Three Wishes

​Tell me what you want and I'll tell you who you are. 
― Anton Chekhov

Like several other people this week, this was my other double exposure idea for the March prompt. And this is the second version. In the first version I tried layering three different pictures together and I couldn't get the scale right so it looked quite odd. This one also looks odd, but I liked the surreal dreamy quality of the black and white background and the bottle practically exploding with light. 

When I first conceived of this picture I started with my pose.

The sunburst was really important to me. I figured I would like the way that looked if I could capture it inside the bottle. 

Then, of course, I didn't have a bottle. In the first version I tried downloading a random picture of a bottle, putting myself in it and then putting the whole thing into another picture and it was simply too many elements to manage and I really struggled with the scale of the whole project. So, I went out and spent $6 on a bottle and then staged this shot.

After that it was a relatively simple matter of filters and layering the pictures together. Snapseed has a good tutorial about double exposures but it's kind of complex and I had to watch it a couple of times to figure out how the brush worked. It's still not a very fine tool but the results were far better than my first go round.

Conceptually, I knew I wanted the background to be black and white and the bottle to be in color. Anyone who thinks their life would improve if only someone would grant their wishes sees their world this way, I think. A dark landscape with golden things locked away and out of their reach. 

I'm a little obsessed with double images now. There are so many story possibilities with two pictures layered together. I have another idea I'm playing with, I'll see what I can get out of it.

And meanwhile, the results of the second Smut Marathon are upon us so my next task is to read feedback and see who the judges picked to win the round. I'll post more about that as well as my second round entry this week.

Happy sunday everyone!