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Anxietalgia: A Senior Surreal Photo by William Thabit (2016)

I decided to base my surreal picture on a dream I had a few weeks ago. In this dream, different things were multiplied. My teddy bear from when I was younger was walking around and popping up in different places. The bear was sometimes distorted and its face was twisted. I remember from the dream that red solo cups were everywhere. I was wearing my dad's colorful Coogi sweater. I remember that in this dream I felt like I was popping out from everything else. I was walking in a black and white landscape that I had been to before in San Francisco. I also remember this puppet that I had bought in Europe many years ago hanging from random buildings and structures. At this time, I can't really understand the exact meaning of this dream, but I remembered it very vividly.

I captured the puppet, the teddy bear, and the red solo cup by using HDR photography. This technique reproduced a greater dynamic range of luminosity than using regular photography would. I also used the morph tool to twist and contort my face and the bear's face. I thought this gave a sense of confusion and anxiety, which is how I felt in the dream. I also adjusted the ''levels'' of the cup and the bear and the puppet. I did this to make the images have greater contrast, which helped them pop from the ominous background. I wanted the picture to not have a clear focal point. In my dream, I felt there was no focal point, just a huge clutter of random objects that I've had throughout my life.
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