Iconic Photographs

I attended the seminar given by Andre Gallant last year where he presented his Dreamscapes and demonstrated the principles behind them.  And I was most impressed by the results he showed on the large screen.  So it was with much anticipation that I began to read his book “Dreamscapes” and, believe me, I was not disappointed.  I found it really well presented, easy to read, excellently illustrated and, above all, challenging!  It is all too easy to think we have found and conquered our particular photographic interest and it is therefore a big awakening to be shown in such a compelling way that there is another aspect we may have thought of but not persued.  I know many of us have experimented with multiple images, but this book prods us to be more creative and I personally found it stimulating.

Andre Gallant is a professional photographer who has co-authored “Photo Impressionism and the Subjective Image” with Freeman Patterson and has now himself authored “Dreamscapes”. Dreamscapes explores photo montages, which he describes as “…passionate, powerful, evocative images derived from fantasy and created by superimposing two photographs.” He demonstrates four types of dreamscape – composite (two images combined), mirror (flipped images), surreal (combining an in-focus image with a out-of-focus one) and cross (combining a vertical image with a horizontal one). The creation of each of these is clearly explained and demonstrated by numerous excellent photographs, with Andre’s tips and suggestions for successfully producing them.

This is a challenging book that encourages the photographer to think “out of the box” and to try to produce something different in the way of artistic technique which, at the same time, develops a different attitude when taking the original photographs with dreamscapes in mind. However, we all have our own images on file and a perusal of these may well reveal a few of them that will be suitable for combining in one way or another.

I can fully recommend Andre’s book Dreamscapes to any photographer who would like to try something new and develop some rewarding montages.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Amazon have the book in stock and although the price is $30.00 it is well worth it in my opinion, not only as a reference book but as a nice book to have sitting around on the coffee table ready to browse. Just click on the photograph.

Dreamscapes, Andre Gallant, An Andre Gallant Book.

Other books by Andre Gallant include -
o Photographing People: At home and Around the World
o Destinations:A Photographer’s Journey

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