by Jim Zuckerman
I use digital technology to go far beyond tweaking good photographs to make them better. This is certainly an important aspect of what Photoshop can do, but in addition to that I like to delve into the realm of fine art, surrealism, and fantasy. When people see this side of my work, they often ask how I come up with my ideas. Do I preconceive the images I create or are they happy accidents?
The answer is both. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to do, and sometimes I simply use the old trial and error method and play around in Photoshop until I either like what I’ve done or I’ve made such a mess of things that I just hit File > revert and start over again.
The picture I’ve uploaded here was taken yesterday. I had purchased this sofa when I was in Indonesia last year specifically to use as a prop. It is a replica of a classic furniture design from Europe and I thought it would be very interesting to incorporate this component into a fashion shot, surreal or otherwise. I used my wife as the model, and she is wearing the wedding dress that she made for our wedding. (The original color of the dress is bright red because I suggested to her that we do something different. Of course, in the back of my mind I was thinking ‘photography’. It was sort of like killing two birds with one stone!)
My preconception in this picture went as far as seeing her on this sofa, which is red. I had originally thought about using the cut and paste technique that I describe in my Creative Techniques in Photoshop course I teach for Betterphoto™ to place her in a desert background. I still may do this. However, yesterday after I downloaded the digital file into my computer I started to play with it using various Photoshop filters and layer masks and came up with this surreal rendition. The background was distorted using Filter > distort > polar coordinates (I applied this filter only to the background and not to the sofa, my wife, or the floor), and using various blending modes I ended up with a desaturated mauve hue.
The photo was taken with a 16 – 35mm wide angle lens set on 16mm, and the lighting was (this is a little embarrassing) only from a floor lamp in my den. I use a Mac G5 as my computer and my camera now is the Canon 1Ds Mark II.
Comments