Teen’s Images of “Little Folk”Make It Big Online

By Mike Schineider

The “Fiddle Oak1. Fiddle Oak: 14岁美国摄影师泽夫·胡佛的笔名，他的奇幻自拍系列令众人惊艳。” pictures have brought Zev Hoover national media attention.

Sometimes, the world can seem overwhelming and overbearing.2. overwhelming: 很有气势的；overbearing: 压倒一切的。If only you were tiny enough to build a house out of cards and climb inside, or escape to a miniature treehouse suspended between stalks of broccoli.3. miniature: 微型的；suspend: 悬浮；stalk: （植物的）茎，秆；broccoli: 西兰花。

美国马萨诸塞州的14岁男孩泽夫·胡佛最近火了，他的“小人国”摄影作品用创造性的手法将正常大小的人拍摄成“迷你人”，从而创造出梦幻般的微缩世界。

Or better yet, just fly away. Fold a giant paper airplane, then grasp its thin fuselage4. fuselage:（飞机的）机身。for dear life and sail across a field into summertime.

Such is Zev Hoover’s fanciful5. fanciful: 想象的。photographic take on reality. His arresting images evoke a wonderland of imaginary environments,built from f-stops and pixels, and hinting at characters with secret stories to tell.6. 这些有趣的图片通过光圈和像素构建起一个想象中的奇境，也暗示着主角们身上那些神秘的故事。

Hoover’s work, which he posts on the photo sharing site Flickr using the handle “Fiddle Oak” (a play on “Little Folk”), has caught fire across the Internet. He has been profiled in the media and on design and photography blogs.

One post touting his “surreal photo manipulations” has received 108,000 Facebook likes.7. tout: 宣传；surreal: 超现实主义的。

“Maybe a million people saw it,” said the slightly stunned8. stunned: 受惊的。Hoover,who is only 14.

“He’s enjoying this little ride,” said his father, Jeff. “But he’s familiar with Andy Warhol’s idea of 15 minutes of fame and realizes this may be transitory.”9. 但是他熟知安迪·沃霍尔关于“每个人都可以成名15分钟”这个理论，因此他意识到了现在的成功都是转瞬即逝的。Andy Warhol: 安迪·沃霍尔（1928—1987），被誉为20世纪艺术界最有名的人物之一，是波普艺术的倡导者和领袖，“每个人都可以成名15分钟”是沃霍尔的著名理论；transitory: 瞬息的，短暂的。

The skinny teen deadpanned10. deadpan: （面无表情地）表达。,“If I was older, it wouldn’t make as good of a story.”

But it’s Hoover’s talent that has captured imaginations. A film production company contacted him about designing a movie poster. He has been approached by a publisher for a potential narrative11. narrative: 叙事的。photo textbook project. Nikon World magazine asked him to contribute a photo. A lens12. lens: 镜头。manufacturer sent him a free lens, saying only: “Take some pictures with it.”

No doubt he will. Plenty of his peers would be happy playing soccer or video games, but not Hoover. He needs to be creating.“I get anxious if I’m not doing something,” he said, sitting outside his family’s Natick home. “What’s next?”

His series of “Little Folk/Fiddle Oak” images began during a walk in the woods with sister, Aliza. He remembers thinking, “Oh, wouldn’t little people be cool?” Crouching near the ground, he imagined seeing the world from their perspective.13. crouch: 蹲伏，蜷缩；perspective:视角。He felt the miniature genre14. genre: 种类，类型。had never been done in photography— “at least not very well.”

“There’s a fine line to walk between having it be too abstract and having it be too cheesy-obvious15. cheesy-obvious: 明显虚构的。,” he said.

He performs his sleight of hand in Photoshop, which he taught himself via Internet tutorials.16. sleight: 熟练手法；tutorial: 教程，学习指南。

Hoover started shooting pictures six years ago. “I put a camera in his hand when he was eight years old and told him about f-stops,” said his mother, Michele Gutlove. “See what he did with that little bit of knowledge?”

