Photo Manipulation (Surreal Art?)

Neo_God

I just called them Manipulated photos, but I guess they could considered surreal art...

I've been slowly working on these for about a month, just taking various pictures, browsing stock photo sites, and thinking up ideas. I was a bit wary about posting these here, and truthfully, I'm unsure why...

I titled the Project "The Family", and I will be entering it into a local art show probably around May, for my highschool.







So, what do you think? I'd love some feedback!

KdS

Breathtaking, I like it a lot.
Very clever choice of pics.

One bemol to me that is very easy to correct : add perhaps some shadows here and there for now, it looks like all is floating in front of a background.

But no matter, we see where you want to go, great work

hikagesan

i agree, i like these a lot, id like to hear your interpretation of what your saying here, or if its just for art's sake. if your rocking seperate layers it'll be easy to add a layer style for a drop shadow to really make the foreground pop. but i think its a purely artistic call, as the pieces work for me the way they are. you may want to push the contrast on the last piece though. reminds me of that NIN video from back in the day.

Hollowmind

I like them. Very freaky work. Nice job.

thnom

Really nice; the middle one reminds me of Michel Macku's photographic work, in particular this piece:

http://www.michal-macku.cz/gel-36.htm

All his work is very good, though: http://www.michal-macku.cz/gallery.htm

johnwoo

Whoa!!...very cool but edging slightly on the disturbing..I like it lots tho'...do you have anymore to show or anymore in the pipeline perhaps?..would really like to see more

Irritant

These are absolutley beautiful!

Reminds me a bit of Doom3, particularly the last one(sort of like a lost soul).

Slash

cute

Neo_God

Thanks for the comments, people!

Kds, I was sorta going for the objects sorta floating in the backround, I had tried to see what it'd look like with a shadow, and it was pretty bad actually, haha.

Hikagesan, yeah, there's no hidden meaning in them, I just did them because I wanted to.

Hollowmind, thanks man.

Thnom, this is pretty funny, because I just discovered this guy about 3 days ago, and his stuff is really impressive.

Johnwoo, I probably won't be making any more, I had originally made 1, but liked doing it so much that I made 2 more. If anything, I'll probably be doing my online portfolio with a similar design. Though I don't know, maybe sometime in the future I'll make another, just because these things are really fun to make.

Irritant, yeah I can see the likness the child has to the lost soul, it's probably the dead eyes and the large open mouth.

Slash, out of all words to describe these, that has to be the best, haha.

poopinmymouth

Er, they are very nicely done, but I can't help but get a vibe that they are just gorey to be disturbing, without a real reason. I'm sure you can spout one off, but they just don't seem like there is a reason for them other than being contrived.

See if you can come up with one that doesn't have to rely on the macabre to be interesting.

I might be way off base, but like I said, that's the vibe I'm getting.

Neo_God

Well the reason for them, is really just I like imagery like this, and I wanted to make some of my own.

As far as me planning this just to make people go "ugh, that's just wrong looking", no, I did these because I wanted to, with my first intent being that no one would really see them, and they would just be decorations for my work area. My girlfriend told me I should show them off and such, so I decided I would. Although the bad reactions of people not accustomed to this sort of stuff is really just a plus in my opinion,haha, I get a nice little satisfaction from seeing someone look at the picture and make a strange face. So I guess a better description for these would be Shock Art

Oh yeah, I've always had a thing for the combination of human anatomy and machinery, haha!

KeR

do you have them in a higher quality?

Neo_God

I would like to plave the higher res picturs, but Photo Bucket caps out at a 250k file size limit, and will usually resize things. SO it seems pretty pointless, though the original size isn't that much bigger.

zach

I love stuff like this. Have you checked out David Ho or Alessandro Bavari? They've got a similar bent. I hope you don't get put on the FBI watch list after you show these at your high school.

Neo_God

No, I havn't heard of those artists before, thanks for the links man, some really interesting stuff. I really like the Alessandro Bavari stuff.

Hah, as far as my highschool goes, I will be putting it in the local art show, but I don't think I'm allowed to display them at the actual school, the school board still needs to okay it, and they havn't gotten back to me or my art teacher.

John Warner

these are absolutely incredible! i'd buy the art book!! :O