PHOTO: Masters of the Selfie

Every summer OMAH is involved in an evening of art and music in Downtown Orillia for the Starry Night Gallery & Studio Tour. The street is closed and businesses set up booths on the street for the night. Last year, OMAH participated with an outdoor photobooth with our cut-out of Sir Sam Steele. Visitors could dress up in vintage costumes and I would take their photo and edit it to look vintage as well. View Snapshots with Sir Sam here.

This year, we wanted to draw the same interest without repeating ourselves. Some summer students and I brainstormed ideas and settled on one called "Masters of the Selfie". We were inspired by the successful social media campaign "VanGo Yourself", wherein users take a famous figure painting and recreate it themselves using everyday items. We spun this in our own way and looked at famous self-portrait artists of the times and jamming it with the modern use of 'the selfie'. After some reseach, I chose to go with Vincent van Gogh (as the event is also named after his work), Frida Khalo, Salvador Dali, and Andy Warhol.

Using some basic costumes and props, our summer student Kirsten and I tested out our idea.

I learned that while the photos themselves were rather simple, the time bulk of time happened in post-editing to manipulate the images to reflect each artist.

Of the four styles we chose, I most enjoyed working through the Andy Warhol style images wherein I was able to play with colours reminiscent to pop art of the 1960's.

It was a fun evening and visitors were extremely engaged with the photobooth we set up. The final images can be seen on OMAH's Facebook page.