Faces in the Wall

This wall is part of a church's outside recreation area in the 6th ward. I shot it for our club "Wall" assignment last year. The wall is actually very cheerful and vibrant and has handpainted tiles as well as plaster faces of children and adults and was made as part of a community art project. The faces can be disconcerting as the eyes are all closed and can appear as death masks but I imagine it was necessary to close their eyes when sticking their faces in the wet plaster. I chose to capitalize on that aspect and used a shallow depth of field with an unusual perspective so that the closer faces were in focus and it appears as if there are many faces receding away. Then I chose to remove the colors by using a black and white adjustment layer to add to the creepiness. If I remember, my entry (similar to but not the same as the top image) did not score well with our judges that night.

Camera info: Nikon D200, 50mm 1.8 lens, top image f2 at 1/20th but braced against the wall, bottom image f2 at 1/40th, ISO 100, shade white balance.

Post processing: Top image: duplicated background layer in Linear burn at 45% opacity, black and white adjustment layer, Curves for contrast, removed distractions in the foreground, sharpened with high pass filter. Bottom image: cloned away trash, duplicated the background in multiply at 25% opacity, duplicated that layer in softlight at 75% opacity, ran a Lomo action at 30% opacity, sharpened with the Edge.