December Wallpaper

This image was created recently in Oaxaca. Earlier in the day, David duChemin had made the comment that there didn’t seem to be a lot of photographers shooting still life images these days. That got me thinking, what other classic styles of photography were perhaps being under-experlored today?

My mind quickly wandered to surrealism. Now, I don’t know enough about fine art to really comment on how much surrealist photography is out there. But, I’m certainly not seeing a lot of it.

Since surrealist photography relies on the clever use of technique, my mind quickly jumped – like a moth to flame – to thinking about HDR. Except, I didn’t want to use HDR to create dreamy, floating, unfocussed and over-saturated swashes of colour – to me that’s not surrealism.

By contrast, I was wondering if I could use HDR to disconnect objects in an image and make them sit at tension with each other in the frame. I haven’t moved anything in post-prodution, but (I hope) the technique makes things look they kind of don’t belong together.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, which must surely be the most surreal season of the year, I offer you this month’s [download id=”5″]