Final Project: Surrealism

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.