Stolen Images

Via: Some might call it plagiarism, but the knock-off is an art form all its own. For this week's Shooting Challenge, readers assembled to duplicate or parody some of the most iconic photographs in history.

I ended up 'stealing' Arnold Newman's portrait of Igor Stravinski (1946).

While I am a big fan of some of Stravinski's music, I do NOT play the piano or know any pianists that could help me recreate the picture. So I ended up doing a self-portrait, featuring my own 'creative' instruments: a laptop and a mechanical pen. As far as the setup, I used a tall ironing board (for placing the laptop) and a very low chair (for me to sit) to be able to get the same perspective as the original picture. After running back and forth over 30(?) times using the camera's self timer, I now understand why some people use remotes.

-Diego Jiménez

As I am sure others will have done with this contest, I took a stab at the iconic Apollo 8 Christmas Eve photo of 1968, which showed the Earth as a lonely "blue marble" in space for the first time. It was an amazing photo that resonated with people around the world.

I took a more human perspective on recreating this "moon shot." With the help of a very willing, naked, patient, and unnamed female accomplice, I used my Canon T2i and a small LED flashlight, and set a small globe about 5 feet from the bed on top of a table. I took a few shots with each subject in focus. The final photo is a mashup.

-Eddie Cevallos

Darkness at the edge of town: Springsteen in Haddonfiled, NJ via Stefanko.

-Emilio Madrigal

I came across Doisneau's portrait of Picasso and I loved it. Not only does it work since this week's challenge is to "steal" a photo but as other users pointed out it was Picasso to say, ""Good artists copy; great artists steal". When I first saw this I looked quickly and didn't realize that his "fingers" were in fact rolls of bread. I thought it would be fun to try and recreate.

-Elizabeth Fleming

Stolen picture: Pink Floyd - Back Catalogue

I'm honestly not even a Pink Floyd fan, but for some reason this is the first picture that came to mind for this challenge. It became a weekend family project as well. The two kids brushed the Barbies' hair and helped style them. They also helped paint the ceiling and spray paint the back wall (we used a spray paint with some texture so it wasn't just a white wall) and the pillars (which are two wooden rods). My boyfriend constructed all of the "building" and assisted the girls with their tasks. The pool is a plastic tub and the walls, ceiling and beams are all foam-core. The window glass is vellum painted orange/yellow and then we got a sheet of tiles at Home Depot and the girls grouted it with sand from their sandbox (BF's idea). I hand painted two of the bodies fully (I think you can tell which, haha) and the others I painted the base coat color, then sized and edited the other album cover pictures in photoshop then printed them off and glued them to the backs. We had to add two Barbies to the collection since we didn't have a red head or another brunette and we happened to find TWO perfect ones at the store. All the Barbie's got their haircut as well due to the fact their hair is too darn poofy for the spacing needed in the shot. Some of the lighting was a little harder then I thought it was going to be so if I had about 5 more hours in the day I would have loved to perfect that.

-Gretchen Pitluk

I once again roped my husband into this photo challenge (he refused to do the Demi Moore picture from the cover of Vanity Fair — NO FUN. We had a difficult time getting the angle just right, and it wasn't until afterwards that I realized he probably should have been bending forward on one knee, but after the post-processing work I'm pretty happy with the result. My husband rocks a mean jailhouse Rock Band guitar.

-Nicole Lombardi

I was really excited to do this challenge, and i immediately knew which photo i wanted to recreate. We actually have a few of Robert Longo's pictures hanging in our apartment and we love them!

It didn't take much persuading the wife. She put on the black dressed and did her thing. I shot it against our bedroom wall and greyscaled the picture in lightroom after. I'm really pleased with the result.

-Ben Morris

I found this photo of Sharon Stone by accident, and came to think about the photocallenge. Called my friend up and she agreed to do the shoot with me. The time to do makeup and hair was 3 times longer than the shoot it self. We also had an argument regadring the need for adding som content to the men's briefs she was wearing...the original kind of looks like there was something there :)

The original photo that we used for our shoot is an autographed glossy, but it seems to originiate from a photosession Sharon Stone did for a Itailan magazined called Max.

-Christina Blom

When i read the new shooting challenge I immediately knew which photo I wanted to use. I looked over at my dog, and there she was, laying on a reddish blanket. How convenient...

-Becca Alves