SCOPHY

Frederic Gautron uses a bit of photoshop to highlight how some urban environments conflict with natural environments.

Link to photographer’s site 

The animated photographs of Ruchome Obrazki create uncertainty about whether the subject or place is moving leading to a re-examination of that relationship.  The faded nostalgic tones suggesting old photos or memories further reinforce the point.

Link to site (with more photos) 

Photographer Joachim Lapotre creates illusions to play with or ambivalent attitudes about taste and health.
Link to site 

London-based photographer Holger Pooten creates surreal photographs of inanimate objects that have seemingly suddenly blown up suggesting intensity is not always apparent.

Link to photographer site

Laurent La Gamba comments on personal relationships with materialism in his see-through camouflage photography series.

Link to site

Markus Kison cuts out the contours of individuals on polaroid photos to create a perception of depth and 3D illusion.

Link to artist site

To anyone who has felt like a different person to different people or to themselves, you’ll be able to identify with this graphic photo illustration by Peter Holub.

Link to artist site

With his exhibition ‘Torticolis’, Laurent Dejente illustrates how simply reversing horizontal and vertical dimensions can create head-rubbing illusions.

Link to exhibition profile (in French) 

Heavily photoshopped, but nonetheless justifiably so, Murat Sayginer’s photos place the subject in surreal emotive positions.

Link to artist site

Created by Koen Hauser, these photographs contrast the fully clothed exterior along with internal organs.

Link to photographer web site 

Ever come across some discarded old photos and wondered what the story behind them was?  Well, the mango falls site compiles loads of these photos and lets your imagination do the rest.

Link to Mango Falls site

Alison Jackson plays with popular imagery and iconography to produce arresting fake tabloid photos that are eerily believable.
Link to Alison’s fake tabloid news site

Face Your Pockets is a Russian photo project where anyone can upload an image of their faces pressed on their scanners along with the random and not-so random stuff in their pockets.

Link to Face Your Pockets site

This is a variation on Little People photography. Instead of actually using miniature models, you can photoshop a photo to make all things look like miniature models.

Below is a simple tutorial about how to take a regular photo and make it look like a miniature model environment:

The Final Photo

–NOTE–
You must be using Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2 for this tutorial, as they contain the “Lens Blur” filter.

Step 1) -
For the best effect select a nice photo to use this technique on, such as a village of houses, a train station, or some angled-view overlooking a town. For this tutorial I will be using this photo I found of an old train station, and will be using the train as the main ‘focus’ in the image:

Step 2) -
After selecting the appropriate image, we then press “Q” to go into “Quick Mask” mode. What this does is lets you quickly mask off areas of the images using either the paint brush tool, a gradient, or selection tools - it’s VERY handy! you will see why.
Once you have pressed Q and are in Quick Mask mode, press “D” to revert your color palette back to the default Black and White, making sure that Black is the foreground and White is the background color.
Select the Gradient tool from the toolbar, then choose the “Reflected Gradient” style from the menu at the top, as shown in the image below:

Step 3) -
Next, choose which area you want to focus on the most - in our example it’s the train. Once this is decided, hold shift and click an drag the gradient tool from the train to the top of the image and let go:

Step 4) -
Once you let go of the gradient, you will have a result that looks like this:

The red area is the area that will be masked off (not included) in the final result.
After this, press “Q” again to return out of Quick Mask mode, and you should get the ‘Marching Ants’ effect which shows you the selected areas. It should look like this:

Step 5) -
Go up to the “Filters” menu, scroll down to the “Blur” category - then select “Lens Blur”.
For my image, I used the following settings to achieve my desired effect:

Step 6) -
After applying the filter, you should have a result that looks finished - but i like to add one more step to it to make it look more ‘toy / plastic / miniature’, rather than a real train.
To do this, I make sure the image’s layer is selected and I press “Ctrl + U” to bring up the “Hue / Saturation” Adjuster. Once it appears, I usually drag the window off to the side a bit so that I can see the image underneath it and the alterations I am making.
All you have to do is move the “Saturation” slider about 10-20 points to the right, so it makes the colors in the image more vivid and bright!

Use your creativity and see what you can come up with! You could even have a photogallery like City Shrinker.

London-based Slinkachu takes photos of miniature human-like figures.

Link to Slinkachu’s photo gallery

No, you’re not hallucinating. Some things really do look like human faces.

Link to photography blog

Believe it or not, at one time, taking a family or couple portrait photo with a paper moon in the background was all the rage.

Link to vintage photo gallery 

Ever wondered what someone’s shoes would look just based on their face - or vice-versa?  Twentyone pictures does an innovative twist on the portrait photography genre.

Link to the project’s gallery 

Jan Von Holleben plays with depth perception and attempts to give two-dimensions a three-dimensional feel. The theme of his photography exhibition is children’s dreams.

Link to Jan’s site and photo gallery

Denis Darzacq has some gravity-defying photos of free-runners in Paris. The freefall photos are intended to be metaphors of a generation of French youth that feel lost.

Link to Denis’ site

Link to Guardian article