The making of 'Looking around'

Tutorial led by Editor Michel Romaggi in collaboration with the author, Igor Kopcev
Edited and published by Yvette Depaepe, the 19^th of March 2025

'Looking around'

This is an exquisite, elegant and extremely fragile beauty, Igor. Could you please describe the various stages of your creative process?
I needed about two square metres of free space and a dark room to shoot. I don't have a table that big, so I shoot on the floor. I also needed about half a metre of blue fabric... I use it as a background... that's why my work has a cool blue colour.

The bokeh is created with the aperture open, while the depth of field does not exceed one millimetre. It is therefore important to determine exactly what is in focus. To make it easier to find the right focus point, I use a small tripod and macro slides.

At the time I was using a Canon 6D Mark II and a Meyer-Optik Görlitz Trioplan 50mm f/2.9 V manual lens with a 13mm macro ring... I think any full-frame camera will do. The camera's folding screen helps a lot because the frame is built in real time. I only use the helicoid of the lens to build a composition in the frame. As I used to do a lot of cycling, I had two powerful battery-powered headlamps left over. The light must be very bright and hard and not too diffuse.

You need glass plates of at least 420 x 210mm so that their edges are not visible in the frame. I used two of them. One is vertical and the other horizontal, on which I placed the subject. I used skeletonised magnolia leaves, which I bought on the internet, and hydrangea flowers.
The angle of the vertical glass can be adjusted, as in this picture, where the angle is very sharp....

I sprayed water on one of them. I did this until the drops began to gather in groups. I waited a few minutes for the fine drops to evaporate. I placed the object itself on the second glass.

I placed a strong light source about a metre and a half from the working area. I placed the glass with the water droplets perpendicular to the glass with the subject.
The second light source (I used a torch with a zoomable beam of the warm spectrum) is needed for additional illumination of the subject (hydrangea blossoms).
This gave me a side view of the vertical glass and its reflection on the lower glass. At the bottom of the frame there was an infinite space - the air filled with bubbles. To immerse you in this space, I named the frame "Looking Around".

There is almost no post-processing on my photos... only cosmetic, because dust settles during the shooting, which is very visible.

Your "paintings", between still life and abstraction, seem to be oriented towards aesthetic research. Could you explain what drives you in this style?
I don't know which style to put them in... they can't be called still life... the depth of field is so small that you can't create a three-dimensional composition of objects... all that remains is an image... they can't be called abstract because only the background is abstract... they can't be called macro because the object isn't big enough and it's not so detailed... so my work combines all three styles...

Bokeh - these magic bubbles are air for me... because air is invisible and how to show it in a photo... sometimes in the form of fine dust... but how to show the movement of air... that is a difficult task at all... only in the form of snow or raindrops... I imagine that the bubbles are the air that surrounds me... sometimes I enhance the effect and suggest that the air moves and surrounds the object... but I also met a photographer who associated these magical bubbles with water... its surface... and I took this experience and diversified my work a little.

'Desparing'

I never prepare or think about a composition in advance. Everything happens spontaneously. I just choose the subjects and the number of light sources. When the room is plunged into darkness... sometimes you should dim your consciousness a little. Put on relaxing, calm music and don't think about anything... the hands do something and I just observe the result.

When I was just starting my research, I used water droplets to generate bubbles... later I tried other sources – a Christmas garland, foil circles, glass buttons, etc. but I still liked only the behavior of water ... even though it evaporates during shooting, changing the things.

'Waiting for miracles...

But there are other ways, where the subject is at a certain height and the side effect is produced on the lower parallel glass. This makes it much easier to control the nature of an abstract drawing.
Since I have sufficiently studied the behaviour of this abstract background, to show the subject with sufficient depth of field, I photograph the subject separately with a macro lens and an abstract background (bokeh) separately, and then glue both frames together in Photoshop.
Recently I've been experimenting with an ultraviolet light source, but that's another story.... Maybe I'll tell about it one day....

'Unpretentious silence'

To end this interesting tutorial, Igor, could you please tell us a little about yourself and your photography practice.

I am glad that I have been given the opportunity to tell my little story.
I was born in the now non-existent country - USSR - in the world of analogue technology. But time passed and analogue photography was replaced by digital photography. Although many did not believe that digital images would fill the world so much. Now almost everyone has a camera in one form or another since childhood and everyone has become a photographer... Looking at what and how people take pictures, I wanted to create something that is not easy to do.
Although now the era of artificial intelligence is coming... and who knows if a camera will be needed at all. But this story is not about that...
I hope my information was useful.
Thank you all, see you soon!

Many thanks for sharing this with us, Igor.