Abstract Photos

My favorite is probably the wine glass being poured into the sink. It's got good lines and movement as you follow the lines of the dye in the water into the sink. It also has interesting color since the dye is the only color prevalent in the otherwise very white background. It's in focus in macro....I only adjusted the levels and added a sharper saturation to it in Photoshop.

Surrealism Photos

Macro Pictures

My favorite picture would probably be the fairie in the sunlight. I just like the shadow it casts and how the camera focused on her so well, the background is much more blurry. I only adjusted the levels, otherwise i didn't have to adjust it at all. I originally edited out the dust all around her (she's been hanging from a window for a long time) but i decided against it because it gave it a very sad romantic feel.

Nadav Kander: My Version

For starters the lighting in one of my pictures is much darker then his pictures...Our compositions are really quite different. I was not able to journey to any sort of nulcear fallout area to take socially satiric pictures so i had to work with what i had. Like i mentioned, our compostitions are really very different. I had a better idea for a place to take pictures at, however i found out that i would get a ticket if i was caught tresspassing...so i had to search elsewhere. The picture on the left, which i prefer much more then the other picture, is from my basement. We had a fire when i was a kid and we rebuilt on the foundation but there's still some pretty obvious damage in the basement. My garage was another place that had a sort of grotesque sense of decay. I only photoshopped them to fix the levels, and i added a grain to make them look a little more like Nadar's pictures. In the piece with the big white block of wood, I added the photograph and covered it with powder so it would blend in more with the dusty dirtyness of the background otherwise the composition was all right there in my garage! SO! Those are my pictures...

Do you mind that my photo is darker then his? or does it still portray that grotesque decaying feeling?

Gretchen Garner:My Version

The main difference in our pictures is the lighting, but there was only so much i could change in photoshop/use in my house. I already had my father standing on a bench holding up a lamp attempting to get it right...but honestly it doesn't make too much of a difference. Also i used more objects in my pictures as oppose to hers. She seems to concentrate on just a few objects with a colorful base underneath to fill the dead space. My colorful bases are t-shirts so i didn't want to leave so much open space, plus i don't mind my compostitions the way they are. I had to photoshop the green monochromatic picture alot because those green ornaments were originally red...ha. I like my compostition for these much more then my mimicks of Nadar Kandev, I just feel i was more successful, maybe because these compositions were easier to recreate.

Do you think that the brightness of my photos is too distracting as oppose to hers, or does it add to the composition?

Nadav Kander

Artist 2: Nadav Kander

From his Chernobly, Half Life series.

I want to emulate the sense of decay that is prevalent in these pictures. That's what I find so interesting about them.

Gretchen Garner

Artist 1: Gretchen Garner


Pictures from the 'Academic Suite' series.

RENT Montage2

This next montage may seem a little trite to those who are not 'Rent-Heads' but the show means alot to me. Someone i love very much was just recently in this show and it meant so much to me that he had such a wonderful and different experience as opposed to other shows. Theatre is a huge part of my life and i have watched it transform actors drastically not only in their abilities as actors, but into better people in general. I began with a picture of scaffolding, edited out a couple signs hanging in the background then changed the hues and saturation etc. to get it to look darker and less of a focal point. Then i found a picture of the cast that will be closing RENT on Broadway and took great pains to edit out the background from the picture so i could add it to my montage. The man who created this beautiful show, Johnathan Larson, sadly died the night before opening. I thought it would be a nice touch to add him in with a lowered opacity to give him that angelic sort of on-looking 'memory' quality. Then I cropped the sign from a different poster and added it at a janky angle. This show has touched many people's lives, including my own and though there are many people bored with the hype over the show i will forever love this show and it will forever mean alot to me.

Did you like my background or was it too distracting?

Save the Water-Montage1

My first montage is i think 6 pictures combined. It began as a glass of water with green dye in it, then i edited it from there. I added the sea water, the turtle, the oil being poured, and the oil in the background. The tools i used were the magnetic lasso tool, hue/color distortion, etc. I didn't follow the rule of thirds i know, but i don't realy mind it in this picture. The dye seemed like it was polluting the water which made me think of the pollution of the ocean nowadays and thus the idea was created. I, obviously disagree with the way that society deems it acceptable to take what they want without any regard to who or what they might be hurting. There are many various forms of sea life that are in danger of extinction due to water pollution and i felt this message was an important one.

Did you like the way i expressed my feelings towards the subject through the use of PS?

A list of the sources i got the pictures from:

http://www.marieclaire.com/hair-beauty/trends/articles/beauty-tips-beauty-secrets, http://photonwriter.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html, http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Everyone%20Else/images-3/sea-turtle-4.jpg, http://thumb18.shutterstock.com.edgesuite.net/photos/display_pic_with_logo/89899/89899,1173475486,7.jpg,