The latest addition to Tel Aviv photographer, Ronen Goldman’s extensive self-assigned project, “The Surrealistic Pillow” comes as an exploration of the world of 360° photography. “The Storyteller” is an image experience that immerses the viewer in a conceptual photo-sphere as a mother reads a story to her daughter. We’ve blogged about Ronen and his self-assigned work before, however “The Storyteller” is his first step into the realm of 360° photography.
Ronen has been working on “The Surrealistic Pillow” for the past nine years in between commercial jobs and he has used it as an outlet to try new photography techniques and ideas that interest him. Most photographs in the series start with a dream, or part of a dream that Ronen remembers and writes down when he first wakes up. He tries to extract elements of the dream, sometimes it’s an abstract feeling and others it’s actual objects or places. He then meditates on the overall atmosphere of the dream, and why it had such a pronounced effect on him. After that, the creative work of planning and preproduction begins, followed by the shoot and heavy post processing. The entire process took months for a single photo, and as of now 25 images over a timespan of 9 years.
Ronen has always tried to convey various dream states throughout the project, but with his new addition of 360° photography and VR, he could create an immersive quality. Even though Ronen typically has been focusing on 2D photographs, he views this as an extension of that work.
It feels like a natural evolution- I have always been trying to transport viewers of my photography to imaginary new worlds and points of view, and this 360° format really adds something to that experience.
The journey to the creation of this photo-sphere began when Ronen watched a 360° video of a Salvador Dali Painting. The 360 photography was mind-blowing to Ronen. He loved the ability it gave him to stand in a seemingly new world with its own visual language.
The preproduction of this shoot was intense and took quite a long time. Firstly, Ronen had to learn the entire process of how to technically create the image before any creative nuance could be brought in. He used heavily an off-camera flash and was able to place his equipment just outside of the frame. The challenge with 360° photography is that if you use a 360° camera to capture the scene all at once, everything is in the frame. To avoid this, Ronen used a traditional camera and stitched together the images in post-processing.
I decided not to use a 360° camera because I wanted to utilize my knowledge of lighting and everything involved in manual photography to my advantage. My whole setup had to move while the camera was moving… it was a bit crazy.
Ronen has had wonderful feedback about his photo-sphere. He continues to get messages daily about people who loved exploring the surreal room and discovering new details- like Easter eggs they didn’t notice the first time. Ronen believes that 360° photos will be huge commercially in the upcoming years. When made well, people spend more time looking at these photos and engaging with clickable objects in the sphere for purchasing, or adding information. He’s already been approached by multiple clients and ad agencies about creating conceptual spheres for their needs, however, at least for now he intends to focus his 360° photos on his art and self-assigned project.
I’m just excited to see where this new medium takes us all as photographers, I’m sure this is only the beginning.
You can see more of Ronen’s work at www.ronengoldman.com.