Fantasy Landscape - photoshop task

Research


Erik Johansson 
Erik Johansson is a professional photographer and retoucher from Sweden. He mostly works on personal and commercial projects. For him, photography is just a way to collect material to realise the ideas in his mind. He gets inspired by things around him in his daily life and all kinds of things he sees. He finds every new project a new challenge and his goal is to realise them as realistic as possible. I find a lot of his idea's are based around how we are destroying the planet and environment. He uses photoshop techniques to create visual representations of the metaphors surrounding how we treat the planet. They are very hard hitting, and their intentions are clear. Erik is sending a direct message: look at what you're doing.

This image is showing a pair of scissors cutting there way through a house in the country. I love the clear effort and attention to detail in this image. I think the message here is we are destroying little homes like this, because there just isn't as much countryside anymore. It's amazing how Erik has taken metaphors about the environment and made them a reality. The colours and tones create a really dark atmosphere, emphasises the negative message this image holds. The weather also matches well, and everything about this image links to project a serious negative message.

This image is showing a city like landscape being zipped over the countryside. The contrast between the two areas is huge, and it really emphasises how we are covering up the bright, friendly countryside with dull repetitive cities. His photoshopping skills are clear, and I can't think how long it would have taken to get this image as perfect as it is.

This is one of my favourite images, because of how strong the atmosphere is. The message is direct and strong: technology and our way of life is taking over and killing the planet. The harsh and dark colours project the negative atmosphere, and the repetetiveness makes it really strong. As with the first, the weather and tones all link perfectly together to make the strongest atmosphere possible.

For my images I first tried an idea I tried last year, where I used photoshop to merge many images together to blur the mouths of talking people. I took the inspiration of Erik Johansson to try and strongly show a message, and I chose to show how we're all so busy and constantly communicating, we're becoming a blur and nothing stands out as much anymore. I felt my idea was good, but the end image was not. I think you need to be closer to the people to see the blur, as it isn't very visible. This would however work if the image was printed large. In general I don't think the colours and tones are strong enough to project the meaning, and this is something I need to work on.

I tried one close up, and this didn't work either. Her facial expressions were too varied and it just looks a bit silly. It does show however it works much better when you are closer to the person, so you can clearly see what is happening.

This is my actual fantasy landscape. I decided to piece together a number of images, to create a believable yet unreal landscape. I first took the picture of the statue and made it smaller, and pasted it onto the market stall. I then cut out a picture of the marmite thingy near the library, and pasted it in the corner. I then placed my image of katie onto it so it appeared she was sitting there. To finish my image, I used the same image of a leaf, and copied and pasted it a number of times, each time rotating it and changing it's size to make them look different. Although I don't like this image, it was good practise and I'm happy with my photoshop skills and how it doesn't look entirely unrealistic. Underneath is a copy of the original background I used.