The Road To Elysium by Wayne J. Cosshall

Welcome to Wayne J. Cosshall - A friend and Visionary Photographer

"I’ve been around photography a very long time (35 years) and digital imaging all my adult life. I received my first camera at 14 to put on the telescopes I loved. From there my photography gradually came down to earth and I started shooting many other subjects. I started working in the darkroom at 16. I also painted. At university I did a computer science undergraduate degree and got into computer graphics in 1978. From then on I had two strong imaging passions: photography and the digital image, along with my other big passion, teaching." Click here to learn more about Wayne, his passion for photography and his art.

“Road to Elysium”, copyright Wayne J. Cosshall
Mainly shot with a Canon 400D and assembled in Adobe Photoshop

I am, among other things, a fine art photographer. Because I philosophically see all of photography as a great manipulation, from the choice of framing, depth of field and color range I want to the most complex of darkroom or computer manipulations, I tend to not hold the image as sacrosanct. So there are times I will happily work with the single image and indeed purely in camera work, and yet at other I will create a work from multiple images. It is one of these I wish to discuss here.

The idea for “Road to Elysium” came over a period of time. At one time I would have said the idea came while watching the movie Gladiator, and specifically the scene at the end of the movie where the main character is walking through the wheat fields. But with reflection this was merely the final trigger. I had been exploring Greco-Roman religious beliefs for some time and also considering spiritual path choices as part of a book I was writing. The movie merely brought all this together by proving the link that tied it all together.

So now I had the integrated idea. I developed this into a full description of the piece. I won’t bore you with the whole thing, but the core elements are a piece that shows, when it comes to spiritual choice, that there is usually more than one path to the destination. Additional elements drew from concepts such as the left and right-handed path spoken of in the Western esoteric tradition, the symbolism tied up with wheat, the sacredness of the tree in systems from Norse legend to the Jewish Kabbalah, and ideas of the underworld, to name but some.

From this came a shot list, which is something I work with often. This was a list of the elements I needed images of. I needed:

• Shots of wheat at various scales and lighting
• At least two high walls with doors in them
• One door must be closed, the other open or see through in some way
• A tree that either sat on a wall or could be worked onto one
• Various sky images
• A trap door, stairs downwards or such
• Various small plants
• Gravel at different scales
• A bench of some sort

Some elements I could provide from my library of images but the bulk I decided to shoot fresh. So I then started scouting locations and whenever I was out shooting for some other task I kept in mind what I needed. The wheat proved the most time consuming, because it was not the right season. So it took me close on six months to collect what I needed for this piece.

Once I felt I had enough of the pieces I started putting them together in Photoshop. I created a blank image and carefully placed guides following the mathematical principle of the Golden Section (very appropriate given the subject matter). I then opened all the chosen images and started dragging them into separate layers. Much work was done with layer masks and some distortion. For example the tree the wall sits on was straight. I created the bends in Photoshop. Lighting was created, as I had been careful to shoot as much as possible is flat light so I could introduce the lighting I wanted.

The resulting image ended up very close to what I had previsualized. A few elements had evolved in their own direction, such as the look of the tree, but the bulk was as I had seen it. With an image created like this it can be hard to know when to stop. In this case because I had my image description, I could and did compare the image with the description and chose to stop when I had covered all the elements to my satisfaction.

This image formed the first and namesake of a series of work that I have not yet finished. It has evolved into a strange mix of semi-autobiographical narrative and semi-exposition on the spiritual life. I am still happy with this image and would not do further work on it, at least not now. It feels complete. This style of working represents one of the ways I work. But only one. They are all valid.

Website: www.dimagemaker.com