Erik Johansson

Why I chose Erik:
Erik Johansson's work involves him taking hundreds of different images and putting them all together to compose an image which is so surreal, but looks like it could have been taken in real life. I chose Erik because his work is so different from everyone else's that I have seen when researching surreal images. The way his images are composed, presents his work as being extremely complex. I chose his work also to get inspiration, as his different projects display a wide range of surrealist imagery that I haven't yet studied in photography.

Bio
Erik Johansson is a photographer and retoucher from Sweden based in Berlin, Germany. Working both on personal and commissioned projects. He doesn’t capture moments, he captures ideas. To Erik photography is just a way to collect material to realise the ideas in his mind with a problem solving approach. Although one photo can consist of hundreds of different images he always wants it to look like it could have been captured. 

The following image shows a man pulling across what appears to be a curtain of a completely different image. What stands out to me the most is how realistic it appears, you can see from the image that the two settings are identical. However, they have evidently been taken or edited at two times of year to show the contrast in Summer and Winter. When he is pulling the curtain across, there a strong creases to show that it is in fact a piece of material and not just two images put together. I think this effect is clever, as the photo shows him not holding onto the material, instead he has let go which exaggerates the creases and makes it seem as though it is falling. 

The above image is extremely creative as it shows the road being split in half to resemble a 'cut along the dotted line' theme. When researching the work of Erik Johansson, I think this work is contextually the most inventive that I have seen. He has thought of everything when taking this image, including the roots on the bottoms of the trees and the shadows that are shown to make the image more realistic. From the image we can see that he has cleverly thought of the background which is maintained through the back of the photo. 

The above optical illusion shows the depth that Erik Johansson and proves that the work he creates on Photoshop has no limits. The image Erik has done shows a set of roads all interlinked, however the roads may seem to be the same way up. The roads and the cars on them are upside down, alongside the traffic lights and road signs. I love this image as the illusion is extremely clever. There is a diagonal line through 

I love this image as it shows what appears the be the man hanging up pieces of scenery. Like the image above, it shows the two setting contrasted with the weather. In the images that he is hanging up, it is incredible realistic as we can see each of the sheets being hung up on the rope. The image being hung up by wall paper is much brighter, with more floral colours and a nicer scenery in the background. In the other image, we see the dark clouds contrasting this as there is a strong presence of the black clouds. 

Influences

This image was influenced by Erik Johansson because I used a number of different editing skills I hadn't previously to conform to his work. I had not used these before, and I adapted this image to manipulate the buildings and make them stand out. I like this image and I wouldn't have been able to do it without the previous inspiration from Erik Johansson. In photoshop, I selected each building on a different duplicate layer and warped it so that the buildings spanned out, without looking fake and stretched. 

Summary

Overall, as my project didn't take on in his direction of work including photo realism, my work didn't really take on the same style in which he did. However, I did look at the different editing techniques that Johansson used in Photoshop and tried to manipulate some of my photographs in the same way that he did. Reflecting on my project, I wish I did try and make my images look more like Erik Johansson's however I feel like I needed to make my photography skills better and then enhance my editing. 

Victor Enrich

Why I chose Victor:
When researching architectural photographers, I noticed one which stuck out to me as being different from the rest. The reason I chose Victor to explore in more depth is because he doesn't just take simple photographs of building. Instead, he transforms the buildings and turns them into complex surrealist images. He does this through taking different parts of the images and then making them unrealistic and more interesting. 

Bio

Born in Barcelona, in 1976. When I was a kid I was spending most of the time playing at home, making races with my scale model cars. Those races were all over the house, including my bedroom, the corridor or the sitting room. With the years I found out that this was my first step into understanding the space from a different perspective, not as a simple user but maybe as a designer. When I was around 8 I discovered technical drawing, thanks to my grandfather, who worked all his life in construction. So, I got rid of my scale cars and I moved into scale plans. First of all, I was playing with some bizarre housing designs, but with time I started to design cities. As time went by, I discovered perspective, as a two dimensional technique to represent three dimensional scenarios. Totally gone crazy with this, I started to make perspective drawings of “my” cities.

In this image, Victor takes the building and transforms it in order for him to create a three dimensional scenario. The level of depth and detail in the bottom inspires me to create images with the same level of detail. It is clear from this image the amount of time Victor puts into his work. I also like the positioning of the building now, where it is is curved and the top of the building is in a completely different position. In many of his images he uses the same buildings, which he recreates in this image is the object of a boat. 

This image presents a modern feeling to me as the three skyscrapers in the image have been transformed to show the insides of them. I like the different shapes that the three buildings now make and the angles that they are leaning towards. The composition for the image is key as there is not a lot of wasted space, however enough to show the scale of the buildings in comparison to the surroundings. 

This image stands out for me from the others as what he usually does is take an image and transform it to make it appear 3D. In this image, he takes parts away from the image in order for it to have that affect, and instead makes the building resemble a block of cheese. There is a strong use of colour in the image, the orange of the holes stand out as they contrast to the dark grey backdrop of the building. In much of his other work, the formal element of colour is lacked however I feel that this image shows that it should be included as much as it can.

This image is extremely creative as he takes the stairs from the hotel and adapts it to appear they are going off into the screen. The composition of the image enables the audience to question where the stairs are leading too. This image is one of my favourite from Victor Enrich due to its simplistic nature and calm feeling it emits. The way he has taken the staircase and just made it trail off into the distance stands out to me. 

