Wellness

PHOTO MIND TRIPS HAPPENING NOW

Dreams are mind alterations…. changes of state. They are mind trips. We conjure images that are usually more dramatic than those we see while awake. We found two photographers who capture dream vignettes that feel like the inside of someone’s expanding mind.

Photography has the special ability to capture reality and reproduce it so we can “accurately” see something. But these photographers are taking their art so far in the opposite direction, capturing and creating what is in their own minds -- their dreams.

CARAS IONUT

Caras Ionut is a dream-builder. He actually constructs dream vignettes, piece by piece.

Ionut is known as a Photo Manipulation Photographer and “Photo Mechanic.” He starts by shooting a random scene. That’s his launchpad.

Then, he tries to build a dream, often using a catalog of over 200,000 photos, splicing images together and using Photoshop to fuse and enhance.

Sometimes the dream unfolds as he shoots and manipulates. Sometime it begins in his head, formed to a point where he sets out in search of the elements he needs to execute his vision.

His arts encompass a surrealistic look that is enchanting and at times dark.

Ionut doesn’t work in a proper studio. He improvises. He’s a Nikon fan, shooting with a D600 and 28-300 lens most of the time, supplemented with a Helios 58mm 2.0 and an ultra- wide Sigma 12-24mm 4.5-5.6D.

Ionut shoots only in RAW. He opens the files in CR [Camera Raw] from Photoshop, then makes small retouching adjustments to light, contrast and color. He adds tone.

Like an artist mixes paints, Ionut mixes photos, guided by the colors, position, and subjects. His colors are soft of soft. His compositions are magnetic.

Dreams are often soaked in emotion. Ionut gets that. He explores both the positive and negative, the light and the dark sides of dreams. You rarely want to be the subject of his dreams, it would be too unsettling.

But you hope that if you ever are in the same odd scenario as the little girl on the swing dangling over a frizzled sea, or the naked figure lying sprawled at the bottom of the spiral staircase, that you would look as beautiful as they do.

ERIK JOHANSSON

Erik Johansson channels M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali as he creates dreamscapes that stretch reality across space and time.

Johansson was never formally trained. He developed his skill via his own obsessions and passions.

He uses Photoshop extensively -- but he tries to do as much as possible in-camera, with his Hasselblad H5D-40, and Hasselblad HCD 35-90, to optimize the illusion. It also makes things easier during post-production.

The skies in Johansson’s images are always cut out and replaced with a sky that matches his vision. Growing up in rural Sweden, his visual style is often connected to the big open skies of the Swedish countryside. Now based in Berlin, Johansson has come to create more urban dreamscapes.

Some pieces are made from 10 to 20 pictures. Some have as many as 130 layers. The foreground of a piece may source from a different image as the background of the same piece, as Johansson composes in multiple layers. Impossible landscapes make for beautiful dreams.

Johansson has been hired by companies such as Google and Microsoft to help them push their dream technologies forward.

Watch Johansson’s inspiring TED Talk about “impossible photography.”

“I use photography as a way of collecting material to realize the ideas in my mind,” says Johansson.

Read more about Beautiful Dreams, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including Building Dreams Now, Kepler’s Dream Beautifully Resurrected Now, 10 Beautiful Ice Cream Dreams Now, Looks Like a Dream Now and Beautiful City Dreams.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Dream in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 09.07.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!