Last Friday (Jan. 22), was the latest school dance. Once again, our class was able to take photos of students as a fundraiser. As this was not Homecoming or Senior Ball; but the white-out dance, there really wasn’t a demand for photos. Our last strobe-light dance only sold $5 worth of photos for the hours we were there… so we created a new marketing strategy… $1/person/photo. This would essentially make it completely affordable for anyone who wanted a photo. As a result, we made around 6x more money this time.

Furthermore, to save costs, we decided that an electronic delivery method would be ideal. We have received complaints in the past that the only reason people got their photo taken was to post it to their Facebook or Myspace page… but weren’t able to do that with a physical photo given to them. So I created an online event gallery system (which will be released later in Open Source for anyone who needs something similar) which would host the photos for the people to go download them after the dance.

For my final exam, I really wanted to give myself a challenge, so I chose to do surrealism for my final. Furthermore, after one of my latest projects, I really enjoyed doing the surreal images. So I decided to give it a go. Really, the focus of the project was to be “Bringing Color into the World.” For the photos, I had models painting “saturation” to the scene in various ways. I also decided to have fluids *magically* turning into color… or paint.

1. While in California, I had my original idea for this project. We were down at the beach while it was storming, and I got this sick picture of the beach. I had this idea to be painting saturation, or color to the image. So… I took this picture with the intent to later add to the image.

I found that it is actually very difficult to explain this project to people, so I just stopped bothering. You really have to see the images to understand.

2. While trying to consider other ideas for the project, I saw an image on DPChallenge that inspired me to paint someone’s face. I took a macro shot of my brother and then proceeded to add him into the picture so it looks like he was painting his face blue… like a Na’vi!!!!1!1!!!!!!!!11omgz!!!!avatar!!! Some of my inspiration for this image came from this image on DPChallenge.

3. In the past, I have seen recursive images, where the models are holding photos of themselves holding photos of them selves, etc. I decided to take this one step further and have Danielle paint herself *magically* into the photo. It actually turned out pretty awesome.

4. While at Schweitzer one day, I had this crazy idea to apply my project to the resort… so I did. I took this photo coming from ze terrain park…. and it turned out pretty awesome after I added Stephen pouring *magical* paint on it.

5. For this photo, the cover photo, I decided to apply my series to Taco bell. Stephen is in front of the image, painting the building back to color.

6. On this photo, I thought it would be cool to apply some Nacho to my series… and took a photo of Taco “Nacho” Bell. I had inspiration because of the rule that one is not allowed to add soda to their water cup. So I made it look like the water tap was filling the cup with Baja Blast.

7. One the thought of making water change into crazy substances, I decided to refill my *magical* paint bucket with water. But it turns magically into paint.

8. For my last photo, and for – quite possibly – one of the better ones in the series, I chose to use this photo. I was downtown with my brother, and decided to use this magical paint to bring the color back to the world… and in this case, the lake. Special Note: For the record, I did not pour paint into the lake. That would be bad for the environment, and illegal. This was purely the work of Photoshop; if you are not able to tell.

Final Word

When I chose this project, I really had no idea it would be as difficult as it was. I chose it as a challenge, and got exactly what I asked for. I feel that I have 5 fantastic ones, along with 3 good ones. I don’t, by any means, think they are bad, but I just feel that I did a better job on certain ones. My personal favorites include the Recursive Image, The Face Painting, Pouring the paint into the lake, and the one taken on the beach. I feel that these were by far the strongest ones in the project.

Below is the contact sheet with all of the images involved in the making of this project.

Finally, in the style of my past posts, I am going to include the same quote as before.

Surrealism: a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential ofthe unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.
Oxford American Dictionary

From a program that was shown to me by Mr. Twitchell, and developed byAnatoly Zenkov, I was able to track the motion of my cursor throughout the whole editing process. Below is the path overlaid a screenshot of my desktop.

The past week, I worked on doing some fish tank shots. I tried some ink, coins, and other random things that looked like they would be cool to drop in there. I positioned the fish tank on my counter, and placed two strobes (1 behind, 1 to the side). I proceeded to take some sweet ink shots.

The real reason I did the ink shots, was simply because they look pretty awesome. I really don’t think they are my most amazing photographs, but they look pretty cool. My brother and I purchased the fish tank from some dude on Craigslist for $10. Pretty good deal for a 10 gallon glass tank.

After my brother did his shots, I figured I might as well do them also, so really the inspiration for this project is his post.

Ghoti is a constructed word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling. It is a respelling of the word fish, and like fish is pronounced /ˈfɪʃ/. It has,

• gh, pronounced /f/ as in tough /tʌf/;
• o, pronounced /ɪ/ as in women /ˈwɪmɪn/; and
• ti, pronounced /ʃ/ as in nation /ˈneɪʃən/.

Wikipedia – Ghoti

Surrealism: a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential ofthe unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.
Oxford American Dictionary

This week’s project has proved to – quite possibly – be the most difficult project to date. Unfortunately, with all of the work, it is still not my strongest work.

