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| © Hugh Kretschmer |
| Hugh Kretschmer's Reformed Liar. Click photo for more images. |
At first glance, professional photographer and photo illustrator Hugh Kretschmer's work looks like the result of Photoshop wizardry. His surreal photographs reveal other worlds, born of Kretschmer's imagination, where a man's body can be firmly set in the ground while his head is, literally, in the clouds; where a giant alien woman attempts to eat all of New York; where tightrope walkers perch gracefully over tiny beds; and where the walls of sound rooms are, of course, covered in ears. Beyond the potency of Kretschmer's content, though, what's really amazing is that the bulk of his work is done manually, through a detailed process of collage and assemblage, with minimal digital finessing. Here, we consider the unusual process behind three of Kretschmer's photographs: Reformed Liar, All Ears and Return of the Thin Man.
It all begins with the sketch, Kretschmer's blueprint. "The process of sketching enables me to plan the shoot, so that [later] when I have a sketch in front of me, it's almost like a schematic." He is meticulous; every angle, every shadow, every aspect of the shot is considered during this phase, streamlining his efforts later.
Reformed Liar was initially intended to complement a story about a writer who challenged himself to give up lying for 30 days. "I usually use a lot of symbolism in my work, and so I wanted to use the Pinocchio nose to interpret that. He'd given up his former self as indicated by hanging up his mask, or a representation of him, on a hook on a wall."
After a thorough sketching phase, Kretschmer built the plywood set and worked with a representation of the mask on the wall to determine proper lighting. It was crucial at this stage to visualize the end result, so that the angle and lighting of the first shot would match up perfectly with his overall vision.
He approached makeup stylist Jane Choi, a consistent collaborator and special effects master, to create a prosthetic nose. Choi attached the prosthetic to Hugh's assistant, Shannon. Hugh then photographed Shannon on Kodak Portra NC 4x5 film, lit to match the intended final shots' lighting. He made life-size prints on Kodak N Type "C" paper, and actually mounted the prints of Shannon's face to poster board.
Next, he placed a layer of tissue paper over the poster board. He drew in the contours of the mask on the tissue paper, and cut along the tissue into the print. This step was delicate and time-consuming. As Kretschmer describes it, it's like drawing on a 2-dimensional plane, only much trickier. "If a cut is off even a little bit, it becomes glaringly obvious."
Using another print, he extended the nose further for additional emphasis. Then he mounted the poster board to the wall, connecting the mask's string to the sides of the print and looping it over the nail in the wall. To give an added sense of three dimensions, he grabbed another print of Shannon, cut a piece of skin from that print, and wrapped the skin around an edge of the mounted poster board.
To give some detail to the shadow areas, Kretschmer photographed the mounted poster board from the front with a single light source, using a Toyo "G45" camera and a 210 mm lens and Fuji RDP III 4x5 film. The camera's lens had to be at just the right height and angle with the print. "The print is basically facing the film plane flat, so that there's no distortion or foreshortening, which is critical to make it look realistic. If it's off a little bit, it will look odd." Hugh used selective focus to hide little problem areas, such as the space around the eyelashes, which was not as fine as he'd wanted.
Then he worked in Photoshop to finalize the shadow detailing. Because of his careful initial sketching and execution, however, there was ultimately very little retouching to be done.
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