edu LIBRARY

I created “A painting too real” four years ago, I had several ideas on how I could realize it but I was limited by my knowledge and experience. I’ve learned a lot over the past years regarding lighting, camera and post-production and I felt it was time for another version. This is not part II, it’s just a different take on the initial idea.

Photographer: Erik Johansson

To me it was important that the painting/frame would be the center point of attention in the frame. I knew that it was very important to get the water-out-of-the-painting effect as realistic as possible and the best way to make something look realistic is to actually do it for real. I also decided to crop the head to remove the distraction of a possible face expression and put more focus on what was happening to the painting.

I bought a frame in a second hand store and removed the back of it. I then built a small space/container behind the frame using paper, plastic and duct tape. The idea was to be able to actually pour water out of the frame. I covered the bottom part with plastic to hold the water and placed a flash with a warm filter and a radio trigger in the upper part of the frame to create a sun. Check out a larger version of the final photo in the portfolio here.

I tried it out a couple of times to see that I worked that way I expected and then it was ready for the shoot.

At the location, a soft light was used as a fill light in the foreground.

I shot both some model- and real boats in different lights depending on where they would be placed in the final photo.

The actual painting was created in post where I shot a sunrise with the sun in the same location as the flash in the frame construction.

And, these are 100 % crops of the different parts of the photo: