Photo-Off Challenge: Taking a stab at the surreal

When Mary issued me her challenge -- things are not always as they seem -- a surrealist portrait immediately crystallized in my mind. I had the key ingredients already and picked up the rest over the weekend at a thrift store.

This shot is almost what I had in mind -- but it was cold and the animals had little patience for posing.


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If I'd had more time, I would have switched the tiger and bear.... The light was coming in from the left side of the frame, which meant that the white whiskers were getting blown out more often than not and the brown of the bear's fur was getting lost in shadow. If I had made them switch places, I think we could have balanced out that problem. Oh well. Live and learn.

Here's another one from that shoot. Simple girl-boy cross dressing, especially in our modern world, is hardly enough to qualify for the theme of this challenge, but I like it anyway. I'm having fun post-processing it (and will probably post that result on my plog later, if anyone cares).


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Which brings us now to my actual submission for this week's Photo-Off Challenge! I took this shot this morning. The pose isn't at all what I pictured when I began, but I like it better than what I pictured. Uno the Bear looks like she means business, lol, and the wide angle lens (which I used on all of these instead of my customary 85mm prime) distorts the size of the head / snout in just the right way. I could wish away the clutter in the lower left corner, but overall I'm very happy with my results. :-)


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On the off chance that I didn't get anything workable from my animals-in-suits idea, I did troll the web a bit for inspiration. Check out this link for a fabulous collection of optical illusions and trick photography.

Mary, your next challenge is ... Beauty in Chaos! Have fun with it. :-)


~RCH~