The Surreal Painting

This time I am paying homage to a surrealist artist, Rene Magritte, whose man in the bowler hat was made popular again in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. I believe his canvas on the easel that disappears into the scene behind is called The Human Condition. The idea of being able to see through the current situation to the world outside appeals to me during the COVID-19 social isolation period.

To make this picture I took a couple of photos, one with a canvas and one with no canvas. I have a nifty remote control for my little Olympus so you can't see me triggering the shot with my right hand by my side.  Rather than try to do a blended image I used the cloning and context sensitive retouch tools in On1 instead, to cover the window frame and easel where the picture would been.

Surreal-ly into a Deep Dream

This was an accidental selfie. I was in my favourite spot for the afternoon light beside TheWindow. I stopped to finish my coffee, right in the shadow of the door frame, and didn't realize I set off the self-timer on my camera from my phone. The actual photo was lame but I decided to try it out in Google Deep Dream Generator, using a "modern art" style pattern.

I think the results are somewhere avant garde 1920ish.

A Surreal Selfie #photoproject

Le Violon d'Ingres

I got inspired whilst looking through Man Ray's photos (I was looking for but never found his Jazz series). He was a Dada &/or Surrealist artist and photographer who came to fame in Paris in the 1920's & 30's. His most famous image from that time is probably Ingre's Violin, but he was also a very successful fashion photographer and filmmaker after the war.

“It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.”

...Man Ray

The object here is to take a "self portrait" (it doesn't have to include your face, could be just a shadow, an empty chair, your hands holding a camera, or a coffee cup!) that tells much more of your story than a standard head-shot selfie. What story do you want to tell? Perhaps it will be about your aspirations, what you have achieved, what you want to do after lockdown is over?

In the Surrealist Shadow

Paying homage to the surrealists seems logical on the 112th anniversary of Salvador Dali’s Birthday. Shadows and dreams are common motives so making a composite of my shadow superimposed on an unoccupied bed seemed to fit. 
 
I used my phone and HDR Camera+ for the unoccupied bed (the dreamer is “away”) and a silhouette portrait taken of my shadow on the ground (again the body is not shown). I used OnOne layers and the soft light blend mode to combine them, nothing trickier than that.