CHAT: W/E Comp 19th - 21st November 2010 - SURREAL

[HinFrance]

Firstly, thanks to all who voted for mine. I can't believe that ogga didn't win outright with that suit, easily got my vote, but that's democracy for you

Ogga and I have come up with a theme for this weekend which I will be posting a little later.

In the meantime here are my above and belows:

Above: Morph - Eye Opener. Good idea, but I think I might have taken some swarfega to that hand before I photographed it . Unfortunately the masking around the hand is not terribly precise (and before anyone mentions it, I know I mucked up the masking of the top of the metronome arm ) and perhaps a little too harshly feathered and dark, so that it doesn't blend too well. Cracking effort on a short time scale.

Below: Highlandscenics – Invisible Flame. I love the simplicity of this one. It seems more of a trompe d'oeil than surreal to me. I guess you've been playing with your snoots. Again, sterling work given your time constraints.

[michaelb104]

Ogga, H, congratulations on the joint win. As others have said it was a very tough choice between the two but I went with Howard in the end.

You’ve both picked an interesting theme for next weekend.

Thank you for my two votes.

Above and Below

Yuck! – the title says it all. Andy I just feel the whole image is not sharp enough but the editing to get the worm coming out of the toothpaste tube is done really well (it was edited in wasn’t it??).

makepeace avenue – this is done really well and a clever idea to make it an album cover (liked the write up on Flickr) but that suit............it really was only just pipped for me by H’s entry.

Originally Posted by michaelb104

Above and Below

Yuck! – the title says it all. Andy I just feel the whole image is not sharp enough but the editing to get the worm coming out of the toothpaste tube is done really well (it was edited in wasn’t it??).

Yes Mike, it was edited in. Holding the worm as though it was coming out of the tube in the same area as the background (in effort to speedily match the natural light level) proved to be quite a task, as he just wanted to be off and would not hold still for an instant. I quite liked the idea that everything was moving in the 'surprise' centred around the wriggling creature.

Many thanks for your critique

[oggalily]

Thanks again for the votes and hope you like the new theme.

For my pic I used a composite of 4 shots - one with an empyy chair, one wirth us sitting in it, and 2 hands. The empty chair shot was used to provide the background behind the "heads". Pretty strightforward really. I used the Liquify tool to blend the hands with the bodies and a bit of dodging and burning and overpainting to match the colours. My inspriation was the Hipgnosis art agency from the 70s who designed several classic album covers for Pink Floyd and Led Zep among others. In fact over on flickr I created a bogus backstory for the album which seems to have fooled one or two people who should know better!

Up and down -
michaelb104 - orapple - great idea, original and well executed. I love the dripping juice, well captured. My only crit is I might have had the bite a bit more "side on" (like the Apple logo) to accentuate it.

jinky - fist like a glove - As they used to say in Mad Magazine, "Blecch"! Another brilliant piece of work with the trademark jinky humour. Editing is spot on, I like the vignette and the processing to give it an extra gritty feel. Wonderfully weird. Definitely not one for the wall.

Voted for Howard's - mostly on the basis of what I imagine the look on Mrs H's face was when presented with the props before the shoot.

I also liked Mr C's wathc and Andy's worm - and would have voted for this one if not for the blurriness. I know it was a conscious decision but I think it detracts from the shot.

Great work from everyone this week though.

[Eyeayen]

I've had a busy week and not had time to get on here and look at everything so sorry I'm a bit late on this post.

I've not really seen any surreal photography before so didn't know what to make of the brief and therefore didn't enter. For the same reason I didn't vote either, there were some great entries and looking over it now having seen everything entered I think H was a well deserved winner. I'm not sure all of them fitted how I imagine the brief in my own mind. I liked Jinky's entry, very well done but at the same time I didn't think it was surreal enough, likewise Time & Space and the Orapple were all good and some nice photoshopping but I didn't think they should have the surreal tag. Cutters Robin takes down turbine one was certainly surreal. Beauxreflets was again good photoshop and posed pic but aside the YUCK factor didn't strike me as surreal.

So I didn't vote, that said I think if anyone asks me about surreal photography some images will spring to mind, H, Morph & Oggalily and I'd know what to do if this ever came up again.

[HinFrance]

After seeing ogga's post, I was reminded that I should pass on how I did mine.

There were 7 shots in all. The sky background, the metronome, the better half with the umbrella, and two of each of the knives. The metronome and the knives (hanging from some invisible thread) were photographed against a white background to make the cutting out easier. Cutting Mrs H out of the foliage background was probably the hardest bit. I've tried at least half a dozen alleged cut out applications and plugins and none of them really work that well. If anyone knows the secret, please share

All the elements were cut from there backgrounds except the sky. The knife layers were duplicated, some of them up to 8 times, some were rotated, flipped and variously resized. I also changed the lighting on some of them to try to add a bit of variety. I then flattened it and tweaked the curves and contrast a bit.

All done in Serif Photoplus X4. 40 layers in all. And I still managed to botch the feathering on the metronome cut out.

[Eyeayen]

Originally Posted by HinFrance

I've tried at least half a dozen alleged cut out applications and plugins and none of them really work that well. If anyone knows the secret, please share

I only know photoshop so that's all I can relate to in my answer I'm afraid H. I photograph and cut things out at work all day everyday, for this I use the pen tool in photoshop which creates bezier curves. This is fine for hard surface objects of straight or curved nature.

However if you need to do something detailed and fluffy or hairy it's more difficult. Essentially for this you need a very well shot image, good contracts on a suitably opposite background. Using curves you can then make the subject completely dark and the background completely white, with this you then create a selection ( in photoshop with the magic wand tool ) and you have your mask.

I've not looked on here but plenty of video's on youtube.

Hope that helps

[HinFrance]

Thanks for that - yep cutting out with contrasting colours is easy enough, it's stuff like fly away hair and low contrast that create the problems. The way we see objects against backgrounds involves the brain interpolating from known foreground subjects to fill in the gaps. Software can't do this.

I have used both the techniques you mention, but I suppose I'm either too fussy or too bad a photographing the object to cut out. Hey ho.

[Eyeayen]

I wouldn't say you're too bad a photographer H but if you don't have a bright white studio or a green screen that is easy to select even on the fly away hair then I'm guessing it's already much harder to replicate any of this ???