Fantasy Landscapes

For this task I have been asked to produce a fantasy landscape in Burton.
I started off by looking at some artists who produce fantasy landscapes.

John Goto 


Goto is a famous British artist best known for his photoshop work. I am looking specifically at his Landscape work, floodgates.


This is an example of John Goto's work, it demonstrates his skills of layering images. I appreciate the skill in his work, being able to add the images together and blend the edges to make a final image. I am not very fond of the overall product that is made, his style is very cartoon and and fantasy. I am impressed with the way John Goto composes his images, however my personal preference is to have realistic images.

After deciding that I didn’t like John Goto’s style of work, I looked at Jerry N. Uelsmann whose work I much prefer. Uelsmann has a B.F.A degree, M.S and M.F.A in photography, he began his career teaching photography at the University of Florida in Gainesville before becoming a graduate research professor of art at the same university. He is now retired from teaching and lives in Florida with his wife, the artist Maggie Taylor.

Uelsmann’s work is more realistic, I like that in some of his images you have to look twice before realising that it is, in fact a fantasy picture. 

This image is an example of Uelsmann’s work. The image is very realistic, yet at the same time completely impossible. The crisp detail in the roots of the tree provide the eye with a focal point, the eye is drawn up the roots to find a house on the top. The proportions of the sides of the house match perfectly that of the sides of the roots which make the roots/house combination work well together. The only thing I would say could be improved is there is slightly too much blurring around the join of the house to the roots which contrasts the crisp detailing in other areas. It is also slightly lighter which draws the eye to the join.

I think one of the factors of Uelsmann’s work being so successful is that it is composed in Greyscale, this flattens the image, making it easier to blend layers together. It would be very hard to blend two colours together, as no colours are the same, it is much easier to blend two shades rather than two colours.

Now I have decided on the style I would like, I’ve got to learn how to do it. I found this website which helped. http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/how-to-create-a-fantasy-landscape-photo-manipulation/

I started by taking an image of the cloud formation as the cloud definition was strong and I thought this would be resembled well in greyscale imagery. I also took an image of a tree thinking that it could be placed into the clouds creating a fantasy landscape. I started by turning the image into black and white, I then altered the contrast and also the levels to enhance the cloud formation.

Once I had got the cloud background how I had imagined it I looked at the image of the tree, I decided I needed to delete the background of this image, so that the silhouette of the tree could be placed onto the cloud image. This proved harder than I had imagined as the colour definition between the tree and background was little, meaning the lasso tool was incapable of tracing around the edge. 

I went around the tree line as best as I could free-hand, once I had completed the selection I inverted it and erased the background. I then tried dragging the tree image onto the clouds and realised that I needed to cut out the background rather than erasing it as it just left a grey background when transferred onto the clouds.



This is the final outcome. Unfortunately this image doesn't work as well as I had imagined. I am very fond of the cloud formation, I think that works really well however the image of the tree is not very strong at all. When comparing my work to that of Uelsmann's I see that his images are much stronger. His images often have strong contrasting lines with a deffinite contrast in tone where as in my image the leaves on the tree produce a very flat tone which doesnt contrast that of the clouds. I needed to use something with strong tone and and lines so that I am able to accurately select around it without losing the detail as I did in the tree image.



I decided to use this image I took for a previous project, with a model sat on a motorbike. This is a strong image with strong ranges in tone. I also think it will look better in the clouds, one because it's dark tones contrast the clouds well but also as it should appear that the bike is riding through the clouds. It will make more sense than a tree in the clouds. I started off by cutting around the image of the bike and placing it on the sky image I had previously used.

This is already much better than the previous image, resembling the work of Uelsmann. However I still think it can be improved to give a better overall tone. I am going to start by going back to the original cloud formation, keeping it light and also bring the contrast up.

This is the finished image, I change the size of the image until I was happy with where it was placed upon the cloud formation. This image has much stronger tones with interesting subject matter.

This is an example of Uelsmann's work where he uses cloud formation, similar to my image he has enhanced the levels making for a more contrasted tonal quality. It also shows his use of strong lines (in the hands) to create a strong striking image.

Uelsmann has inspired me to create strong images with meaning. All of his greyscale images have strong contrasting tone which makes them more interesting and eye-catching.