20-10-2013 / Personal Visions #2: Your So Called Friends
Your So Called Friends
On this entry I present the second installment of the Personal Visions series: Your So Called Friends.
For me this image discusses a point that, until recently, had been a recurrent theme with people I know. The difference this time is that I've learned a lot ever since I shot this photograph and I don't let things go this far with people.
Technical commentary
Originally this shot was conceived as a black and white image; the idea was to have an intense contrast between the bright and dark areas. The idea was to push the envelope beyond the reasonable.
After hours of experimenting with the adjustments, the result just wasn't working for me; the results weren't as dramatic as I wanted them to be.
At some point I was ready to give up and restore the original colors of the image and leave the idea alone when I accidentally made a "wrong" adjustment to the photograph and I ended up with this rendering. Needless to say, I loved the result and knew this is what I was looking for, even though the color tones are more nuanced than I planned originally, they work better than my first idea.
This turned out to be a case where a mistake actually leads you to a better result.
Personal commentary
At the moment of taking this photo, I had gone through several unpleasant incidents with several people I considered my friends at the time, but like all hypocrites do sooner or later, they dropped the mask and showed their true face.
After being thrown under the bus in order to save their own face, I decided to walk away from those people and carry on with my own devices.
Like I stated before, this shot was taken during an improvised gathering and walk to take pictures. When I came across this view, I thought "This branch looks like someone is stretching its hand out to you, but you don't realize the thorns on it until you have a good grab on it and they have hurt you intensely". It obviously made me think of the whole issue I recently went through at that time.
It was when I reviewed the picture on my camera that I came up with the title. I said to myself "Look at your so called friends" and the phrase stuck on me. Ever since then I've felt it was the proper title for this shot.
While I originally was going for B&W, this one expresses my point better: the fact that a LOT of people these days present themselves with an aura of kindness and good will (yellow color) does not mean that's their real side; in reality, they are cold people. Cold in the sense that they only seek their own benefit and they won't have any regard or consideration of how much they'll destroy or how many people they will consume in the process. The problem is that we usually don't notice that until is too late. It isn't until their thorns have pierced and damaged everything on the inside and have made us bleed that we realize that they never were friends to begin with, but a cold branch of thorns, hence the blue color.
The problem with people like this is that they get in your life with ease and speed, but removing them is more troublesome and painful than if you just had said "No" in the first place. Just like when you remove a thorn, they will hurt you more on their way out than on the way in.
Ironically, 4 years later, I came out of a personal relationship that further stresses the meaning this photograph has for me. That's why I think it's still as relevant today as it was back when I made it. Hopefully, this time I learned the lesson for good and won't have to remove another of these branches off me in the future.
When everything was said and done
and you ended up alone
When every door was shut in your face
and everyone disappeared without a trace
When every pillar crumbled
and you realized all you had in reality was rubble
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