For some reason, it seems to be much harder to get positive feedback from the art community when you are into humor. I am not talking about my little self, but in general: for example, comedies are generally not much rewarded at the Oscars ceremony, or humorists are often considered as worthless actors by their peers. It is a bit like if humor was too popular, too accessible, to get recognition from the intellectual sphere. This is a bit sad, since creating a really funny work of art is not easy at all, and certainly requires specific talent (Monty Pythons, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, just to name a few classics).
Anyway, I personally always enjoy when a challenge calls for humorous entries. It is a very good occasion to try silly things in order to be funny - of course it often fails, but who cares. So when the challenge appeared, I tried to imagine a situation where of course, someone was doing something the wrong way, but also where some fantasy was going on, so that I could take advantage of the editing rules. This is how I arrived at that magical side, and this poor magician having troubles with the usual "rabbit-in-the-hat" trick.
From a technical point of view, I did my best to come up with a dynamic composition: the tilted hat looked quite good in the foreground, creating a diagonal with the magician in the background. However, at this stage the 2 main components where too dissociated, so I worked hard to make them appear more "linked", if that makes sense. In order to do that, I used some smoke, but mainly the wand: its direction and the blue light coming out of it was the best "tricks" I found for that purpose.
Regarding my face, I tried a lot of possibilities, but they were all just bad (yes, even more than this one). In order to look really grumpy, I decided to take this self portrait just after waking up: one always look totally off in the morning, at least for a few minutes ;-) So all the lighting was set the evening before, and when I left the bed I directly went to the studio and took a few photos during 5 minutes. My wife laughed when she saw the result, this is how I knew it worked as intended ;-)
Thank you all for the nice votes and comments!
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Love the pre-coffee face, Christophe! Excellent execution and idea as always. I do agree with you on your notes about humour, itès so much harder to do comedy well.
I look forward to Expert Editing challenges not to enter but just to see your work. This has to be one of my favorites of yours. Awesome stuff. 10 from me.
I am in awe of your talents - I keep trying to find places where things aren't seamless and I always fail. Fun interpretation of the challenge but it would make an awesome trick if some magician could pull it off :)
Very Bad Trick
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