Lately, I haven’t photographed. Lately, I’ve been learning to adapt.
Instead of capturing a new landscape or a different type of subject, I’ve been working with photos I photographed back in 2021 and 2022. Unintentionally, I have withheld so many fun and messy shots of myself and my close friends. Since these photos have just sat on my hard drive I decided to create digital collages with them. While making these pieces I have had the opportunity to improve my skills in Photoshop and it’s been very amusing. Creating something new with material that I considered old or on its own uninteresting has let me focus on my friends and myself. I love these folks here. I fucking love them.
For most of these shots, I used a landscape as the background for each subject. Each background I chose felt like it had a lot of empty space that I could fill in with faces and colors. I began experimenting with gradients and opacity levels to mix and match colors that, in my opinion, fit each frame and person. I love clicking on random buttons in Photoshop and discovering new ways of altering or enhancing photos.
I haven’t had the inspiration to photograph new places or things. I miss seeing sharp and rugged desert mountains to photograph during the sunrise or sunset. I recall Arizona’s sunsets often- they were unmatched/beautiful/jaw-dropping :0. The different shades of purple, yellow, and orange I saw blew me away. It’s different here, not worse or better. Most of Charlotte and parts of North Carolina aren’t as exciting for me as my old home was.
Traveling or tramping along a new area was a part of my conservation job/lifestyle. Our crews had to drive to new locations for work, pretty much, every two weeks or month. On my off days, since everywhere around me was new to me, I was able to explore new places with more than a weekend’s time to visit. Since I’ve been back in the SE I’ve come to accept that it’s harder to get around and frankly uninteresting(to me). So I wonder often, not if but when, will I try to seriously pick up my camera. What will I create? Good photos? funny or goofy collages? portraits? city photographs? green landscapes?
I wanted each photo to have a different song. In some songs, the lyrics are what make the connection between the image and the song. In others thats not the case. dont matta
Where This Flower Blooms – Tyler, The Creator
What I love about this track are the strings that hit right at 0:01. Mixed with a rhythmic piano chord progression, T brings you into his sunset show. Scum Fuck Flower Boy blasted open Tyler’s audience and reach which lead to his current success. A record I am sure he will be forever grateful for. I think it’s pretty good.
I combined two photos; one is a mural from Tucson, AZ and the other is a really nice rainbow I saw off of Red Rock’s Turtlehead Peak. Back when I lived in Tucson, my fascination with skulls began and since then I have tried to draw and photograph skulls. I even got one tattooed. I love seeing this skeleton pair over some Nevada mountains.
Ain’t nobody fucking with T but that might be my ego
…
Favorite color green, energy is skrong
I guess I chose this photo with WTFB because it was the first collage I worked on. It was like a taste of potential. A preview of what I could start doing with Photoshop; in a way it was like a breath of inspiration. I’ve always wanted to post this mural photograph because I loved it so much, but I didn’t create it. Still..not mine but no one’s put these two together and that idea is mine. 🙂
Pilot – Tyler, The Creator
PILOT IS WEIRD but good. What I like about this song is the way the song starts off a bit hectic and hazy, but then the beat, the drums and the sharp anxiety-drivin’ keys build up and explode with a low sustained horn (AAGSGDGHHH)!! Next, the piano chords come in and the electronic cascade silences to let the song breathe. I can’t really articulate it well but like what the fuck. This song can hit hard but at the same time, it can be so pretty (to me haha maybe not most folks). I love the duality. Thnx T.
I don’t wanna crash
I’m in first class but I feel like coach
Cause I’m in first class but I feel like coachI’m tryna find a place, a place where I can land at
A place where I can be
Classic shot of myself holding a can of Modelo over a shot of Flagstaff’s San Francisco Peaks. I look cold huh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGPGK_wOOVM&ab_channel=Tyler%2CTheCreator
Late Nights – Jay Worthy &Larry June
This song samples Willie Hutch’s Color Her Sunshine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5-Odcob0DE&ab_channel=SoulConnection Check it out if you don’t know fool(1:05).
Color her sunshine color her all night
sprinkle moon dust in her hair and love
The fucking horns on the original song are amazing!
I been maintainin’, still fightin’ through it
I got the heart to do it, I’m takin’ bigger steps
What I like about Worthy and June’s song is the way the synth cruises along the beat and how their voices rap over it -Mwuaaahhh- chef’s kiss. The lyrics of this song mean a lot to me. Bump this fool.
Every time I listen, I am transported to summer 2022. I had left Flagstaff to live in northern California with nothing but the clothes on my back (really just a car full of my shit haha). Late nights holds so much value for myself and also my Brother. He showed me this song and we bump it often.
