Souvenir Overlays

November 17, 2006 5:47 AM

Michael Hughes takes cheap souvenirs, and then takes photographs with them superimposed over the real thing. A Flickr photo set.
via Wired's Table of Malcontents
posted by Bugbread (30 comments total)

Cool. Where's the high-concept conceptual essay that should be accompanying the work?

(Sorry, I haven't bothered to try Googling the artist yet...)
posted by vhsiv at 5:52 AM on November 17, 2006

Hee, that was cool.

I liked the popsicle one the best.
posted by wells at 5:54 AM on November 17, 2006

I just saw this on boing boing the other day. It's a pretty cute idea.
posted by rubyeyo at 5:59 AM on November 17, 2006

Cool.
posted by thirteenkiller at 5:59 AM on November 17, 2006

This was a cute idea. My dad collects those kinds of metal building souvenirs (has hundreds of them) and postcards (tens of thousands) and trolly models. I want to show him this in the hopes it inspires him to do something nifty with them.
posted by piratebowling at 6:06 AM on November 17, 2006

Fantastic! Thanks for the post.
posted by dreamsign at 6:08 AM on November 17, 2006

The WTC one gets me.
posted by alidarbac at 6:27 AM on November 17, 2006

Competition: someone needs to build elaborate dioramas which they can then photograph superimposed over the actual landmarks whose settings they model.
posted by cortex at 6:40 AM on November 17, 2006

Nice find, bugbread. These are great.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:45 AM on November 17, 2006

Some of those are really well done. Cool!
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:58 AM on November 17, 2006

These are great!
posted by bunglin jones at 6:58 AM on November 17, 2006

They're very nice - the ones where you can see part of the real thing behind, like the Statue of Liberty / WTC ones work the best. And my, what a hefty thumb he has!
posted by jontyjago at 7:07 AM on November 17, 2006

This was good, thanks.

Where's the high-concept conceptual essay that should be accompanying the work?

I had more or less the same thought, but I'm kind of hoping that this is just fun for the sake of fun.
posted by teleskiving at 7:12 AM on November 17, 2006

This was neat! I was surprised by how consistently well these shots are lined up.

I think by "ongoing book project" we can all assume the essay is coming at some point in the future.
posted by shownomercy at 7:20 AM on November 17, 2006

It was weird to be looking at pictures of famous scenes and find myself thinking, "Get that other picture out of the way, I want to see the real thing!"

Ooh, ooh! Did I just predict one of the concepts in the high-concept essay! Do I get some sort of prize!

Seriously, though, this may be one of the first times a piece of conceptual art "worked" for me. Well done.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:35 AM on November 17, 2006

Quixote and the windwill was great. Good find.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 7:50 AM on November 17, 2006

Funny. Poignant. Profound. All of them interesting visual icons about man and the passage of time. Thanks, bugbread.
posted by cenoxo at 7:55 AM on November 17, 2006

Yeah these are great. While authentic and such I can't help but think that the meaty man hand with the Casio might benefit by being replaced by something nicer. He needs a hand model.
posted by jimmythefish at 8:23 AM on November 17, 2006

Wow. This was a LOT cooler than I expected it to be. Thanks.
posted by quite unimportant at 9:06 AM on November 17, 2006

Cool! Fun!
posted by jacquilynne at 9:06 AM on November 17, 2006

Since i saw these i have wondered how they were actually taken.
1) The focus is too good on the close object as well as getting some of the far away object.
2) The alignment is way too good to do consistently holding an object.
( try it )

I guess he takes a picture of his hand and object and then a picture of the background then later manipulates them. This lets the lighting on the hand be correct .
Still very nice though.
posted by stuartmm at 10:16 AM on November 17, 2006

Great fun!
(But his thumbnail isn't all that it can be, either).
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:19 AM on November 17, 2006

Stuartmm: your theory debunked (on that one photo, anyway).
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 10:24 AM on November 17, 2006

stuartmm, you are tilting at windmills.

1. Depth of field can be controlled very well with the judicious use of quality lenses.

2. Digital storage is cheap. Potentially shaky, messy shot? Shoot twenty, keep the best.
posted by cortex at 10:55 AM on November 17, 2006

Straightforward concept + clever execution = MeFi winner!
P.S. I want his freq. flyer miles!
posted by rob511 at 11:01 AM on November 17, 2006

[this is good]
posted by deborah at 11:34 AM on November 17, 2006

stuartmm writes "Since i saw these i have wondered how they were actually taken.
"1) The focus is too good on the close object as well as getting some of the far away object."

Consumer digicams have such slow and tiny lenses you have to work at not having DOF from 1m to infinity.
posted by Mitheral at 1:01 PM on November 17, 2006

Great idea, superbly executed. Thanks!
posted by Dr-Baa at 1:50 PM on November 17, 2006

I love the guy's arm in every shot. That one bit of consistency that flows from photo to photo, country to country. And the quality (for lack of a better word) of the hand is great; i felt like i was looking at my uncles vacation slides.

I agree with nebulawindphone. Very rarely do I actually enjoy the pop art being made today, but I found myself happily chuckling along with the slideshow. Thanks, bugbread.
posted by mosessis at 8:29 PM on November 17, 2006

Very very nice, indeed. I thought the 'debunking' one (which includes the shadow of his hand) was particularly clever. And — as somebody who took more than a thousand photos of boats in Maine this summer (from rowboats to huge cruise ships) — I liked this one.

The series reminded me in a way of an old photo I've always admired, taken by Roger Minick in 1980, of a woman looking at a waterfall valley in Yosemite National Park while wearing a scarf that shows the same falls on it.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:47 PM on November 17, 2006