How I got that shot... The Illusionist

Photographer: Erik Johansson
Client: Personal project 

Set Them Free. © Erik Johansson.
Set Them Free. © Erik Johansson.

Take one look at his work and it’s immediately clear why Swedish-born Erik Johansson struggles to find the right word to describe his job title. With work that has been described as equal parts M.C. Escher and Salvador Dali, Johansson is part illustrator, photographer, retoucher, manipulator, and visual artist. Though Johansson may grapple with providing a suitable title that accounts for his many talents, his legion of fans worldwide have no such difficulty. To them, Johansson is nothing short of an impressive illusionist.

It’s not hard to see why. Johansson’s images are indeed akin to a conjuror’s act, where the brain is left confronted by what it sees, but can’t logically ponder the solution. And just as it is with all great illusions, the secret to the seeming realness of the magic is the work that is carried out behind the curtain; the acute attention to detail that is required to openly defy even the most cynical of sceptics.

Johansson’s first foray into the artistic realm was as child with an early passion for drawing. However, a serendipitous gift at the age of fifteen would introduce Johansson to a new and wonderful medium that would change the course of his artistic direction. “On my 15th birthday I got a digital camera and that’s when I started taking photos,” recalls Johansson. “The process was so different to drawing. When you draw something you have to come up with an idea, you have to put it down on paper and there’s a process. When I pressed the trigger on my camera, that process was done already. And I felt that I wanted to do something more with the pictures.”

This passion for pushing the boundaries led Johansson to discover image manipulation and has seen him produce his signature photographic sleights of hand. “I realised that pressing the trigger of the camera didn’t need to be the end of process, but rather it could be the beginning.”

Inspiration

The motivation behind Johansson’s magic is the desire to capture the ideas that come to him from all manner of sources. “It can be anything. I think it’s about being open to new ideas and thinking about things in your daily life in a different way and questioning everything, even logic, to come up with these ideas. I can see something in my daily life that is the beginning of something. It’s usually something simple.” There is an undeniable dreamlike quality to Johansson’s images, which contain a realism that belies the impossibility of the scenarios they depict. This surrealism is a continuing presence throughout Johansson’s work, and functions as a thread that connects all his images, despite the fact they’re all approached as independent personal projects. “Each image tells a story, as if it’s one frame from something more,” Johansson explains.

His dreamy storytelling has been embraced internationally, with his images shared across the net, and his story featured in photographic titles such as PDN. “I’m really grateful that people seem to like my style and work. I have agents but most of the work I get is people seeing my work on blogs or in magazines. They go to my blog and see something and then they come to me ask me if I can work with them. I’m getting more and more busy, and that’s a good thing.” Johansson is far too modest when acknowledging the impact his work has had on his career. In actual fact, the projects have launched Johansson on to an international stage, or, to be more precise, the stage of the 2011 TEDSalon in London and, more recently at the Adobe Max conference in Los Angeles in May 2013 as one of just four creatives chosen to present keynotes to the 5,000 plus in attendance.

Erik Johansson
Fishy island. © Erik Johansson.

How it was done

Though the process behind Johansson’s images varies from shot to shot, it always starts with the idea. “It takes time to come up with an idea. It’s the problem solving part. It’s a balance between an idea that I like and something that I feel confident that I can realise in a realistic way.” Johansson admits that while he’s full of ideas, he might attempt to realise only one out of every twenty, “because sometimes I can’t really put myself in the right perspective or I can’t find the perfect location.”

Once he has identified a manageable idea, the planning begins: which locations would be best suited to the shoot, what props need to be made and so on. While Johansson now invests a lot of time in this stage, his previous modus operandi was more spontaneous. Go your own road, which Johansson shot on a whim while on a road trip with a friend, involved little planning, and though Fishy Island required a little more forethought there was much Johansson left to luck. “I had this idea about seeing the lake from the side, and having an animal there and I wanted its back to be the island,” he says, “but then there was the issue of where I could find the fish.” By chance, Johansson happened to be on a fishing trip to a group of islands off the coast of Africa and, camera in hand, decided to immortalise the unfortunate catch of one of his fishing companions.

