07/13/2019
RITES OF PASSAGE from !⠀
Please read below for my story of the process of making this image.⠀
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These days, when a new album released, it's celebrated as the start of something new. But the reality is, that the work it took to bring it to this point of release has been long, trying and intense.⠀
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Everyone involved — songwriters, composers, producers, managers, spouses, family, supporters, and, yes, photographers, — have been working on their part in the creation and inspiration of bringing the music to life.⠀
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The twins and I originally shot the foundational portraits in March of last year, and it was nearly a 6 month process to get through the steps needed to finalize the final image: review and making selects, printing, ripping and tearing, and piecing it back together... photographing the structure as flat art, stripping out just the paper's edges, then digitally replacing the printed images with the right areas from the original portraits to restore the detail lost in printing...⠀
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Then, in August, I was done. The twins loved it! And then there was the lull. While the twins continued their journey on their album, I didn't hear anything for months. I waited.⠀
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And then, maybe two months ago, I saw Jordan at church and he was like "Dude! We figured out how to finish the album art." Turns out that when my super High Res and detailed image was condensed down for web display, the fine paper's edge line that separated their faces became lost. In the process of trying to create art that showed how different Tyler and Jordan were from each other, on final display, they perhaps looked too much like they were one.⠀
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To solve the issue, their manager split and rearranged my "solo" image to now bring the twins each into their own side of the frame, and added the color graduations to make it pop. Frickin' genius.⠀
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I leave you with this:⠀
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"The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity @ Franklin, Tennessee