Meet the 500px World Footage Awards Great Paintings Elegance Winner

The 2022 500px World Pictures Awards serves creatives working with pictures and gives them a chance to show off their skill and be rewarded for it. The second one fashion of the contest consisted of six classes: Technical, Storytelling, Business Content material subject matter subject material, Documentary, Nice Art work, and Panorama. Nowadays at the weblog we’re speaking with the winner of the Great Paintings class, Elena Paraskeva, as she tells us further in regards to the picture.

Hello Elena, please introduce your self.

Consider it or no longer, my masters used to be as soon as once in finance, and my occupation in the us used to be as soon as once first as a Director of Analytics after which as a Selling and promoting and advertising and marketing Executive for Nestle Waters.

I’m utterly self-taught, on no account attended a unmarried workshop, and fast-forward a decade later, my paintings is in recent years on exhibition on the Eu Parliament in Brussels.

I’m a loyal Adobe Trainer, instructing masses on my procedure, and I’m a pass judgement on for one of the most necessary global’s maximum esteemed pictures competitions along with for the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.

The a hit picture: “Keeping up the Distance”

What made you gravitate to this genre of images—pushing the limits of illustration and developing paintings further conceptual in nature?
I believe myself to be an advanced specific person, and as such, I might truly like my interplay with the viewer to happen in a further sophisticated, contextual area the place the that implies and serve as is indirectly to be had to clutch. A further concerned dialog of the minds will have to occur for the unraveling of the unique thought to be attained.

Are you able to let us know one of the simplest ways you deliberate and completed the shoot for the “Keeping up the Distance” picture?
The proper picture is a part of an 8-image collection that has been featured extensively in magazines all over the world. The issue used to be as soon as once in reality created proper after our lockdowns ended. It used to be as soon as once a surreal time for those who believe it, the concern, and the want to distance ourselves used to be as soon as once so intense, all other folks went by means of a never-before-seen level of social deprivation. The issue explores society’s awkward makes an check out at re-integration, using humor and color.

There are so many parts within this picture. Used to be as soon as it a topic working with such a lot of parts of color, props, and fashions?
I’ve a procedure after I create a chain, and all of it begins with me writing down the storyline and the message. I then scout for places and take footage of every body within this location. Once I’ve honed in at the specific frames, I elaborate at the composition, writing down the poses, the props, the clothes, and, in any case, the proper lighting fixtures for use. All of the factor is predetermined way earlier than the day of the shoot, no longer the remainder is left to chance. In that sense, it’s simple at the day of the shoot, I do know precisely what I’m going for.

Do you’ll have a favourite picture in your 500px Profile and why?
I’m all the time further emotionally hooked as much as a chain slightly than person pictures, on account of the intrinsic message in the back of them and the time funding. On the other hand If I had to choose a picture or two, I’d say the “Cubist” (I & II) as a result of they’re so advertising and marketing guide of my conceptual genre and sensibility.

All photographers have their hottest equipment. What’s yours, and what equipment did you use to create “Maintaining the Distance”?
I’m a Nikon photographer, so all my equipment (digital digital camera and lenses) is Nikon. I don’t have a favourite lens to be honest, as a result of I to find that every lens has its private worth relying on the kind of shoot concerned. If I’m doing a fantastic artwork portrait, I make the most of an extended lens, but when I’m doing a way shoot, I make the most of a wide-angle one, and I in reality love the distortion.

This actual collection used to be as soon as once environmentally founded and all of the parts within the body had to be in focal point, so I used a wide-angle lens fixed on my tripod. Lighting used to be as soon as as quickly because the an an identical for every picture within the collection, as I love to have light-cohesiveness, and because it used to be as soon as once a harsh and in reality brilliant day, the function used to be as soon as once to make use of the solar as the primary supply, and the strobes given that secondary supply that removed the harsh shadows. On account of this, I used massive octaboxes for even protection.

Framing and taking the shot is just a sliver of what it takes to make a robust picture. The opposite similarly essential phase is enhancing, how did you use enhancing equipment to boost your picture?
That is especially true, enhancing performs crucial position in my paintings. For this actual collection, I used Photoshop to merge all of the other exposures I created for every scene since I used to be working with a unmarried style. I additionally performed with color to be sure that the color-blocking I envisioned will be the similar for every picture. Colour grading for me is the rest step of the method and it’s what separates a excellent picture from an excellent picture!

When filing your paintings to the awards, how did you choose out of your a large number of portfolio and come to a decision on the most productive pictures? Curation is generally a battle for creatives so do you’ll have any tips about how you’ll be able to be selective and intentional when it comes to filing your paintings to competitions?
All of it comes all of the way proper all the way down to which festival you could be filing to. Analysis previous winners to peer what the contest gravitates against. Is it realism, rawness, documentary-style pictures, or very stylized, pop, colourful, or surreal imagery?

For example, the Lensculture and Sony competitions require very other imagery from say the ICA, Chromatica Awards, IPA, FAPA and a number of others. The principle competitions love and acknowledge further documentary genre pictures and supply issue-based imagery, while the latter award the sudden and the extra technically founded.

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