I've come back and come back to this one for a while now. It works, but hasn't got the wow of surrealism yet. I'm at a loss to explain why though. The only thing I can think of is that the chair and the leaf don't directly relate to each other, but I'm not an art scholar, so don't have the full grasp of it yet. I really wish I could be more constructive, Northy.
Nicely composed - light vs dark background highlighting the subjects works very well. One thing you might want to try is to "De-tilt-shift" this shot :-) I mean, you can make life-size stuff look like miniatures by de-focusing the background and foreground --> miniatures should appear life-size if you bring background to focus = take another shot with the back wall in focus and combine the shots together.... Might work. Or not. :)
I think this works better than the first one, something to do with the scale of the leaf and the chair. But I agree with @quixoticneophyte, in that the two don't relate to each other. I also agree with @janim about the composition which is delightful.
This is super... just the loss of size understanding and the confusion as your eyes cruise the shot... what is that, which is out of place, its pretty awkward, so fabulous. Nice job!
The size comparison totally figured out. But I'm finding the background kind of dull and therefore not surreal - see where I'm going? Total points to you for trying this out and setting up different shots. I'm terrible at following through if it takes me more than a minute to do it! Oohhh..I just thought this next to a sewer grate - haha - with weird things stuck in the grates. Yeah, I'm totally going off on my own thought here. ;)
@quixoticneophyte tx Alexander... makes for interesting reading... never took art classes and maybe i could use some ;p
@janim i do have some where the background was in focus, but they were garish on the eye... at first i thought it was the focus, but now i am thinking it may have been the choice of background along the lines of the point @kass was making... i have an idea for another attempt which i will see about working on later this week...
@kass not sure if the tenacity is my inherently perfectionist nature or just part of my way of avoiding reality for a while ;p
Have you read through these articles by Adam Marelli?
There are only five parts to them, there is no part four. http://www.adammarelliphoto.com/tag/surrealist-manifesto/
I hope they might offer a little something extra to give you that "aha" moment with this!
@janim i do have some where the background was in focus, but they were garish on the eye... at first i thought it was the focus, but now i am thinking it may have been the choice of background along the lines of the point @kass was making... i have an idea for another attempt which i will see about working on later this week...
@kass not sure if the tenacity is my inherently perfectionist nature or just part of my way of avoiding reality for a while ;p