Pre Work
The surrealism movement was an artistic movement that started in the 1920's and ended in the 1960's. This movement was led by the poet Andre Breton and lasted through World War II. The "surrealists" as they called themselves aimed to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the imagination. They were very big on imagination and breaking the standard thoughts of realism and rational thought. They believed that the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighting it down with taboos. Their aim was to point out contradictions in everyday life and spark revolution. Surrealism artwork often had a collage of images that juxtaposed each other and caused the viewer to think. They also had elements of fiction and nonfiction mixed to affect the viewer.
Examples of Classic Surrealism
Vladimir Kush, African Sonata
The Persistence of Time, Salvador Dali
Examples of Surrealism In Modern Photography
Ahermin
Link: ahermin.deviantart
Final Edits
Many Men
For this image, I used two separate pictures of Lake Odell at different times of the day. One was the water and the other was the trees in the background. I started by merging these two photos together, then I took two mannequins that I photographed and added to the picture. I put the woman on the log and then put many copies of the man all around the landscape. I cropped the mannequins and changed their size to create depth and make the image more interesting, as well as adding a shadow to the closest one. Cropping created the effect of swimming. This picture was fun to make because I got to play around with positioning the mannequins and blending of photos. This is my favorite of the bunch.
Watch Tower
This image was similar to the last one. I used a photo of a mannequin and a robot, as well as another picture of Lake Odell. The first thing I did was place the robots along the tree line and position them to look like sentinels. Then I put the mannequin in the foreground looking back at the viewer to give it a sense of realism and I put a very subtle texture over the photo. After all of my images were added, I made the photo black and white and tinted it a light golden yellow color. This was a hard one for me because I thought it was missing something until I added the mannequin. Overall I enjoyed making this picture.
Legion
The original purpose for this image was to imitate the American flag by using the birds, but it didn't really work. I used two cutouts of birds and made a pattern with them. Then I isolated the flagpole and brought it to the front of the image. After all of my edits, I made the photo black and white and changed the color balance to give the photo more contrast. Even though this picture didn't work out the way I wanted it to, It helped me make the next image.
Wing Spangled Banner
This is the result of the first images failure to replicate the flag. For this photo, I used the same background but I removed the flagpole and patched the hole with the healing tool. Then I took the same bird cutouts and made the stars and stripes with them. To really emphasize the fact that this was supposed to be a flag, I added colored boxes to separate the sections of birds and give it the red, white, and blue of our National Flag. I enjoyed making this much more than the last image because I got to work with colors, and still kept the pattern theme. Overall, I enjoyed this project. At first I was lost but once I had some guidance and used abstract thinking, it was much easier to create. Inserting images that don't belong in a setting is very fun to play with and leads to some crazy creations in Photoshop. 
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