“Fiddle Oak” is not his first photography endeavor17. endeavor: 尝试，努力。. When he was 10, Hoover embarked on18. embark on: 从事，着手。“The Snugg Project,” taking a photo of his teddy bear in unique, whimsical settings for 365 consecutive days.19. whimsical: 古怪的，异想天开的；setting: 场景设定；consecutive: 连续的。“It became a little like work,” his father said, “but made him be creative every single day.” Some of the pictures were displayed at J.P. Licks ice cream shops.

Hoover’s family lives in the last house on a dead-end street next to a cemetery, with the Charles River and a meadow for a backyard,20. 胡佛一家住在一个封闭街区最里面的一处房子里，旁边紧靠着一处公墓，后院临着查尔斯湖和一片草地。cemetery: 墓地，公墓。and he shoots most of the “Little Folk” images in this landscape. Others are shot in the studio.

“When I say ‘studio’,” he corrected, “I mean bathtub with a towel or a sheet.”

His first camera was a cheap point-and-shoot21. point-and-shoot: 傻瓜相机。. Now he shoots with a Nikon D7000, and his father said the teen often knows more about gear than experts working in a camera shop.

Yet his art also feels tinged with melancholy.22. 他的摄影作品总是带有淡淡的忧伤。tinge: 使带有……气息；melancholy: 忧郁，悲伤。In “Summer Tales,”he and his sister sit on a popsicle stick raft on a pond at night.23. popsicle: 雪糕，冰棒；stick:棍；raft: 筏子。Where are they going? Have they been abandoned? In an ominous work called “Inspecting,” a giant hand wielding a magnifying glass looks ready to interrogate a tiny Hoover, or fry him like an ant.24. 在一幅带有不祥预兆的名为《检查》的作品中，一只巨大的手拿着一面放大镜，看上去似乎在审问微小的胡佛，又或者是将他当成一只蚂蚁那样煎炸。ominous: 不祥的；interrogate: 审问，质问。Another piece shows him walking through fire as wild as his unruly auburn hair.25. unruly:（头发）难梳理的；auburn: 赤褐色的。

“All the pictures have a very lonely feeling to them,” he said.“Even if they have more than one person in them, it’s ‘big world, little people.’”

But the mood isn’t “loneliness out of control,” he added. “It’s loneliness like it’s a beautiful feeling.”

Whether Hoover’s work is photography or digital art is a question his fans, and some detractors26. detractor: 诋毁者，诽谤者。, have debated. Some online commenters have been nasty, attributing his success to parents who could afford to buy him expensive equipment. Others think he’s a hoax27. hoax: 骗局，恶作剧。.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Hoover said of how people label his work. “It’s all art.”

He takes the criticism in stride28. in stride: 泰然自若地。as well. “That’s the Internet for you. Don’t feed the trolls.”29. 不要理会那些在网上制造争端的人。

Whatever you call the images,his work reflects a sophisticated and complex relationship with the natural and human-made world. Hoover sat down at his computer to show a visitor the dozens of elements that go into each image.

“Slowly they’ve gotten more fantastical and magical,”he said. The productions, too,have become more complicated.One image, “Fly,” featuring a miniature Hoover clinging to a paper airplane in mid-air,involved a three-hour shoot. He suspended paper airplanes from strings, then suspended himself from a pole between two ladders.He then tiled together multiple takes of the large- and small-scale scenes, added shadows and blur effects, and adjusted the color.30. 接下来，他把众多大小场景拼贴起来，加上阴影和模糊特效，然后调整色彩。tile: 平铺；blur: 模糊。

“What I am doing always is really quite basic,” he said. “All the techniques stuff is Day 1 Photoshop.”

But to make a fantasy world believable is an arduous31. arduous: 艰巨的，费力的。process.His mother said he will spend 8 to 10 hours, endlessly tweaking32. tweak: 扭，用力拉。each image until he gets the desired effect.

As for what’s next, the young photographer remains undecided. With all the Internet buzz33. buzz: 嗡嗡声，这里指互联网上的热议。, he has begun to sell prints of his work. Beyond that, he has the summer ahead of him—flights of fancy to contemplate34. contemplate: 冥思苦想，沉思。, trees to climb and conquer. He is thinking about an aerial35. aerial: 空中的。photography project. Big adventures for a young man still navigating a small world.

“I don’t have a plan or anything,” he said. “I’m not sure if I’ll consider myself a photographer forever.”