Monday, June 30, 2008

Fantasy meets Photography

Greetings,

My name is Michael Koontz and I am new to the Etsy VAST team. Hailing from upstate South Carolina, I knew from an early age that I wanted to do something within the field of visual arts. Didn't have much of an idea as to what until college where I began as a Graphic Design major. Due to creative differences between myself and the head of the department, I soon decided that graphic design was not where I wanted to be (nothing against design, just against -that- design dept.)

Having taken a couple photography courses previously (required for GD major,) I decided to switch programs and study photography full time. I soon fell in love with the lighting studio. Bright, contrasty colors and dramatic lighting helped create the wonderfully magical feel that I had always envisioned in my work. During my senior semester, I spent 14 weeks working in the studio with nothing more than a glass chess set, a photo flood and a Mini-MagLite flashlight plus a many gels in various colors which I used to explore the relationships of light (that is a subject for another entry.)

After school I began to explore combining my love of photography with my love of fantasy literature and games. I began thinking of ways to incorporate some more mystical and magical elements into my work, and fine tuning my skills with Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator software suites to bring about truly photographic fantasy illustrations.



Digital Photo Manipulation
c. 2008 J. Michael Koontz; all rights reserved

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Very cool digital photomanipulation work (from a fellow digital artist.) :))

Good luck on Etsy!

Sharon aka redladyarts.etsy.com

Jean Levert Hood said...

Welcome to the group!! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work.