From a sketch to a painting
Sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar in my kitchen, drinking some wine, I look down at the bottle and notice the cork inside the bottle. I couldn't find my wine-bottle-opener thingie and had to push the cork down through the bottle's neck in order to open it. The cork was floating in this dark liquid, reflecting the light and pointed diagonally to the upper right.
I follow the path the cork gives me and besides the bottle, but behind, I see our black day-of-the-dead-sugar-skull salt shaker. I close one of my eyes and start trying to align the edge of the skull with the edge of the bottle. I do this and notice how the edge of the bottle curves upward and to the left, forming the bottle's neck. Behind the line of this edge, I see our napkin holder, that has a similar circular edge, so with one eye closed, I see if I can align this edge, while keeping the sugar skull's edge also aligned.
It wasn't a perfect fit, but then I noticed in the far background a sharp vertical line of a knife pointing directly downward towards the edge of the bottle, that I decide to take out my iPhone and make a sketch.
Afterwards, while sipping my wine, I'm looking down at my iPhone's screen, contemplating the resulting image, thinking to myself that I really liked it. After pondering this for some time, I suddenly realize I'm at home, and my "good" camera is close by. I ask my family not to move anything in the bar and I go get my dslr, sit down again in my stool, and put it to my eye trying to recreate the alignment I had discovered earlier. This camera though, has a 50mm lens, which means it brings me closer to the image than the iPhone's camera. Trying the image both vertically and horizontally I make the image.
Besides the focal length of the shot and obviously the file's resolution, another difference between these shots, is that my sketches taken on the iPhone, I have self imposed myself to only edit them with the options available within the iPhone, and the ones from the camera, since I shoot RAW, I do download those to my computer and work them in Lightroom. Also, in my camera I had to adjust aperture and speed due to the dim lighting, which resulted in a bokeh effect of the background.
The fact how a simple observation can evolve into a photograph captivates me. No special props or models are needed. Just a playful disposition is required.
Andres Gonzalez
