Logan Zillmer
1993 - present
1993 - present
- Personal Background Logan was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1993. After spending hours in the dark room at his high school, Logan did not like taking pictures for a long time after. He started off taking senior pictures, which bored him and made him dread his camera, as these were not interesting nor creative, but repetitive. Logan lost interest in photography all together, but became interested in it again in 2013. He then decided to take 1 picture every day for a year, starting on New Year's day. He then began taking more surreal photos, which really grabbed his attention. It wasn’t until he graduated Full Sail University with a film degree that he started paying closer attention to the type of photos he was taking. Logan is now an up and coming artist, and is on Tumblr’s “Photographers to Watch” list (2014).\
- Style Logan’s work is very surreal, playing on conceptual view, and making something impossible seem possible. All of his artwork utilizes photoshop to enlarge and shrink certain aspects, as well as cut, overlay, erase and crop his images to create the final product- something impossible in real life. Many of his works contain large people with tiny things, such as a large man picking up a house, crossing a road, etc., or toy with the sky, taking chunks out of it, falling through it, etc. Logan’s artwork is very unique, as he can take it as far as his imagination will let him. He sketches his ideas first, and then spends time gathering props, people, etc. and then making his idea come to life through editing. Logan’s style or photography is fairly new, as it utilizes photoshop and other digital photo editing softwares.
- Philosophy Logan’s work is inspired by “Mystery” and “Childhood remnants” (Logan’s blog). Logan is a firm believer in not sharing his meanings, as he believes the meanings are personal to him, and wants others to have a personal meaning, not affected by what he intended. He believes the mystery of his meaning is what makes his artwork so mysterious and intriguing. His artwork is not political nor social, each photo has its own intentions, and some have none at all, and are just for fun. Each photo says something different, depending on how the viewer perceives the photo, which depends on the individual and their life experiences. Therefore, his photos have infinite meanings.
- Influences This photographer's work is very unique. Logan's photos inspired me to play along with photoshop a lot more and pay attention to detail in the editing process as well as angles and perspective. His work is very interesting and has made me think more closely about the photos I take, and make me want to take more interesting photos. I especially like how Logan overlaps and enlarges photos to make things appear a different way. I want to continue to develop work influenced by Zillmer, and learn to make the images look as natural as his images.
- Sources http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/interview-surreal-photography-zillmer, http://www.thephoblographer.com/2014/12/11/enter-a-world-of-mesmerizing-photographic-illusions-with-logan-zillmer/#.WCsNmyMrJz8, http://www.loganzillmerphoto.com/blog/
- Compare and Contrast In my images, I tried to replicate the same concepts. Logan's images create more of an eery vibe, as his backgrounds are darker and empty. His photos are very simplistic, yet intriguing, which is what I attempted to replicate in mine. Each of my images has the same concept as the one I was trying to replicate, but with different backgrounds. My interpretation of the giant man was to use the same person, having a smaller person looking up at himself. Although similar, our images are very different, as they have different backgrounds, people, feelings and meanings.
- Personal Artist Statement I really enjoyed doing this project. I took the pictures separately and then edited them together using the erase tool on photoshop. It took a long time as I had to be very accurate in order to make the pictures look like they were one whole picture and not separate. I enjoyed copying Logan's style, and playing around with photoshop. The images had to be edited as it began to snow as I was taking them, making them a little bit over exposed. In all, I am very happy with the way they turned out, as after the first one they got a lot easier. If I were to do it again, I would add a shadow to "Stomp" to make it look more realistic, although I like the way it looks without a shadow. In "Overlooked" I edited some leaves in front of the giants feet, as there was grass covering the shoes that was not to scale and therefore looked fake. I was very happy with the way the leaves turned out, as they look natural and I think it ended up adding to the picture, as it made the two images appear more united as one whole image. My images are up for interpretation, the meaning is what you believe, just like Logan's images. There can be multiple meanings which is what makes the images so unique and intriguing.