In my Surreal Composition, there wasn’t a particular message I wanted to convey, but more so a visually striking piece with a lot of layers to it. At first, when brainstorming for this project, I was really unsure of what to do. But after some brainstorming I came up with the idea of incorporating basketball in some way. I then drew some inspiration for the basketball player sitting on top of the world, which in this case is a basketball with Covid masks. For the landscape portions I knew I wanted to choose a pink/purple sunset background and incorporate a lot of chaos amongst that photo hence the Golden Gate Bridge, clouds, and lightning. Last but not least, the green aliens peeking out the corners of the TV were just some final fun additions.
I really find a lot of the techniques we learned in Photoshop Compositing 1 and 2 to be extremely helpful. I needed to mask out the player, basketball, and TV for example which was easily done through the tutorial we learned that feature in. And then, for the landscapes, the various blend modes allowed me to get the right contrast and color that I wanted for the final piece.
I’d say that Surreal Compositions are harder, yet easier at the same time. It’s harder in that it’s hard to make it all come together and look interesting, but it’s a lot more fun. Whereas, in Realistic compositions, you are often trying to copy or emulate a real feature. And when I find myself really trying to make something accurate, the process becomes super nitty gritty and it can be super frustrating. But, in the surreal, you can make your own image and create whatever you want from wherever you want.
Related website
