When people see an image of a landscape they expect to see exactly that upon arrival at the location. Anything less and we feel cheated of the photographic scene they were promised. Prior to photography, the most accurate representation was through an artist’s interpretation of a painting.
Photography acts as a way to document the events in our lives as a sense of truth, but they are just data, and with any type of data they can be corrupted. Hence the distortions.
I have always been overly observant and when I go somewhere I don’t necessarily take in “the big picture”. Rather I take in smaller bits of location that catch my eye and those are what stick with me. The images used in the final composites are the little photographic moments, objects that stick with me after visiting an area.
These begin to argue are they a better representation of the location over a typical landscape or do they become so abstracted to the point they are something else.
Process of building one of these floating islands in Photoshop.
