Blog: American Gothic but Not

Isn’t crazy to think that things can change in your life within a blink of an eye. That’s crazy right? Well that is essentially how this photoset came to life, not as dramatically as the statement, but it still was fairly unplanned and a go with the flow type of day.

It was a brisk October 24th morning, I was hanging out in my room playing xbox, consistently checking my temperature to ensure that my temperature was within a healthy range. Of course, probably due to my crippling anxiety, my temperature began to fluctuate between 99 degrees and 98 degrees. Such temperatures are fairly normal, but for me it was cause for high alert, causing me to contact my buddy Fred about cancelling our photo meet up. “That’s cool” was his answer, but I knew deep down that it was most certainly “not cool.”

An hour pasted, sadness and regret engulfing my body, I gingerly check my temperature once again to ensure that my sanity was not the cause for my slightly heightened temperature. “Fuck me dude,” I yelled reading that my temperature was not only 97 degrees, but that I now had to call Fred to ask him for forgiveness and if he still wanted to meet up to take pictures. Lucky for me, my buddy said yes and we began to set out to take some interesting pictures.

Now all short stories aside, on October 24th me and my close friend Fred went out to take some pictures for fun. At first the whole shoot was specifically supposed to be a short shoot to get some photos for our Tinder and Bumble profiles. Not gonna lie, that’s pretty embarrassing to say, but that’s what it was supposed to be at first. We first began to take some photos in his backyard with his dogs, you know, something cute to interest the ladies right. Cause we all know, nobody can resist the puppies.

Fred (left) embraces Rosie (right)

Then we had this idea of going out to this field that another close friend of mine, Madhavi, had let me know about. We were gonna get some interesting pictures for Tinder but eventually my mind wandered and I ended up wanting to do something a little more artistic. The field that we went to was filled with these dead beans of some sort, that tasted gummy and bland. Don’t ask me why Fred had decided to eat a bean, but at least we now know what they taste like and that they are not poisonous ness, well not yet.

Anyways, the field was pretty cool and really reminded me of a nice chill country side and more specifically the painting by the name of “American Gothic.” Prior to that day, I never really thought about that painting and I definitely didn’t know the name of it. However, for some odd reason, that painting just magically appeared in my head making me have to somehow capture it in my own way. l had managed to come up with the idea of having Fred and his brother Andrew stand next to each other having one of them hold this weird bean plant to act as a pitchfork to try our best at emulating the painting. Interestingly enough it ended up working pretty well, I mean it wasn’t necessarily the same as the painting, but it was still inspired in the right ways in my opinion. I

I also had Fred and his brother Andrew sit in the field and stand in different areas so I could really play with different angles and depths of fields looking for different ways to capture these portraits while also keeping them interesting.I really enjoyed these photos but the photo emulating “American Gothic,” was really my favorite.

As far as editing, I didn’t want to do anything to crazy or overly saturated. I was very inspired by the colors found inside of the original “American Gothic” painting and I used most of that pallet within these photos. I was really looking to keep a more muted look and something that felt more nostalgic and timeless in a way, just as a painting would feel. For many of the photos I reduced the highlights and brought up the shadows just a bit to make the photos more balanced in lighting.

I also added a bit of green into the shadows and some yellow into the highlights to really emphasize that nostalgic and timeless feel to the photos. I was also looking for a way to spice of up one of the portraits of Fred, so I ended up adding a couple of birds into background of one of the photos using photoshop. Adding a touch of gaussian blur to the layer to make the birds seems more realistic, hopefully fooling some of those who viewed it which I suspect I did end up doing.

Overall, I really enjoyed this photoset and the day as well. It was the first time in a long time trying to go out and create something so it really felt good to get something creative out there. Honestly I didn’t think that I would even get out that day due to the anxiety that was killing me in the morning but somehow everything turned out alright. If you enjoyed anything about this freeform blog, or have any questions please let me know in the comments below or just message me on Instagram or through email. Also, if you got this far in my terrible writing, I really do appreciate you and the fact that you took time out to read my rambling really means a lot to me, so shout out to you. Anyways thanks for coming out and be sure to stay tuned for another blog post in the next couple of days, i’m not sure what it will be about but it will definitely be about something. Feel Free to Check out the full photoset below!

Peace, Love, and Positivity <3