Experience: A Senior Surreal Photo by Arthur Owen (2013)

For the Design portion of our Surrealism Unit, we were assigned to create a surreal piece of art that incorporated three different photographs as well as one texture. One of these photographs had to have the techniques of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, which combines different exposure times into one photo that allows for more detail to be visible (some detail is always hidden in brightness levels the camera can't see at a given exposure, HDR allows the camera to see all or most of this detail). For my artwork, I took three photos of myself, an HDR photo of a glass of water, and a texture of a painting I made a few years ago. Two of the photos are of me reading a book, underwater at the bottom of the glass. The third photo of me is laid out on top of the water, looking up at the ''sky''. The idea I was trying to convey in this art is that fixation on the theoretical (me reading the books) brings you down in the light of pure experience (me gazing at the sky).