Surreal Self Portraits

Purpose:

• To express yourself using the concepts of surrealism;

• To learn about surreal artists such as Salvador Dali, Renee Magritte, Frida Khalo and contemporary photographers: Rachel Baran, Manu Pombrol;

• To continue to explore advanced Photoshop tools to create a seamless, convincing surreal self portrait.

Surrealism: surrealism is a style of art that doesn't conform to logic and creates pieces that look dreamlike and unreal. 

Some similarities between the surrealist artists Rachel Baran and Manu Pombrol are their usage of themselves in their photos. Both photographers include themselves in every piece of their art as the main subject, no matter how they distort it. However, there are several differences in their work that makes them unique artists. Manu Pombrol often distorts his photos and makes them surreal with the usage of his own body parts. This includes adding in arms or eyes, or changing something about his body that you would never see on a typical human. Rachel Baran however, tends to change the elements in the photo that surround her, adding in a specific background to make it look like she’s floating, or pouring a steady stream of water out of her ear. 

Some important ideas and details that I personally will need to remember in order to create a successful surreal self-portrait are making sure that I not only focus on the coloring of the photo or changing something that could hypothetically be changed in real life, but instead actually changing and manipulating elements that would make what is happening in the photo not possible. Additionally, I need to focus on making my changes intentional support what my overall purpose of making the photo is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izOAjvk7cRs&t=16s

This video talks a lot about using masking and various other techniques

What skills are necessary to be able to create a surreal self-portrait using your camera and PhotoShop? Please be specific, citing examples in your work.

Some skills that I found to be essential to creating surreal self portraits in photoshop are knowing how to create a mask, and knowing how to change the lighting. Creating a mask is extremely helpful because then you can change specific small details to make your photo more realistic. Changing the lighting is also extremely important because then you can make you elements look like something else, such as when I made my head the sun.