Photographer Inspiration:
Kyle Thompson
Kyle Thompson lived in the suburbs of Chicago all his life. He was born on January 11th 1992. Thompson first started photography when he was 19. He started photography because of his interest in abandoned houses nearby. The majority of his photographs are taken in the forests or abandoned houses and are mainly self portraits. Even though his photography is brilliant he has no formal education in the subject. He is also known to use a lot of props in his work such as materials, mirrors, model boats, and even balloons. He used these props in such an amazing way, as you can see in the middle image, he used the fabric to create an image that made him look like he had wings which gives an amazing impact to the image. Thompson also uses different effects such as smoke, water, and even different lighting effects. this allows the image to get more of a surreal impact to it.
Chema Madoz
Chema Madoz was born in 1958. Madoz is a Spanish photographer known mainly because of his black and white surrealist images. Madoz studied at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and he studied art history between 1980 and 1983. In his work he takes everyday objects and makes them in a very weird image, for example he took a stone and made it look like a purse and he took a pair and made it look like a lightbulb. He seems to use two unrelated objects that share a visual similarity in some of his irk and then he also uses optical illusions such as the ladder in the last image above, you can't tell wether the ladder is leaning up against a mirror or if the ladder is going through a hole in the wall. This gives his work an amazing surreal effect and his work is definitely inspirational.
Own Photographs:
In this image I took a photograph of scenery using a tripod so the camera did not move and then I took an image of me holding up the hoop by using a timer on the camera. After this I put the images into Photoshop and erased the area that I didn't want shown which was the inside of the hoop. I then merged the layers together and changed the brightness and contrast of the image to make it look better. Doing this to the image made it look as if part of me had disappeared which gave it a really nice surrealist effect. I also took the images where there was little light which gave the image a nice dark effect.
For this image I done something very similar to the first but instead of holding the hoop up in front of my face I put it around my waste with some fabric hanging down from it. I then put the image into photoshop with a image of just the background as well and done the same as the first one with selecting the area I didn't want and rubbed it out using the rubber tool.
For this image I also used the method of selecting the area that I didn't want and then rubbing it out. The difference with this one is that I rubbed out from the waste down so that you could see my face. In this image it looks like the hoop is floating and that the person is also floating. This gives the image a very surreal effect.