Anyone who's ever been 'in love' can testify to one absolute truth: More often than not the roses end up in the dumpster behind the bar where you sit trying to slurringly erase the memories of dashed dreams and annoyingly resilient memories.
And then there are those damn photographs...pesky reminders that the heart is as fallible as the mind, and smiles transfixed in time often belie a sense of unease and an overwhelming desire to make like Usain and bolt. That's where Kaitlin Kelly (kaitlinkellyphotography.com)comes in. And while the girl from Washington state may not promise an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, she can help you remember that Ex doesn't always mark the spot.
The now LA-based photographer has a penchant for erasing exes from photographs and replacing them with a celebrity of your choice, and boy is she in demand. As the Drive-by Truckers sang, "good ideas always start with a full glass", so did this one.
"It came from a night of drinking with friends. A close friend of mine was visiting and I was cleaning out my external hard drive that was filled with old pictures," Kaitlin told Mirror."I was complaining about the fact that I have so many great pictures from high school or early college, but given that my exes are present in most of them, I had no desire to look at them."And then her friend stated the blindingly obvious: "You're a photo editor. Just Photoshop over them with celebrities!" And thus began Kaitlin's early romance with Loki, or Tom Hiddleston to those of you who have been living under a rock for the last five years. "The first one I did was of Tom Hiddleston."
But it ain't always easy. The Virgin Knight Richard Branson has proved to be the most challenging celebrity to drop into photographs, says Kaitlin.
"I met a wonderful woman, Aimee May, on Facebook and she wanted her ex replaced with Bran son. It was also the hardest, because he really has only photos from one direction which made matching it that much harder [we checked, for heaven's sake occasionally look right Richard]."
Kaitlin was surprised at the popularity of Henry Cavill (better known as the third worst Superman ever): "He's quite handsome but I didn't realize he was so widely loved!"
Removing someone from a picture, however, also erases them from a tapestry that carries a memory. Like a tattoo artist being asked if they could ink Justin Bieber onto someone's butt, has she ever paused and asked her client if that's what they really wanted?
"There's certainly a degree of that, but I think the thing that makes it different is humor. That's a common thread in every story I get told by a prospective client; a story of pain or being done wrong or simply losing somebody, and then wanting to cover it up with humor," says Kaitlin.
She believes that while we all try to escape our pasts it's bet ter to look on the erasure as a way of reclaiming it rather than deleting it: "There's a security that comes from being able to look at a photo and going 'Ugh, this person was sort of a mistake', and then wanting to jokingly cover them up. It's fun to explain 'Oh, well, no, Jamie Dornan didn't take me to homecoming, but I didn't like my ex so I covered him up!' It's sort of rewriting the narrative of a bad relationship. And truly most of the requests I get say, 'I want to be able to look at this photo and chuckle, instead of feeling sad'."
But there's so much more to Kaitlin's photography than a masterful skill at Photoshop. She's always been in love with the pristine landscapes in nature, and the man-made concrete mazes that form our burgeoning urban spaces.
She loves both, and cherishes one's yin to the other's yang: "Just like there are specific landscapes you can only find in certain places, it's also true for cities. Each has a different feel. Cities are the landsca pes we build for ourselves. I shoot a lot of infrared photography both of landscapes and cities, and shooting them in this sort of otherworldly way shows how similar they are."
Kaitlin grew up just outside Seattle in the US and contrary to what Grey's Anatomy and The Killing leads you to believe, it isn't always as wet as dipsomaniac fish. "My house is 15 minutes from a remote forest and from one of the most beautiful cities in the world. However, when I lived in New York, it was really difficult for me. I found Manhattan very difficult to live in, and nature helps me relax like nothing else. I live in Los Angeles now which is somewhat similar, and I really love it. My favorite places are the ones where cities are surrounded by beautiful nature. Purely one or the other doesn't work for me," she says.
While photography has been Kaitlin's passion since she was 14 years old, her job as a TV writer pays the bills. She's currently working on the pilot for a sci-fi show and as much as we tried, we will not be seeing Tyrion Lannister mooning Uranus any time soon.
But while she loves writing TV shows, it's photography that nurtures her independent sprite: "It's an art that nobody has control over but me. Whenever I look at one of the many thousands of pictures I've taken, I remember exactly where I was, what I felt, the time in my life; there's this refrain of 'put down your camera and enjoy your life' but for me, I really do enjoy my life through my camera."
The proliferation of digital megapixels into everyone's life these days means that photography is common place, even though the art is still rare. Kaitlin believes the ubiquitous smartphone camera and the legions of social media critics has made life difficult for aspiring photographers: "The sheer amount of images on the web mean that even if you're the best photographer out there, you might not get not iced. You'll post a picture that you think is the best you've ever done, and it'll get like, two likes. Sometimes it feels like shouting into the void, and it can be really demoralizing." More than anything else, Kaitlin believes that you have to be a photographer for you, first and foremost.
Kaitlin is a self-confessed science fiction buff and we finally get down to brass tacks: Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek? "This is the hardest question I've ever been asked. It's like having to pick between children. Battlestar Galactica is my favorite show of all time—but Star Trek is the world I want to live in. Battlestar teaches us about the world in which we live, and Star Trek gives us an example of the world we should want to create. Science fiction wouldn't be as good without either of them."
OK so she copped out a bit there, but the underlying message is clear. We live in a reality th at is often distorted by necessity and routine, but that should never take away from the fact that beauty is all around us: in the concrete pillars of a human monolith or the knots in the bark of nature's masterpiece. Pick up a camera and capture your life as you go through it, and don't worry if you make mistakes along the way. There's always Henry Cavill to sort it out.
Source: Use that celebrity hex to get over your ex
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