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Photographer creates a MAD world in Photoshop

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I was recently scouring the Interweb when I came across a fantastic, post apocalyptic, promo image. As I looked further it seemed to be for a new TV show, but as I dug a little deeper, I found out it was the brainchild of Jeff Madison.

Jeff is a photographer from New York, and his new photo series Mad World is based on a fictional TV show that comes on after AMC’s The Walking Dead! I like nothing more than when a photographer/digital artist who goes the whole hog and creates detailed stories with their images. I myself tend to write backstories and write down full character sheets before any actual shooting begins. So I was happy to see Jeff building a whole world with his imagination.[Read More…]

The artist combines matte painting, collages and photography to create composites with reality of their own

What do you get when you combine matte painting, cutout fragments of old photos and magazine pictures, photography and digital manipulation? British artist Suzanne Moxhay brings these techniques together to create complex, surrealistic, and captivating artwork.

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How to turn daytime into night in photoshop

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Recently I created a series of composite images around my home town. I shot the locations early one morning, then shot the models a week later in my home studio. One of the images was going to show a couple out at night, walking past the city nightlife. Being one not to make things easy on himself, I decided I would shoot the location in daylight, and change it to night. Now I know I will probably get lots of comments, which I have already on Facebook, saying why didn’t you just shoot it at night. The answer is I didn’t want to. I wanted to challenge myself. I knew I would learn some valuable lessons whilst doing this. This is how we grow. Also the location would have been a nightmare to shoot at night. It is usually full of drunk people enjoying the beer of the city.

So without further ado, lets play God, and turn day to night! But before we start here is a speed edit of the whole image![Read More…]

10 steps to creating an indoor jungle

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Last year my friend Marsha invited me to this crazy Victorian mansion along with a small handful of awesome photographers and models to hang out and make some art … Obviously I said, “heck yesss.” The house was a gold mine of strange colorful rooms full of interesting wall paper, decorative trimmings, and some gorgeous natural light.

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How I shot a witch doctor surrounded by wolves

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One day whilst I was sprinting my heart out on the running machine at the gym, an image popped into my head. The scene was a tribal/witch doctor lady, surrounded by wolves. I wrote it down on a scrap of paper when I got home, and threw it into my ideas folder. It was around 6 months later, after finishing some client work, that I thought it was time to create some personal images and flex the old Photoshop muscles. The first piece of paper I picked up was the witch doctor idea. Knowing it would make a cool image, and challenge me, this is the project I would choose.

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Ryan J Weiss – Composite storyteller

By now, if you have read my previous posts (which you all should have done, tut tut), you will know that I am inspired greatly by the cinema. I have loved movies since I was a little boy. I would sit for hours on end, watching, and re-watching my favourite movies. If I had to tell you guys right now what it was that sucked me in, time, and time again, it would be one thing. The stories.

As most of us know by now, you can have a movie with the best special FX in the world, but if it is attached to a plot-less, or weak story, the film will suck! How many times recently have you been to the cinema, and exited underwhelmed. Yeah the movie might be visual eye candy, but without its heart, a well written story, it is nothing but another shallow excuse to make money.

As photographers we are all storytellers at the core, but unlike cinema, we only have one image to convey a story. This is something I strive to do in my own work, for each image to be a story, with its own tale to tell. Well there is one photographer in particular, who has this skill down to a fine art (excuse the pun :P)

In 2013, when the photography world was still quite new to me, I remember browsing on Flickr. I was clicking through the photos, when I stumbled onto an image that looked like a still from a movie. It had a young man, cradling a dog in his arms, as he walked away from what looked like a burning building. I stared at the image on my screen, trying to deconstruct it in my head. How had this guy created such a seamless, and cinematic image? There was so much story to tell in this one lone image, that I couldn’t take my eyes from it. Eventually I moved my mouse cursor to the name written at the top, Ryan J Weiss (Fcebook, Flickr), and clicked to see his photo stream.

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Realistic Composites does a great job at teaching you how to realistically compose

Realistic Composites (basics) – €85.00 by Adrian Sommeling is a workshop that teaches you how to create lively, funny composits from start to finish. And when I say start, I mean from pre-planning a shoot so your photos are “composing ready”, until putting the last coloring touch on the final piece.

As someone who is just starting out with compositing (not to be confused with composting) I totally loved it, here is why:

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Mater Suspiria – Creating a witching image from scraps

I’m affiliated with the Dark Realm Collective (DRC), it’s an art group that specializes in Dark / Horror / Supernatural subjects – the group was founded October 2014 by Matt Seff Barnes. As a collective, we release four ‘art packs’ a year; each pack has a title, and a selection of five ‘themes’ for the artists to choose from.

This easter we used witches as our theme. With a few theme-titles to choose from and to spark our imagination.

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Photoshop Artist Makes Kids Dream Jobs Instantly Happen

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I have two daughters (11 and 4) and one son (7). They wanna be: an actress, a robot maker and a dancer-chef-teacher-driver. I’ll let you do the match up. Actually many of us had “dream jobs” when we were growing up and for some, we never got to experience those dreams because life took us on different paths than we thought they would when we were young.

Photographer Brandon Cawood opens a small window so kids, (specifically, his sister’s, Malisa, 5th grade pupils) can see themselves in that dream job of theirs. As a bonus, the project started when two 5th graders interviewed Brandon for they Career Project at school – They wanted to be photographers when they grow up. (How cool is that, kids still want to be photographers, take that Cynicists!). Brandon gave the class a lecture what it means to “be a photographer” and the kids wanted their photos taken in a cool way.

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