Pantone aej (BTS)

What is the Pantone Scene series?

It’s an on-going photography project challenging myself to create interesting, weird, and fun aesthetics using Pantone swatch postcards to match my surroundings or something in it. Check out my earlier post here, it includes more about what the Pantone color matching system is and what sparked the project.

 

Collaborating with Ashley Johnson

“Ashley Johnson is a visual artist working at Exchange Studios in downtown Buffalo, NY. She works with ceramics, collage, and photography, but expresses her creativity most through stippled ink drawings and large scale ink paintings.” – aejcreate.com

We’re friends who nerd out together over color and composition – I really appreciate Ashley’s artistic talents and sensibilities and I knew she would be excited for a Pantone collaboration of her unique hair color.

It was fitting to shoot in her studio to feel the mood of her space and include her artwork in the shot. The idea for this image came to me because I, like most of us have an inner child that enjoys being silly, having fun, and being a little weird.

 

Final Images (2)

 

 

Behind the Scenes (BTS)

I knew that pulling this off the way I wanted would require Photoshop compositing the swatches in the frame so that I could place them exactly where I wanted. I’m glad Ashley was there to help because when I do this alone it’s challenging to focus my shot and hold the swatches. I’m showing 3 here but we shot around 30 different variations of swatch position to use in the final image. For floating objects (which I overdo but it’s just so much fun!) I try to always get what I need in-camera as much as possible and do minor transformations in Photoshop later. The final step was arranging the swatches in a silly way and replacing the swatch name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

aejcreate.com

 

The Pantone Scene series