Calm Before the Storm: A Senior Surreal Photo by Ethan Leikach (2015)

For my surrealist piece I chose to transform the chain into water as it travels underneath the smaller bird. As it hits the plank the color begins to fade and slowly the chain transitions into water, which eventually files into the larger lake in the background. To do this I used a simple layer mask for uncovering the color of the chain and then overlapped that image with the image of the lake to create the second half of the chain. This was all done through Photoshop by picking and choosing which layers to overlap and manipulating each individual image that the composition is comprised of.

I surrounded the birds with two bodies of water to indicate the same theme of being trapped that stems from the chain dividing the image. The plank slowly slipping into the pool of water is another extension of that and the larger bird is there to symbolize the stronger of the two surviving as he is standing safely on the land. I interpret the overall scene to be the calm before the storm, like the beginning of the end one would see in most movies.