I came a long way from cold nights dodgin’ vice
Lake Merrit in Oakland, CA is a fun and goofy place. The original background picture doesn’t have him in there at all. The different colors I layered on him are a way to show a person’s different personality or moods. We aren’t just one person at all times. We are multifaceted individuals and we are changing and growing at all times.
Wild Blue – John Mayer
Walking through the wilderness
And living off the loneliness
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado. You can kinda see the canyon walls behind Con (It’s a sweet park, check it out someday if you can). On this collage, I played with gradients and colors. I wanted the whole collage to be flooded with blues. I didn’t want it to feel very flat so when adding gradients on the Connors I added some shades of red to give it that 3-D glasses look while maintaining a blue theme. A sort of wild blue if you will haha.
Connor is not camera shy so I had many shots of him doing something funny. If you haven’t realized, all these collages are funny (to me). I don’t want them to be serious and I don’t care if they are objectively good or not. I wanted to make art that I could show my friends and laugh at.
And you’ll never know
The unlikely beauty in letting you go
Sob Rock was a cool record and I like listening to it every now and then. I’m not the biggest fan of 80s pop/rock genre but I appreciate the concept of the album. But I’m a huge John Mayer fan so I’ll always support his music. This song was attached to his collage more because of the feeling instead of the lyrics or production of the song. So won’t dig into the song.
20201127– Mac Demarco
Mac Demarco is a musician that I admire very very much. Mac’s latest releases; Five Easy Hotdogs and One Wayne G challenged the way contemporary records are released and consumed. With 5EH he gave us a Plein-air record that showcased his time traveling in North America in his search for musical inspiration. What a fucking badass. Then Mac gave the world a 199-track record of music from the last five years. He just dropped that one day and didn’t care about the record’s success.
This track, 20201127 ( November 27th, 2020), is, in my opinion, a nice little rolling tune. The guitar strums down over a high hat and a thick/warm bass line. The motion in the tune reminds me of a beach.
In this collage, the background is a tree truck washed up to shore, most likely from a sound off the coast of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I think its roots had been weathered from the crashing wave’s consistent impact. It was very strange to see a tree on the coast but that’s what made it beautiful to me.
My friend Alex visited me in Las Vegas and I took a bunch of photographs of him climbing and exploring the Ice Box Canyon trail in the Red Rock Conservation area. Thanks for all the candid photos haha. I had fun adding many Alexs to this collage. I wanted to add a type of stamp of Alex on the collage so I experimented with the shape-making tool on Photoshop and layered him over it. I liked it and will try to make more collages with that tool. The colors are sweet too. I like that shade of pink.
Just a Bum – Michael Hurley
Travelin’ over land like a natural born man
…
Just a hobo
Easy come easy go don’t ya see don’t ya know you’re lovin’ hobo
Just a lovin’ 27-year-old tramp. I miss being out west and I really miss how I felt when I was exploring the country. I once told an old flame of mine that I didn’t have a worry in the world while working out in the Sonoran. I guess there is a blissful simplicity in not having anything or being anyone.
I won’t write about this collage and song. I want y’all to make your own thoughts about it. I do love my eyes though (pretty af).
Remember that I loved you, was my lovin’ alright?
Freedom is Free – Chicano Batman
Lastly, my friend Max. I challenged myself with this collage. I tried to take all I had learned in my last collages to make this last collage. I heavily worked with masking and selecting tools all while switching through blending modes in each max-layer. My favorite part of this collage is the top right corner. Max is holding a PBR, two coronitas, and what I think is, a Yuengling haha. The eyes in the background are hilarious and they are a callback to my sunset photograph, where my eyes are front and center.
You got your guns up on display
But you can’t control how I feel no way
The background was taken in Tucson one early morning. I went out to the base of the Catalina mountain to get some sunrise photographs one winter morning. Saguaros and killer cholla were all over the place- it’s amazing! Every time I see my Tucson Catalina highway photos I really want to print them and hang them all over the place. https://elcanto.photo.blog/2021/05/25/oshcokota-chancho-en-piedra/
There’s no amount of negativity can put a dent in me
A friend of mine (shout out Pao!) invited me to a Chicano Batman show in my university town back in 2016 or 17 and I’m really glad I went. Chicano Batman is such a cool band. Their look, sound, and lyrics are sick! I decided to attach this song to the collage because Max is a fan of CB and when I look at desert mountains and roads I am reminded that I am free to go anywhere I want.
Well, that wraps this montage up.
As always, thank you for reading.
I can only hope we cross paths in the wind
-Nico
El canto de mis fotos 