My name is Léa Jones, and I am so honored to be sharing some thoughts on this blog. Thank you p52clicks for asking!
I am a mother of three, I am French, married to a Brit and moved to the USA almost 10 years ago. I live in New England and love it, I spend all my summers in France, and I am currently renovating an old french farmhouse (@lamaisondelea ). I am writing this blog post with plaster on my hands :)
A few years ago, as winter was approaching, I was inspired by Cindy Cavanagh’s beautiful work and I just LOVED the way her diptychs were telling stories, so, out of the blue I announced I would be sharing diptychs. Nothing else, just diptychs for 3 months.
The first weeks were agonizingly hard. Finding two images that work together was so much harder than I thought. Shooting vertical was all new as well.
Making colours, lines and shapes of two images work as a “whole” was so much harder than I had anticipated, but I LOVE that it pushed me to think about my composition and forced me to look at my images with new eyes. It definitely pushed me through the winter. Winters in New England are so dreary and after the first few exciting snowfalls, there is nothing left to shoot but mud and grey. and more snow.
I wanted to share a few of my favourite diptychs with some notes of why I think they ”work”, now obviously this is really subjective and maybe they do not work at all, but this is art. We all have different opinions, so I will just share mine.
These are film images and I just loved that it told the story of my 15 yr old: The beach, the sun, the braces, the sunnies, the ukulele. Her favorite things in life ( well not the braces, but I love that stage). A simple storytelling diptych.
I wanted the detail of the twine, I loved the circle and tried to hone in on the circles vs the straight lines of the table. The yellow/orange and the blue/grey were the reason I started to shoot these images. I also loved the different textures of the twine and the dried orange.
The colors were just what I was looking for. I loved that my little guy looked so little among the trees
I tried to do a black and white combo with colour for weeks and never quite managed one that I loved. I do love this one, and I think it has to do with the textures.
Had to include one of the very rare self portraits I have. I liked how the shape of the berries mimicked the shape of my head. and well, colours!
This is one of my favourite. I love how the colours are so harmonious, I love the contrast of texture: crunchiness vs smoothness/softness. I love it because it's bread, and YUM.
When I created this diptych I realized how much liked the contrast of light and dark. the image on the left is bright and on the right is dark. The subject is the same but the focus is different. This is one of my favourite too.
Freelensing makes everything so dreamy, and shooting in snow can be really hard and harsh. I wanted this to feel soft and dreamy. I love how the shadows meet in the middle. I love how the focus is on the legs. My daughter's long legs and Stormy's legs.
Another horse photo, because that's what we do three times a week. See how Noa's body when she pushes the wheelbarrow mimics the horse nose. I love that. I also liked, and I sure all horse loving people will relate, horses is about love and hard work, and the two images together portray that well. Also that light!
Again I love the contrast of dark and light. The subject being bottom left and top right: I think it creates tension, that brings our eyes around. Of course I lucked out with the colours here, the hat and the ice were the same colours and I tried to bring it out even more in my edit, i played a little with the HSL panel to get matching tones. You can push your blue or green or yellow to match the color you are looking for. The leading lines of the ice were also perfect. I totally lucked out with these two images, and was delighted when I tried them together :-)
The main story here is the colours, red and green being complementary colours. I love the contrast of the (red) circle and the lines as well. It's all "lines" except for the paddle & his head.
This last one were iPhone pics from a ski trip. The story of going home late and being exhausted, the blurriness emphasizes that story. I love the leading lines in both.
Thank you so much for reading this, I hope this inspired you to start your own project, whether it's diptychs or anything that appeals to you right now, this project has brought so many new friends in my life and I LOVED having my own project to work on through the long New England winter.
xxx
Léa
www.leajones.net
IG: @leajonesphoto and @lamaisondelea