The first thing I did was just listen to the song, "Maybe I'm Amazed" by Paul Mccartney, in its entirety. There were a couple of lines that I immediately thought could be the basis for a new image. To be sure, I looked up the lyrics to the song so I could read them and isolate the words. In the end I decided I could shoot and edit something based on the line: “maybe I’m amazed at the way you’re with me all the time; and maybe I’m afraid of the way I leave you.”
Although this is widely heralded as a love song, in my typical fashion I was pulled towards this line which is a little sad and made me feel a certain loneliness. Right away I thought I might want to show a woman (me, since this is a self-portrait) walking away from something–the chair idea didn’t come into the picture until about halfway through the shoot. In the final edit you see the woman leaving behind an empty chair, but looking back as if she’s unsure. She’s walking away from the light into the darkness, tentatively reaching back as if she might be leaving something good behind. The birds came in during the editing process, loosely inspired by the line “maybe I’m a lonely man who’s in the middle of something that he doesn’t really understand.” I like to add a dream-like element to my images when I can, and the birds coming out of my stomach and through the border of the photo seemed to capture that feeling of bewilderment I was after. I don’t usually like to share that much of the backstory but would rather leave it up to the viewer to imagine their own story. Perhaps they can still wonder where I am going and why I am leaving?
1. Step 1
I shot this self-portrait with the Slow Shutter app, a favorite of mine for when I want to capture blur and movement. I then took the photo into Snapseed (iOS and Android) for a little straightening and fine tuning–that’s pretty much a standard move for me. Next up, Vintage Scene, which a is great app for, well, giving photos a vintage look–no surprise there. I use this app often and just play around with the settings until I see something I like.
2. Step 2
I added the birds using an app called Tapfx (iOS and Android). This app has many different effects that you can add to photos but I’ve only ever used the birds. I actually have many of my own photos of birds that I usually layer into my photos for a bird effect but for this one I wanted to place the birds in somewhat of a line coming out of my body so it was easier to do this way.
3. Step 3
Since Tapfx cropped the image square, I had to take it into Superimpose (iOS and Android) and lay the square version with the birds over the portrait version to bring it back to the right crop.
4. Step 4
Next, a few minor edits in Retouch (iOS and Android) to fix some areas that had too much texture or a random scratch that I didn’t like.
5. Step 5
At this point I thought it might be done but as I often do, I let it sit on my camera roll for a while. I like to take a fresh look at my images after a few days or a week, or even longer sometimes. When I came back to this one I felt that it needed more. I decided to experiment with Scratch Cam–a great app that allows you to play around with the color and apply scratches, textures, and borders–but I ended up not incorporating this version.
6. Step 6
So I moved on to Noir Photo (iOS and Android) where you can choose different areas of the image and darken or lighten the surrounding area to create a vignette. I played around here a bit but settled on keeping the right side of the photo light and have her moving towards the darkness.
7. Final
And finally, I pulled it into Square Ready, added a few more birds in Tapfx, save, and done!