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.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment