awEsOme

Forced perspective is defined as ‘a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is.’

I read about forced perspective photography and i Googled it, saw a lot of examples, and is feeling very eager to try this out soon.

Then i came across this picture, a great example from 1918 - Human Statue of Liberty - which really impressed me. I doubt any other photographer will be able to recreate a masterpiece this good.

Please click on the picture for larger and detailed view.

If you study the picture properly, you'll notice that the feet if the statue is only composed by a few men, while in the head and flames - NUMEROUS! The photographer make full use of his knowledge of perspective and beautifully executed this piece of artistic photograph.

The picture is composed of 18,000 men preparing for war in a training camp at Camp Dodge, in Iowa.

A few very interesting facts about the image:

• Length from base to Shoulder: 150 feet
• Right Arm: 340 feet
• Length of Torch and flame: 1000 feet
• Total Length: 1490 Feet
• Number of men in body and head of figure: 2,000
• Number of men in right arm: 1,200
• Number of men in torch: 2,800
• Number of men in the flame only: 12,000
• Total men: 18,000

I can't stop feeling amused by this photograph.

i fiNaLLy lOvE sHoPpinG!

The title of this post is not relevant. I'm not talking about real shopping. I'm talking about working with images I shot almost every night in Photoshop! I looked and searched into my old picture folder and post-processed every potentially editable photographs.

You might ask, "Woi, siao ah? What the hell happen to you? Why suddenly so bersemangat, rajin edit picture plak?"

It all started when I accidentally crash into some Dave Hill’s work. His photos make me go, "Oh my God!! His works are really f*cking awesome!" Click on his name to go to his personal website. You need to see it for yourself to understand why I went nuts over his works. Then while Googling, I came across works by Kukubesi. Again I’m stunned in awe. I swear I must at least achieve 1% of their work. Yes, 1% will do.

So I start searching for tutorials, but most of them are skipping steps; making the readers lost halfway through their guide. In the end, I tried to experiment from where I got lost and referring to many other guides as well. Then I got real lost. Terpesong. Instead of achieving the minimalism of the painted photo feel, I went all out to make my photographs look like real paintings instead.

I shoot this lonely duckling using D80 and this is the result of my post processing.

I’m partially satisfied with some of the pictures myself (though I know it’s incomparable with Dave's and Kukubesi's). I plan to get a good rest, shoot more pictures (maybe, tengok mood), and work on them in Photoshop again (definitely!)

Check out more of my photography works at my Flickr page by clicking at the link below
http://www.flickr.com/photos/genecell/
(or you can also access my Flickr page through the badge I attached at this blog’s side bar).
All comments and critics are welcomed.