Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Into the Eye of Nature: A Senior Surreal Photo by Christopher Lanman (2014)

In my piece you see an enormous flower coming from the sky. The flower is mainly violet, with a touch of yellow like the bird that appears to be landing on it. The flower has a feather like texture that can be seen if you look closely. There are also silhouetted building structures that add to the mysterious look of the piece. The background is a dark blue sky with very dark gray clouds. In the distance, there are other birds that appear to be flying towards the flower. Overall, there is some sort of metamorphosis occurring between the flower and the bird. To create this work I used a variety of techniques in Adobe Photoshop. For example, I gave the flower the texture of feathers using Photoshop and I made my clouds high-dynamic-range (HDR) to get a surreal effect.

I chose a color palette consisting of violet, yellow and blue to illustrate vital elements of nature: yellow like the sun, blue like water and violet representing everything else in between. This piece is about the beauty of nature and how in an urban world we lose sight of the importance of nature. In other words, I am illustrating biophilia, which is the idea that man has an innate need to be in nature. To demarcate just that, I symbolize the circle of life by having the flower metamorphosize into the bird and nature appearing as if it is slowly encompassing the city to illustrate the concept of biophilia.
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