For our first themed podcast episode of the year, Kristina and I are tackling our biggest challenge yet: Diptychs!
Diptych comes from the Greek meaning two (dip) fold (tych). Originally, diptychs were art that was divided into sections and hinged together. Eventually photographers adopted the technique as well. Essentially, you take two images, and display them next to each other. This in turn creates a third image – the sum of both parts.
What you actually decide to do with those two parts is up to you. However, to create a true diptych, there should be some kind of shared theme such as color, camera angle, subject, location, etc. One of my favorite examples is this photo by Berglind Mari.
Kristina has much more experience with diptych photography than I do. Here’s an example of her diptych portraiture photography, which she discusses a bit in this episode:
Diptych by Kristina Alexanderson
I was looking forward to tackling a diptych for the podcast, and walked away pleased and encouraged. I’ve always appreciated diptychs, but had yet to try shooting one myself. I now have the diptych bug and cannot wait to try again. Kristina and I had a great chat about diptychs, looked over some listener submissions, and dove deep into discussing our interpretations. It just might be my favorite themed episode to date!
You can listen to the episode now on your favorite podcast app, or right here on this blog post. Make sure to keep scrolling so that you can see our images, and the listener submissions!
My Image
Pushing Daisies
Kristina’s Image
Diptych by Kristina Alexanderson
Listener Submissions
Thanks as always to our wonderful listeners for submitting their own photos! Here are the photos we discussed on the podcast:
Dance Diptych by Tobias M. Schiel
Diptych by LJToyPhotography
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- Hide and Seek by spideygoeshygge
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- Hide and Seek by spideygoeshygge
We didn’t see this submission from Zee in time for the recording, but I just love how he continues to use the Painter Spider-Man motif across these themes!
“Miles and K2 team up to make a diptych of Captain America’s shield…” by Demarcation Media
Love through Diptychs
If you enjoyed our diptych theme as much as we did, you’re in luck! For February we’re tackling the technique again, with an added twist. We’ll shoot diptychs with the theme of love. This will be our first time re-doing a technique, and I’m excited to see what we come up with. I also can’t wait to see how you interpret the theme and use diptychs to tell a story!
If you’d like to participate with us and get the chance of having our photo discussed on the show, use the hashtag #tp_love and tag both myself (@thereeljames23) and Kristina (@kalexanderson). You can also email your submission to us at toyphotographypod@gmail.com.
Until next time, thanks for listening and happy shooting!
-James
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I really enjoyed listening to your breakdown of the images and wow, both your diptychs are so cleverly done. This has given me a much better insight into the technique and I’ll be keen to explore it more in future especially with varying sizes and orientation. I’ll certainly remember to place the 2 images together as one!
Looking forward to the #tp_love creations. 🙂
Thanks for submitting 🙂 Your work is always fun to look at and to talk about. I’m glad you liked the episode. I look forward to see what you do on the love theme 🙂
Thanks, Janan! This was such a fun technique to discuss and try. I loved your interpretations and can’t wait to see what you do next time you experiment with it.
That was a great episode and I learned a lot about the combination of two pictures ??❤️?? I’m excited about the posted examples ??? excellent work!!! Looking forward to the love diptychs ??
Thank you Astrid, it’s so fun to do these podcasts with James – I love looking and talking about pictures. I’m also looking forward to what we’ll see on the theme of love 🙂 I hope you will join.
Thank you, Astrid! I still have no idea what I’m going to do for the love theme ?