Tommy Ingberg

Tommy's Photos:


                              Army

                            Control

                                 Stroll

                                        Puppet 

                                        Wish

                                 Standing Still

These photos are from the series “Reality Rearranged” taken between 2010-2013. This photos like all of his photos are black and white and has the same setting as most of his photos do. Tommy refers to his work as a visual diary and explains that in this album his goal was to explain something abstract with surrealism. In this series he has used his inner life, thoughts, feelings and express them through his photos.

                        Turbulence

     
                               Hero

                                Closing Time

These photos were from the series called “Stranger” taken between 2010-2012. In this series he uses actual people that you can see with faces and a huge element in this series would be clouds. Although he has no statement about these photos I believe its called stranger because in all of his photos you can never see the persons actual face. I think this is brilliant because it adds a bit of mystery. 

This photo are from the new series “Solitaire”; this series is still in progress and he is currently working on adding more photos to the series. It was taken on May the 14th 2013 so very recently. Though it does not say where he has taken the photos I would imagine he used some sort of background or the outdoors. I find it very interesting how he uses black and white for every photo but at the same time it gives it a neat effect. Although he has not given a statement for this yet he says “Solitaire is a game played by oneself, much like my creative process where I use my own inner life, thoughts and feelings as seeds to my pictures.” I think this is a good way of looking at it because often life is kind of like a game.

About Tommy:

     Tommy Ingberg is a visual arts photographer who was born in Sweden and is currently 33 years old. He is a self taught photographer who experiments in self reflecting, surreal photos that express has thoughts, feelings and emotions.  When he was 15 he got his first camera after hours of experimenting with it he finally found his expression. For tommy he must experiment with many trial and errors before he gets a photo he likes as creativity does not come easily to him. When he gets an idea he will sketch it and then start shooting; he shoots his photos inside but trys to mimic the light outside. However when he can not take a photo inside he will take it outside. He uses his camera to create most of his image but at the end when combining the images he uses photoshop. Tommy has no fancy equipment he has a Canon EOS 7D, a Canon 24-70/2.8 lens and a few of Elinchrom flash units. He is inspired by Erwitt, Brassai, Leibovitz but when he started to learn more about other photographers many more added to his inspiration such as Picasso, Magritte and Escher. Photography is not the only artwork he has looked into also music, painting and poetry. In his photos of Reality Rearranged the faceless man is his alter ego. He enjoys what he does with great passion and has received international recognition for his work and has received multiple awards and honorable mentions. He won a prize in 2012 for his photo torn.

I actually interviewed Tommy to get a better feel about what he's all about. My final question for him was if he had any advice for a young person hoping to continue in photography. He told me that the key to being a good photographer is to work hard and never give up. The very last piece of advice he gave me was to spend as much time as I can doing what you love and to not listen to what others tell me I should be rather then what I want to be.

Tommy's work is very strong, he has a unique way of making his photo's different but also very powerful and surreal. When I see his photos I notice two things, one being he has a very little element in some of his photos but also a very dark element in others. For example the photo of the hands grabbing the rock to me shows god or another peaceful creature that is always looking after us. On the other hand the photos of the hands reaching for the man shows a darker side, almost evil. I think it's very interesting that he uses the same symbol being hands for both darkness and light but it's also very unique. I think all of his photo's are very strong because all of them are different yet all of them all similar and I love that about them. I don't know if I can spot a weakness, the only advice I could give would be to experiment more and to maybe try a different approach on it but at the same time I do like how they are all connected. Tommy is very impressive as he is self taught but has defiantly made a name for himself and is always very young.









My Photo's:

In this photo I wanted to experiment with what Tommy did with the big hand. To me this hand represents god and that god is always looking after us. This photo also is a symbol that means that theres always someone there for you when you need it. 



This photo along with my other photo was inspired by Tommys images. This photo is suppose to represent that sometimes we fall down but theres always someone there to pick you up weither it be god or a loved one who cares about you. For this photo I took three different photos, the hand, the person and the sky and I used the layers to my advantage. It turned out really interesting.

This photo I took was inspired by the photos Tommy took where there was no people in the clothes. I took this photo as an experiment and fell in love with the result. To create this photo I had someone lay on the ground and have them hold up the dress. I did not have to do anything in photoshop other then change the colour which made it so much better.

This is yet another photo that was inspired by Tommy's photos of the big hands. I do admit I am not positive of the meaning of the hand to Tommy but to me it represents god. I believe he is always looking after us and thats what I try to show that in my photos. I took three photos as well for this one and then combined them in photoshop.



Some people say that the eyes are the window to the soul which I also believe. In Tommy's photos he has an album called "Stranger" and in this album you do not see the mans face. I believe that it is impossible to for sure know who it is when you can not see their eyes because the eyes are the most memorable. Sure by looking at this you can guess who it is, however I bet if we put five people around her who had similar features you would guess incorrectly.

For this photo I was inspired by Tommy when he told me personally that he has to experiment in order to create a photo he likes. This gave me the idea to experiment with different features and effects. One thing I noticed when I was changing the photo's black and white was that you could adjust certain colours to different extremes of darkness. To shoot this photo I splattered paint on her face which was yellow and put her against a white background then in photoshop I adjusted it to black and white and adjusted the yellow until it turned white. This gave it an interesting look to make the paint on her face appear to be glowing.

This photo was probably the most time consuming as I had to mix together 5 different photos. The darker sky and the lighter sky are from the same photo but I messed around with it in photoshop to create on darker then the other. I wanted to take a photo like this because unlike my other photos this one is darker then the rest. To me the hands represent some sort of evil that is trying to grab the poor girl who is just walking along living life. To create this image I had to do a lot of erasing and cropping but I think in the end it was worth it. My inspiration for this photo was in Tommy's with all of the hands  I instantly thought of evil and wanted to create a darker photo of my own.

This photo is one of my favourites because not only was it very powerful it also was easy to create. For this photo what you see it what you get however I did want to have one photo that was creepy and sneaky. To me this would fit into Tommy's album "Stranger" because you can not tell who it is. Because you can not see their eyes it makes the smile in my opinion more creepy which is what I was going for.