Challenge:Surrealism II (Expert Editing) Camera:Nikon D7100 Location: Chateau Snaffles Date: Aug 21, 2014 Aperture: various ISO: various Shutter: various Date Uploaded: Aug 21, 2014
OK I've re-uploaded this image and info block on the shot and its symbolism/relevance to the overall image for the third time tonight, and my patience is wearing thin. For whatever reason, computer keeps killing my connection so instead of waxing on with shoot notes, which I will gladly post at a later time, I will add only the pp notes and call it a night.
pp: shot all images RAW, crop, brightness/contrast, vibrance saturation, refine edge, smudge, burn, dodge, clone, replace colour, move layers around, eventually flatten, til the magickal triumvirate is reached: resize, sharpen, save for web.
Thank you and good night!
POST-CHALLENGE: If you can't see a connection between a sad dolly and a melting ice cream cone, then obviously you've never seen a child bawling its head off over a dropped ice cream. If you don't *get* a hand clutching a key, with a golden chain fastened around the wrist preventing it from getting to the lock on a flying-away Polaroid...obviously you don't realize wealth is no assurance of happiness. Bastet is in the distance carrying a meat cleaver. Is she coming to kill, or to sever the chain? Who knows?
If you noticed the skull behind the dolly, that is a very common reminder of the inevitable, of what awaits us all. The washy tones and gloomy sky and barren sand should say all that there is to say.
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Susan pinged me with regard to my comment, feeling my "just lots of layers" comment was both unfair and missed the point of the photo. Given that I'm a new member of the critique club she expressed concern that my comment (my emphasis) wasn't in the spirit of that group. In my reply I offered my critique, and I excerpt that portion here for the record.
What probably didn't come across (in my comment) is that when I said that it, "doesn't come together in any real way", I mean that while I get what you're trying to do, it doesn't look like any two things exist on the same plain.
Outside of a little shadow under the doll, everything else looks like it could have been cut from a magazine and pasted on a sheet of construction paper to form a collage. Light direction varies from cut piece to cut piece (back left on the doll, front right on the hand, back right on the tin man, underneath the wings), the edges on some of the elements are not clean or you're missing pieces, and the fact that these disparate elements actually exist in this place of "gloomy sky and barren sand" is barely believable on an individual level, let alone as a group. You made some effort to try and show that these were all sitting on the sand, and it sort of works on the doll, but not for anything else as I see it. And a gloomier sky would have been better as the clouds are a little too white and somewhat mask the other white elements (wings, photo, skull). Perhaps replicate the sky layer with a Multiply blend mode once or twice to darken them?
So, while I get the symbolism of what it is you're trying to say (none of that was lost), I find the execution of the image to fail to show it in a real enough manner to make it work as something truly surreal. And isn't that what I'm supposed to be looking for in a digital photography challenge? And I stand by my comment - the execution looks exactly like you simply stacked a bunch of layers in the proper order and didn't little else to make one layer meld into the other. If that's what you were going for then you nailed it - but it doesn't work for me.
Weird. My mind is saying: "What?" Then I see the next bit, and its: "Eh?" But in a good way for this challenge. This then becomes much more personal than the other hands-with-eyes shots. I really like it.
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