Illuminate: A Senior Surreal Photo by Alan Enecial (2014)

In my surrealist piece, I have a white flower as my focal point. My metamorphosis in this piece is in the flower with a lit candle extending out of the center of it. Surrounding the flower is a morning sky and around that morning sky is a transition into a starry night sky. Instead of just adjusting the brightness around the candle, I chose to have two skies surround it. The morning sky is supposed to represent the candle illuminating the scene. I created my piece using Adobe Photoshop. In this piece, I included three edited HDR photos. I chose to use a macro lense to bring out all of the small details in the flower. Because I was using a macro lense, I had to get up close to my subject and so I wasn't able to use a tripod. This made it a little difficult to take my three pictures with different exposures because I wasn't able to keep all three photos completely in line. Once I had the right pictures, I edited them in Photoshop using the Camera Raw Filter. For the background, I took a circular selection of the morning sky I took and placed beneath the flower and above the picture of the night sky. I then used the gradient tool to have the two skies merge into one another.

In this piece, I wanted to convey the message that everything has their own light despite the lack of ''light'' or knowledge you have about them/it. The flower is illuminating the starry night sky that surrounds it into a bright, morning sky. The color scheme I chose was a triad color scheme consisting of oranges, greens, and blues. I chose this color scheme accordingly to my objects in the piece. The reason I chose to have a candle in a flower is because flowers are usually looked at as delicate objects while fire is looked at as a wild, destructive element. I chose to use these two objects due to their contradicting characteristics. The narrative in this piece is the candle that found its light.