Nadav Bagim

Nadav Bagim is another photographer who is otherwise preoccupied in other professions. Bagim is a brain sciences student from Israel who, like Keochkerian, only recently got into photography and is using it as a hobby and a way of making money on the side. Bagim’s subjects are all nature based from animals to landscapes, but what attracted me to his work was his macro shots of insects. (Bagim, N.2014).

Bagim has one project that was of particular interest to me, his WonderLand project. He has this to say about his work ‘The WonderLand series was composed using a unique but rather simple and elegant artificial lighting and household objects (from vegetables to plastic bags). The photos were shot in a miniature studio on the kitchen table wit a Canon EOS 60D, a Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens and flashes. The photos are real, not a digital manipulation, and the outcome is a beautiful magical set with a fairy flair to it. The small models were found in my apartment and on plants outside my window, all alive and active, none of the was harmed during shooting.’ (Bagim, n. 2014)

The WpmderLand project can be seen my following this link. (http://www.aimishboy.com/wonderland.html)

Bagim’s sets look like surreal alien worlds; this is what attracted me his work. The colours and subject combine to make something that is quite unique and very unworldly. The colours alone create a surreal atmosphere, but then combined with the insects make the whole thing very alien. As there is no sense of scale with in the images its easy to imagine and get lost in the world created within the photographs.

Again, just like Keochkerian’s work, it gets me thinking about using colours within my own work to create the surreal atmosphere. They work really well to create something very alien because it’s something we don’t expect, it’s something different.

Also the sense of scale is a big contributor to the surreal effect, start changing perspective and scale of things that are known to people, but present them in different ways and the subject should stand out. Bagim’s subjects work really well because they are details of the everyday that people miss, photographed in a way which directs attention to them so the audience sees them in a new light so to speak.

Nadav Bagim

Nadav Bagim

Nadav Bagim

Nadav Bagim

Nadav Bagim

The two above images are good examples of photographing something similar but presenting it in a way that is different to the norm, giving the viewer a distorted sense of what they are seeing, creating the surreal atmosphere.

The water and ‘grass’ elements being similar, and the general shape of the insects, but combined with the colours and the scale (macro making them look large and seeing details otherwise missed) makes the whole image look like your peering into some unknown alien world.

David Keochkerian

David Keochkerian isn’t a photographer by trade. His real profession lies in the realms of physical medicine and rehabilitation and only practises photography as a hobby. He says he has only been practising photography for the past three years, although he grew up with it around him and as a general interest because his father worked as a practising photographer, so he is no stranger to the dark room. However is only became a real passion for him in the past couple of years.

Keochkerian has this to say about his work ‘I like to capture the fleeting, the subtle, the beautiful, the rare, the spectacular, the staggering…to reveal how the daily and the ordinary can b filled with enthusiasm.’ (Keochkerian, D. 2014). 

Keochkerian’s website can be found by following this link…http://www.david-keochkerian.com/#filter=.home

Looking through Keochkerian’s portfolio it is easy to see that he uses many different techniques including HDR, panoramic, long exposure, black and white, and in doing so photographs different subjects. But what caught my attention and why I’m looking into this practitioner is his work with landscapes and using infrared techniques.

What interested me about this work was that it’s a fairly simple technique that results in quite dramatic surreal effects.

The landscapes look quite extraordinary because of their colour casts, they look completely out of this world because it depicts something so similar to us (the landscape) but presented so differently as well (because of the colour casting).

I came across Keochkerian’s work while looking at a blog by Christopher Jobson.

(http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/01/01/david_keochkerian_surreal_landscapes_through_infrared_photography_photos.html)

Jobson describes Keochkerian’s work as ‘Dr. Seuss-style surreal photography’ and ‘seasons seem reversed, with white trees appearing in spring, and bushes are transformed into something that looks like fragile blades of bubble gum’ (Jobson, C. 2013). I agree with how Jobson has described these images, they are quite strange to look at, but as I said that’s because they are so similar to what we know, but presented so differently. The colour casting works so well to create a surreal effect making the images appear like they are capturing scenes from a completely different world, something you would expect to see in sci-fi movies.

David Keochkerian

David Keochkerian

David Keochkerian

David Keochkerian

Looking through this work it gives me inspiration and fresh ideas of how to create surreal effects in my own work. Before I was thinking of just making black and white images, but looking through this and seeing the effects you can get from changing the colour casts to what people don’t expect to see (a slightly green tinted sky, yellow and white tress, etc) makes me reconsider my output. Maybe these inverted colour techniques are a way to go.

Follow these links to see more of Keochkerian's work.

http://www.david-keochkerian.com/#filter=.home

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/01/01/david_keochkerian_surreal_landscapes_through_infrared_photography_photos.html

Chris Clor

Chris Clor is a photographer and illustrator who utilises both the camera and CGI to create his work, he specialises in conceptual, portrait and product photography. This blending of different techniques results in Clor's unique and recognisable cinematic style.

Chlor has won several awards for his work including the Communication Arts award and One Eyeland Photographer of the year and so often has his work published in photographic press such as Digital Photographer, Adobe Layers and Capture to name but a few. As a result of his success Clor is sought after to speak at different schools and universities and other photographic associations.

Clor's usual clients include Shell Oil, Gillette and Ford Motor to name just a few of the larger names. Often Clor doesn't work just by himself, he has a team of producers, stylists and assistants to help complete his work, but he oversees all aspects personally. (Clor, C. 2014 [@http://www.clorimages.com/Asset.asp?AssetID=50414&AKey=KADJ6V2J])

I found Chris Clor's work while continuing my research on surreal landscapes. His work generated some ideas of creating ones on different contexts.

The first being; creating a surreal alien environment by mixing different architecture in environments where it just doesn't belong. These images below, by Clor, are what inspired this idea. The pyramid outside of a city casts a strange alien atmosphere across the entire image. It reminds me of different sci-fi films and tv series, all of which have to create this surreal alien environment by mixing props into locations they don't usually belong, playing with scale and perspective and other methods to create an atmosphere where the subjects look quite unworldly. This would be done simply by using forced perspective and different digital image composites.

Chris Clor

Chris Clor

Chris Clor

The second idea; quite simple and perhaps harder to accomplish, similar in some respects to the first idea, putting different animals into locations and environments they don't belong. The ideal and most effective way of doing this would be using CGI, but other methods would include getting wildlife shots at a zoo perhaps and they compositing them in. Obviously this would be harder to make believable because of matching lighting, perspective and other factors. But it doesn't have to be animals, I could use other props to a similar effect.

Chris Clor

Chris Clor

The third idea; this final idea is from these images below by Clor. It's simply putting things from a different time into the modern landscape. This could be a historic building in a modern environment or like the images, a person dressed as historical character in a modern place. This will give the images a timeless surreal atmosphere, but perhaps not quite what i'm looking for, depending on the degree as to how this is done will determine how surreal the images are. For example a historical building in a modern landscape might not seem that surreal, but a person dressed as historic character, like in these images, would seem quite surreal depending on certain factors as they could just look like a person dressed up, the images would need to look quite immersive which could be quite tricky.

Chris Clor

Chris Clor

Overall I find Clor's work quite inspiring, it has led to some insights and generated some ideas of where to take my current project making it seem more feasible in some ways.

http://www.clorimages.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=38203&AKey=KADJ6V2J