is less active space in front of her. Most of the picture is dead space. That’s a risky move, but it works here. It gives her an almost uncanny look, as though she is only pretending to look out to the left, but really she’s looking straight at the viewer. Look at it long enough and you will swear she’s looking at you. The title is the same as the song he links to in the description. [To listen, click here.] It’s interesting that the music video uses light in similar ways to Legolas’ revealing and hiding the people in it.
For more extraordinary head shots, click here:
In “Fly On,” Legolas obscures the head shot with diffused objects in front of it. It looks like perhaps some grass or plants that are out of focus thanks to Depth of Field. It could be curtains or anything really. But is an effective way of obscuring all but what he wants to highlight. He also uses the rule of thirds in this and the first picture to balance the picture. This picture feels more hopeful than the other, even though she is injured.
In “Thoughts,” he used an overlay to add a storm and streak of lightning. You can use a very diffuse eraser or pen to intensify and eliminate how much shows through. This picture is so striking, not just because of the flash of lightning and the clouds in his beard, but look at his eyes. They are directly looking at the furthest point, the lower right corner, forming a diagonal.
Legolas Baxton’s photostream is almost all headshots. He includes a song with each picture as well as some of the lyrics. The song and the picture title are the same. He puts quite a bit of thought into it because they do go together very well. He uses shadows or diffused light and at times, bright overblown light to obscure most of the avatar revealing only what he wants us to see. He occasionally uses overlays to add other elements. Many of his portraits are emotionally evocative and visually stunning.
See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter, on her blog, and on her Ko-Fi.
Comments