I started out my search for inspiration at Worth1000.com, a site that hosts Photoshop competitions which lead to lots of surreal photos. While browsing, I found an image that was utterly stellar, Kitty Attack. This image was so inspiring to me, and being a cat person, I decided to try to replicate the image in my own way.

The first step was for me to find an image of a bridge. For the original image, they chose the Golden Gate Bridge, but as I had no plans to travel to San Francisco any time soon, I felt that was out of the question – and it would really feel too much like copying. Where I’m from, North Idaho, there is a rather large bridge that spans over Lake Pend Oreille in Sandpoint, ID that is 1.3mi long. This bridge is rather famous among locals here, so I logically chose that bridge for the shot. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a superb image of said bridge, so I tried another bridge adjacent to the original one. Although it was not the well-known one, it is very similar in looks. Below is my shot for the background of the image…

The image is actually composed of three individual exposures to get a good look to the image. The sky was totally blown out if the bridge was exposed correctly, while the water was dark. So I took three exposures, each exposed for the three main elements of the photo: the sky, the bridge, and the water. I combined these in Photoshop and this set up the background of the image.

Next, I started adding some destruction to the image: First, I moved some of the pylons down into the water, then warped the elements of the bridge, and finally, I collapsed a main portion of the bridge. I originally looked on the internet for tutorials on how to create ruins from images and came across this tutorial on how to make Modern Ruins, but was unable to do most of the stuff in the image due to lack of destruction in Coeur d’Alene. But I was able to use some of the techniques and inspiration from the tutorial.

After I finished totally annihilating the bridge, I went to photograph my cat, so he could be doing the destruction. From my experience, felines really do not make the best of models. They really resist anything to do with sitting when told, and doing the things you ask them (even if you ask nicely). Then when you add in strobes, they just totally go ballistic. This was no exception. I chose my cat, Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov, to do the modeling. At first he totally resisted, but after I introduced a food bowl, a toy, cat treats, a green laser pointer, and another human to restrain him***; he cooperated. Below, you are able to see both cats lazily chilling there.

After coaxing my cat to be playful with string, laser pointers, and other toys, he cooperated for about 30 seconds. I finally got some good photos. Below is the image I chose for the project.

Once I edited the image in Photoshop, I was able to place it into the document. I placed him behind the bridge, and did some really difficult and time consuming masking to get it to look like he was both behind the bridge, and partially submerged in the water. Below is an image of what it looked like after I added the cat.

Now that the main elements were in the image, I was able to make the cat do some very evil things. First, I added some green burning lasers coming from his eyes to give him laser vision. I aimed these at the bridge and then proceeded to modify them to look more like lasers. It was actually quite simple to add them, really. First, I drew two lines using the line tool at about 5px wide on lime green. Then I added a noisy glow in a similar green and turned down the opacity. That was it. Next, I figured it was only logical if the green lasers were doing damage, otherwise Mikhail would never have dreamed of wasting such precious energy on them. So, I downloaded some grinder spark brushes from DeviantArt. I added some nice sparks coming from the bridge and overlaid an orange and red gradient over them. Next, I added some speckling to them to create more tiny sparks. This is where that “Fire” comes from on the bridge. I realized that with fire, there is smoke. So I created a new layer and brushed some white over the layer at 10 percent on a hard edged brush. I made billowing smoke, but then applied a rather harsh gaussian blur to tone them down. Then I turned the opacity down quite a bit to make it clear. Next, I repeated the same thing, but with black smoke for right next to the sparks.

Finally, I realized that where there is destruction in water, there is a splash. So I used the same brush set, but put it in the water and overlaid the water pattern (from the water in the image) over the splash. I applied some speckle to it, gaussian blurred the texture and was done.

At 25 layers, 4 separate images, and many hours of work, I was finally done with the project. I estimate that I spent nearly 16 hours on this project. Although these are just estimates, they are very close to what I spend on the project. I am disappointed that it really didn’t turn out as good as I hoped, but I am still happy with it. In fact, just writing this entry alone, at nearly 1200 words, it is a full-blown essay. From the exporting, color correction, resizing, and writing, I have worked on this for about 4 hours overall.

• Research: 30 min
• Bridge Photography: 2 hrs.
• Editing bridge w/ background: 2 hrs.
• Photographing cat: 2 hrs.
• Photoshopping: 6 hrs.
• Blog entry, including creating web thumbs: 4 hrs.

Below are the contact sheets for the project. You may notice that there are some from the mountain, this is simply because I was originally going to have the cat attacking the lodge at Schweitzer Mountain, but it didn’t work out as planned.

*** No animals were harmed in the production of this image.

What is it?!?!

Well, I was looking at some of the amazingly great photoshop compositions at Worth1000.com, and saw an image of a cat jumping from the water, attacking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I loved the idea, so I decided that I will try to do the same for the landmark bridge of North Idaho… the Longbridge of Sandpoint. At 1.3 miles, the bridge should create the adequate effect I am looking for. Unfortunately, after searching for quite some time on Worth1000’s website, I was unable to find the original… so you will just have to accept my drawing as a substitute for the amazingness of the original and for my work.

EDIT: I found the link to the image…. I like it, it’s nice.

http://fx.worth1000.com/entries/506056/kitty-attack