Album Art

Photomanipulation is used all the time in CD's, book covers, movie posters etc. and shows a more commercial side to the art of composite imagery. I've started looking into album art and cover art as I find it to be a great possibility of work I can try and get after CIT. I love that although it is commercial work, the photographer often has a great role to play in the design and creativity put into it.
Here are just a few examples of album art that uses photomanipulation:

Luis Beltrán

Out of all of the photographers I have researched so far, Luis Beltrán has stood out among the crowd for me. I absolutely love his work and I find his images to be extremely unique and creative. 

Luis Beltrán is a Spanish photographer who specializes in surreal and fine art images. He uses a mixture of composites and photomanipulation to create spectacularly strange works of art. He is based in Valencia and does exhibition work for galleries in Spain and the US. His artwork can also be bought as Limited Edition prints on his website for $90 AUD each.

As his artist statements for his series are in spanish, I was only able to understand key words, but I managed to find a quote on his flickr site:

"When I was a child, I used to spend my holidays in a small town in the mountains. I often woke up to the light rays beaming through the window in the morning while birds chirped. I always conjure up this moment as one of the most peaceful times of my life. I have never been able to recapture that peace, but I still keep trying everyday through my work".

Luis Beltran is a very interesting individual, and I feel as though every image portrays a part of his soul, and I could analyse his images for hours on end.

http://www.luisbeltran.es/

Alexia Sinclair

I thought I would start off with one of the masters of composite imagery, Alexia Sinclair. Most of us are pretty familiar with her work and what she does, but her work can not go overlooked in the photomanipulation realm.

Alexia Sinclair is a Sydney based fine-art photographer and digital artist who specializes in fantasy composites. She is most well known for her two series; The Regal Twelve and The Royal Dozen. In these series she scouted and photographed locations and then combined them with studio portraits.
Alexia Sinclair is my main inspiration for my folio, as I highly admire her style and creativity.

Alexia gets her work by producing images for exhibition and by doing commercial and private commissions. She also sells her artworks as limited edition collectors prints and hosts various workshops.

The Regal Twelve
Alexia traveled to Europe to capture backgrounds for her series of twelve european queens. They are captured in a dark, yet elegant style and I love the intricacy of the props and fashion. The series includes monarchs such as Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth and Marie Antoinette. What makes this series more interesting than other composite work is that it is of real people, which makes it more engaging to the viewer, as the you can work out who the person in the image is based on the props and background.

The Royal Dozen
This is the male version of the Regal Twelve, and is my favourite of her works so far. Again, what I think makes it work particularly well is that it is of real people, and her work really explores the history and personality of each person. As with the Regal Twelve, she traveled predominantly in Europe to capture the location images, and then returned to Australia to do the studio portraits. The Noble men she chose for this series was based on their controversial leadership and influence on society, and included men such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn and Napoleon.

http://alexiasinclair.com/