Erik Johansson
Behind the scenes of Set Them Free. © Erik Johansson.

“In a way, it was luck that it turned out this way. It could have been a different fish. When I saw it, it was the perfect shape. I could really imagine the island on the back of it.”

Since then, Johansson has made a concerted effort to pre-plan as much as possible, which he believes has had a marked effect on the quality of his work. “You don’t see that much of a difference when you compare my work of a few years ago to now on the website, but when you see them printed you really see a difference. I now spend so much more time working on the detail, to make it look really perfect. If I can capture something in camera, I’d rather build something to try to make that happen, rather than faking it in Photoshop. I think it’s always better.”

This was how Johansson approached Set Them Free. With Set Them Free, it was more about planning and making sure it would turn out exactly as I wanted. I didn’t want to leave anything to luck or chance.”

Of particular importance on this shoot was ensuring the water pouring out of the frame was as realistic as possible. “I could do it in Photoshop but I knew it would take a lot of time so I thought if I built something so that the water was actually coming out of the painting, I wouldn’t have to fake it.” Using materials he found at home, Johansson took the frame and built a small container out of cardboard and plastic bags behind it. “I could actually fill it up with water and shot it with the water pouring out.”

Like Johansson’s shots themselves, the boats were a mix of real and not so real. “Some of the boats in the background, that are further away, are actually model boats that I borrowed from my parents’ window,” he explains. I brought it out, lowered it in a little bit of water and took pictures.” For more realistic boats, Johansson also took photos of boats on the water in Berlin. “I shot the real boats from a bridge because I needed a higher perspective so they would look like model boats.”

While Johansson will often shoot with a team on commissioned work, he most often flies solo or works with a friend on personal projects. There is one friend in particular who’s now famous pins often feature in Johansson’s work, including Go your own road and Set Them Free.

Lighting and gear

Fishy Island was shot using natural light, and Johansson used a similar approach with Set Them Free. “The image was shot just as the sun was setting so I tried to use flash just as a way of making the available light a little bit stronger or to shape objects.”

To simulate the sun in the frame, Johansson taped a small batteryoperated Canon Speedlite to the top of the frame, alongside a radio trigger. He also used another Canon Speedlite with a large umbrella to add some light to the scene overall.

Set Them Free was shot using a Canon 5D Mark II, with a 24-70mm lens. Johansson has since replaced this camera with a Hasselblad, which he jokes will keep him on his toes. “I am really happy but now I have to spend even more time on the detail because it picks up even more!”

Retouching

While Fishy Island was compiled by Johansson in Photoshop CS6, using approximately 10 images and 50 layers, and taking about 10 hours in total, Set Them Free is the product of an impressive 120 to 130 layers, and approximately 20 hours. “It’s quite heavy,” Johansson jokes.

While most would blanch at such a serious undertaking, Johansson nonchalantly insists it’s not too difficult. “If you plan it well and have good materials then it’s basically like putting a puzzle together. You put the pieces together where you imagine they should be, with layer masks and adjustment layers.”

Johansson does admit however, to taking regular breaks from his puzzle, to ensure his body and perspective doesn’t fatigue. “When I put the image together, and spend hours in Photoshop, it’s really hard to see what’s good and not good. That’s the trickiest part,” he says. “When it comes to personal work, I usually don’t have a deadline so I can usually spend a couple hours on it and then leave it for a while to see it with new eyes.”

Erik Johansson
End Of Line. © Erik Johansson.

The future

Though Johansson hopes to one day produce an exhibition or book from his work, he admits he feels he’s not at that point yet. “I really want to do something, but I still want to realise a few more ideas before I feel like I have a body of work that I want to show,” he says. “It’s hard, because you put your standard a bit higher over the years, but hopefully by the end of next year I’ll be ready.”

Johansson is currently working on several projects, including a new behind the scenes video which he hopes to publish soon. Whatever the future holds for Johansson and his work, if his previous portfolio is anything to go by, there’s no doubt that whatever he produces will be nothing short of magic.

Contact

erikjohanssonphoto.com