Last Updated on 12/11/2014 by Chris Gampat
All photos by Logan Zillmer. Used with permission.
To Logan Zillmer photography is more than capturing decisive moments or a good exposure. Instead he takes real life images and turns them into creates scenes he envisions. It has earned him a very coveted spot amongst the lineup of Tumblr’s photographers to watch. Good practical photography is an important underlying element, yes, but Logan says he’s far more excited with playing with reality. It’s a mindset that’s led the Grand Rapids, Michigan photographer develop his own style of photographic illusions fueled with pure creativity and some Photoshopping.
“I think the camera is an interesting tool in the way that you cannot escape the fact that its product is real,” Logan says. “Its a process of recording light and in the digital age has skewed this somewhat, but the cameras master function is still to recreate […] the reality before it.”
“I get to do what I want with that reality and that excites me,” he says. “I like to make things that are inherently real feel unreal.”
Logan openly admits he hasn’t really been into photography in a serious manner until the beginning of 2013. Prior to that the Full Sail University film school graduate fell into several spats with photography during high school and later a short-lived foray into taking senior portraits. For a time Logan says it even made him sick to look at his camera, however, on New Years Day 2013 he resolved to take on the photo 365 challenge.
“I decided to let my creative imagination dictate what my images were going to be,” Logan says. “Rather than some preconceived notion about what was the purest form of photography, it became apparent that conceptual photography was what I needed.”
“My process starts with an idea, the idea becomes a drawing (bad drawing) then it’s like solving a problem or putting together a puzzle,” Logan expounds. He also tries to do as much as he can with practical photography before adjust the RAW files and going into Photoshop to arrange and compile his images.
“Most of the time [my photography] is just a process removing the reality from an actual image,” Logan quips. In its place he likes to replace it with his own to create a wholly different scene.
“All of [my] creative energy started pouring out and in ways that I could [finally] be happy about.” Isn’t that the truth.
You can check out more of Logan’s work on his Tumblr, his new website (launching soon), and Flickr. Be sure to like him one Facebook too.