Clothed Chameleon by Severine Arend

As it was darker than a bear's cave out today in the bay area, I didn't feel like taking underexposed noisy shots again, so I decided to do a little self portrait for this post. And continuing the self portraiture/photography vibe going on..

I wanted to share with you a few of my favorite photographers I've been inspired by for some time now.

Up first I'd like to mention a few fellow Flickrites as the community likes to call themselves.

Herewith Clement Louis also a lookbook user, who's eccentric sense of style mixed with a powerful esthetic for photography, beautiful looks and dark imagery oozes this Parisian hobo chic, mixing new classic with vintage pieces, showcasing Paris's streets in the background, as if the relationship between Clement Louis and his Parisian surroundings had a sort of symbiotic relationship, interdependent of one another. This artistic being you'd only find strolling around Montparnasse, taking a drag from a cigarette and vanishing with only a smokey cologne scent in its wake.




On to Dan Beleiu or Genergrohl on Flickr, who also has a blog, is another self portraiture and portraiture artist who creates unusual scenes straight out of Dan's mind. Through his imagery with clones who interact with one another as if deciding what feat to take on next, and textures which give his photographs an air of age and decay.



Mattijn Franssen is the great master of trickery. His heavily photoshopped, composited/photo montage imagery evokes our childhood memories of fairy tales and magical adventures, as Mattijn and his cat, who is to be seen in almost every one of his images, like a "Where's Waldo" book, take on outer-world challenges and travel the surreal world fabricated by Mattijn's rich and limitless imagination.





Finally two other photographers not known from the Flickr community, but who have inspired my own self portraiture photography quite a bit, are Gregory Crewdson and Joshua Hoffine.

Gregory Crewdson, as does Joshua Hoffine, both build their own sets before photographing. After creative brain-storming and hard labor, lighting comes into play, some actors/models, and after a bit of post-processing, an image such as this by Gregory Crewdson is most likely to take your breath away.




Joshua Hoffine's imagery will definitely leave you wide-eyed and gasping for more.





All photos taken from the artist's respective sites, linked back to them.