Influences

Looking at Victor Enrich's work inspired me to look at the different ways that you can distort buildings and architecture. When I started looking at the Evidence topic, I looked at different skyscrapers and architecture and in my computer experiments I did subtle edits to buildings to make them look different. When looking at his work, I took this image of The 'Walkie Talkie' in London, and distorted it by selecting it in photoshop and changing the shape. I did not want to distort the entire image as I didn't want the sky to look different and it to be noticeable that I have simply applied a filter to the image. Instead, I took the parts of the image that I want to distort out and distorted it then placing it back on the blue sky.

Summary

Overall, when I chose Victor Enrich to explore in further detail, it inspired me to do more with my images of architecture and buildings. Now, when looking at the different buildings I have, I am able to look back at the work of Enrich and try and distort it and make it similar to his. 

Print Techniques

Selective Colour:

Duotone:

Repetition:

Black & White:

Photojoiner:

Soft Focus:

9 - London - Straight Images

Computer Experiments

8 - Work Diary

Evaluation

Following up from my previous shoot, in which I placed glow sticks in bottles of water. I struggled in what I could do next as the shoot did not go as much to planned. However, when looking at some of my photographers in more detail in my research log. I figured that I could put different things into water that are not solid like glow sticks are. I then came up with the idea of putting food colouring into water and watching it dissolve. When going into the studio, I set up my camera on a tripod and put some paper on the table. This enabled me to draw a ring around the wine glass on the paper so it was in the same place for each photo. Then when taking pictures of the glass, to ensure it was all in the right place I found that the outline of the glass was not strong enough. Therefore, either side of the glass but out of the frame I put a piece of black card which means that the sides and glass stands out. This made the glass stand out a lot more in comparison to the other images which previously did not make the glass stand out. When I poured the water into the glass, I continuously pressed the shutter to take some pictures of the glass filling up. When looking at these pictures in photoshop I realised that I actually prefer these images to a lot of the others and I wish I had taken more. 

I like the above image due to its simplicity in the photo. Another mistake I made during the shoot was not including the bottom of the glass. The reason I couldn't do this was because I then would have had to included the table and paper that it was stood on, and I would have had to zoom out. This would have meant that I would have included a lot of the set that I had created while taking the photographs. One of the downsides of this meant that I could not make a multiple imagery out of the photos as the images underneath each other do not look right. Instead, I made a triptych of the photographs that were the best from the shoot. This made them stand out more and as there were none underneath the bottoms did not stand out as much.

Progression

The next shoot I will be doing involves me going to London. In London I will be looking and taking pictures of the range of different lights that are around me. I will also be looking at the different colours, and what I want to do to show the different lights on the road is get streaks from the busy traffic to display how busy London is, even at night. 

8 - Straight Images

7 - Work Diary

Evaluation

In the previous shoot, I looked at my research log and image bank to come up with the idea of placing glow sticks in water in order to enhance the colours and make them stand out more. I looked in several different shops to buy thick glow sticks so I would only have to put one into the water and it would be brighter. However, I could not find these anywhere and therefore had to put six smaller ones into each bottle. Overall, I feel they give the same effect as the thicker one as they were just as bright and filled up the bottle with different lights. I like the effect that is emitted to the viewer as the bright colours in each bottle contrast from one another and stand out. One of my biggest problems when coming back in to the class and looking at the images on photoshop was the sharpness of the images. This is because I did not use the camera on a tripod and then when I took the images, some of the colours emitted less light and therefore the shutter speed was slower. This made some of the images, particularly the red ones blurred. To combat this, I had to go back in and retake the images using a tripod.

I took the above image as a whole on photoshop, then edited it so that each bottle was on its own. By doing this I was able to put all of the bottles lined up with a black background on photoshop. One image from the shoot that did not work so well and an example of how the camera should have been left on the tripod was the following image. You can see that in comparison to the top image that the image is much more unfocused and it is harder to determine what the photo is off.

Progression

7 - Straight Images

6 - Light Writing - Work Diary

Evaluation

In the shoot I just did, I wanted to create an image like what was in my previous progression. This involved me taking a picture of somebody, and writing their name behind them. I feel like my shoot was successful, as I did exactly what I put out to do. I went into the studio and set up a stall so that all of the people that I imaged where in the same place. I also put the studio camera on a tripod, and ensured that it didn't move throughout the shoot. It took several attempts when I began writing behind them. First of all, the flash went off and took the picture of the person, then the shutter speed was kept open for a round 20 seconds in which I had to run behind the person and write their name back to front. This was a struggle at the beginning of the shoot as it meant that I wasn't sure where to write the name and where it would appear in the frame. The first image I took of Josh took me 6 attempts to do it as I needed to keep changing the shutter speed to ensure I had enough time to write his name and get the composition right. After this, I edited the images on photoshop to enhance the colours of what I had done. The last image was the final one I did with the first two exhibiting the attempts which did not work very well.

Progression

Carrying on from the light writing shoot, I want to experiment with colour and how it can affect the mood of the image. One image that I have seen on the image and what I aspire for my work to look like is the following which shows glow sticks in bottles of water. I like this idea as it will use bright colours and I can make a multiple imagery or several images of the different colours together in the studio.