David Lachapelle

David Lachapelle is an American photographer and music video/adverisment director, who who works in fashion, advertisment and fine art.

His work is noted for its very surreal and outlandish images, which in most cases use digital editing techniques to make them seem much more surreal. Also by using these digital techniques he can make the colour much more vivid which adds to the surrealism of his photographs. An example of these is shown on the left. the main object, the burger, has been layed on top of another image, then edited to make it seem as if it actually happened e.g. the shadow was put in.

In the one on the right i like the way that there are lots of things going on, but that the main image of the women holding the baby stands out a lot. The bold red colour really catches the eye of anyone that views the image. To add another edge of surrealism the women is lying down as her head is rested on the pillow, but at a first glance you don't notice this.

Colour Variation

Another way to alter colour in a image is by using the colour variation window, like the screenshot below. This tool allows you to see both images, before and after, and you can add red, blue, green and lighness to an image in stages. it also allows you to subtract colour so you can achieve the desired colouration effect. In my pictures I used this tool so that the green in the grass was more vivid and the whole picture was less washed out. The tool allows you to change the colours in the midtones, highlights, shadows and saturation. You can also increase the density of the colour adjustment on each stage.

Inverting the Image and Colourising

First I got my original image and, using the hue/saturation tool, I created a completely destaurated image. So it was my original picture was now in greyscale.This made the image similar to the style of Fox Talbot and Maholy-Nagy. Then by using the invert button, the image was now in negative (below). I like the way this turned out but i added to it by going back onto the hue/saturation sliders and colourising it. Then once I had done that I adjusted the colour so it was a purple colour. Then, using the levels tool, I made the image darker.

These are the screenshots from the photoshop window.