2013.10.31, UNTITLED BOTTEGA
DETROIT, MI
The Untitled Bottega (now Baltimore Gallery) is a lightly curated art gallery and performance space in Detroit, Michigan.
In 2013, the gallery held a catered Halloween celebration themed on the Stanley Kubrick film, A Clockwork Orange, with screening room and decorations based on the Korova Milk Bar.
The gallery space was filled with such intense and pervasive red light, that the only way to salvage intelligible captures of the event was to convert most of the pictures to black-and-white.
Combined with the pleasing level of noise contributed by my Canon 5D MkII, and the usual level of post-production sweetening, the resulting images look reminiscent of the prints I used to make as a high school student using my preferred high-contrast 35mm B&W film.
While I enjoy harvesting salient and juicy details out of HDR images in Lightroom today, there is definitely a place in mine and anyone's artistic expression for crushed shadows and highlights—if you know exactly what you're looking for in an image, such restrictions can strengthen your subjects and make for more interesting pictures.
