From photos to fantasy art

A simple photograph can be the spark that starts a fantasy inspired work of art. Fredrik Ödman shows you his amazing photo collage techniques.

For me photographs have become a natural part of the process of creating art. Ever since I began to paint and draw I have been fascinated by realistic painting. I have therefore almost always attempted to achieve a photographic result. Soon after beginning a course in photography – despite thinking it wasn’t the right thing for me – I was completely spellbound. And after I tried Photoshop for the first time and became convinced of its fantastic possibilities I have now finally arrived at a creative process that works brilliantly for me!

The image that I have chosen for this workshop consists almost entirely of photographs that I have taken. I’ll show you how to combine different photographs such as these using Photoshop tools, and how to work with light and colours using simple selection and adjusting. You’ll see how the enormous amount of detail in a photograph can be easily combined with the Brush tool.

The preparatory work consists of taking photographs with a studio flash buried under the earth while also making use of the ambient light. I have used a Mamiya medium format camera and negative film. Some of the detailed photos have been taken with a NikonD50 digital camera. The scanner is a Nikon Coolscan 9000. Now we know what our tools are, let’s begin…