Last week I had a discussion with my instructor Brad about my working process and some general limitations that I felt it would be good to break out from. One of the things that's bugged me about my previous composites, such as the Emplacement/Spectre/Object for example, is that they invariably settle into a "detatched" perspective, with no clear evidence of where the photographer is standing in relation to the whole environment. As a result there is a lack of any foreground/background dynamic, instead there is only background, a more or less flat plane.
This type of perspective works well for photographers like Edward Burtynsky and Andreas Gursky, who use grand-scale perspectives without a "grounding" foreground to render real-world places appear alien and leveled out to such a degree that abstract forms and patterns become an immediate visual highlight.
Andreas Gursky, Pyongyang V, 2007.
But when it comes to what I'm doing by creating an image of a place that doesn't exist, I think it's important to establish a clear sense of scale in order for the viewer to get a better idea of how big things are in relation to human size. I've included human figures in my composites before in hopes of accomplishing this feat, but I've found that because they are always so totally dwarfed by their surroundings, people viewing my images have often completely overlooked the fact that there are figures in them at all.
Because my end goal in making these composites is to create depictions of non-existent environments that people hopefully find interesting enough to reflect upon, I'm always striving to direct the focus towards making my images more immersive and less akin to merely an elaborate display of my Photoshop collage technique. Hopefully by widening the depth of field and including a definite foreground with my latest composite, I'll be moving closer towards that goal.