Stump in Flames: A Senior Surreal Photo by Helena Steffens (2014)

In my surrealism photo, a tree stump is morphing into a lantern. The lantern sprays a dark orange and red fire. The background of the photo is composed of charred, distorted flowers. The petals and leaves are still intact and connected to the stems, but are very clumped together. It has the effect of looking like melted aluminum and also looks somewhat watery. I mainly used Photoshop to create my composition. To create my piece, I put together an HDR photo of a tree stump and traced out a photo of a torch I took. I cut out different parts of the flame and morphed it into one giant flame. To make the background, I added different effects and blurred a photo of flowers I took. I then put a blue tint to it.

I used a simple, complementary color scheme. Originally my photo was mainly black and white with just the orange of the fire being any color. After working on it for a while, however, I decided to add a dark blue tint to the background. I felt that this added a watery effect and made the composition more interesting. When I look at my piece, I imagine a tree stump in the woods catching on fire. The fire is blown by the wind and is invincible. It ''burns'' the water and the air, but the tree stump is spared because it is so detailed and complex.