Hyper Photos

Read the article and go see the pics HERE They are AMAZING!


"On Time,” Jean-François Rauzier's gargantuan 32-by-66-foot panorama composed of several hundred seamless images of clocks, cliffs, buildings and ocean, is emblematic of the hours upon hours Rauzier spends to capture, compose and edit each of his Hyper-photo dreamscapes. In the photo, a man in black stands alone amidst a beach comprised entirely of clocks, thousands and thousands of clocks.

The surrealist aesthetic of the image is interesting in itself. But the truly amazing quality of the photograph lies in the hyper-realistic detail of it. The faces of the clocks, and there seems to be miles of them, can each be read as if directly in front of you. It's like staring into a finely detailed world that can never blur.

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Collage

“I agree that it may sound crazy,” Rauzier explains when asked why he spends the inordinate time it takes to manufacture only a single Hyper-photo image, “but I've been a photographer, painter and sculptor for 30 years, exploring these different techniques of expression up until 2001. At that time, I began my Hyper-photo work and I haven't needed to do anything else. I'm entirely satisfied. As a photographer, I can use this powerful art medium to capture reality. As a painter, I can control my image exactly and put what I want where I want. And as a sculptor, I savor spending a long time on my work, as a meditation, to have the pleasure to approach, touch and feel the texture, then back away to see the entire work. Hyper-photo is a combination of all of these.”

Each image that Rauzier assembles is a collage of between 600 to 1,000 individual close-up images, each taken one by one, using a telephoto lens over a period of one to two hours. Once the entire scene is captured, Rauzier stitches them together using Photoshop, working obsessively until the naked eye can't discern where each piece of the image begins or ends.
The composited images are of enormous proportions, wall-sized photos that you can almost walk into, literally, in the case of a recent exhibit at the Los Angeles Pacific Design Center, where three separate fabric prints of a Rauzier image were printed in a succession of enlargements, mimicking the feel of walking into the symmetrical world of the image. Each curtain was a doorway, opening to finer details that weren't easily noticeable upon first inspection—antiquated pictures submerged in the water of a lake, a picnicking couple along a river bank, even down to the texture of tree limbs and single blades of grass. The human eye isn't remotely able to capture the precise details of each Hyper-photo.

“No lens can give the perfect sharpness in one photo,” Rauzier says, “from as close as 12 inches up to infinity, that I can achieve by assembling 500 photos. It's interesting to know that the details exist, hidden in the picture, as in reality. And during an exhibition, I exhibit cropped and enlarged details. People go alternatively to the picture—and the details.”

Rauzier wants the viewer to have to decide whether the image is a photograph or a painting, or both, in some cases, as in the “Ideal Library of the Senate,” where some of the library patrons are photographed as paintings of prominent literary figures. Thematically, his ideas and images form puzzles themselves.

“I'm really dreaming awake—sometimes sleeping in front of my computer, oui, oui! I go to bed and awake always thinking about the image I'm making, as in a wonderful dream. During the long period of time it takes me to work on my image, my imagination is working, especially when I'm sleeping in front of the computer, and a story is coming step by step.

“Objects and people are telling it,” he continues. “Some objects are recurrent—snakes, apples, cats, roses, mystic or sexual symbols—things we have in our unconscious minds. Always existential questions: Why are we here? What must we do? Are we responsible for the good and the bad? My recurrent themes are the original sin, the innocence of a child that's lost very quickly and we don't remember exactly when and how.”

Puzzle Pieces

“First I need large landscapes, fields and deserts, other escapes,” Rauzier explains. “Most of the time, a landscape inspires me. I have an emotion, but I can't really see how the final image will be. It's very important to know that because it was difficult for me at first. It's exactly the opposite of photography. As a classic photographer, I look in my viewfinder and shoot and I have my picture. In the case of the Hyper-photo, in the viewfinder, I just see details. I tried every wide-angle viewfinder as a movie director would, but it's impossible to have 360-degree vision; 180-degree viewfinders exist, but there's so much distortion that we can't imagine the result. So when I shoot, I have some ideas, but I don't know how it will be in the end. It's always an adventure, a discovery of a parallel world.”

Adds Rauzier, “Now, I also explore towns, industry, urban places—any great locations with a lot of details and material to work with. For some pictures, such as the “Ideal Library of the Senate,” “Latest News,” the very surrealistic images, I have a very precise idea before taking pictures and have to find the location closest to my idea to create it. Some, like “NY Reservoir,” are by chance. I was invited to a party and had a shock seeing the view from the flat. I just had to come back, shoot and respect the reality, enhancing some things, but changing very little.”

Rauzier's minute changes can be significant, though. “To create my ideal world,” he says, “I remove whatever signifies human presence in order to give the landscape its original virginity, perhaps a quest for the Garden of Eden. In a landscape, I'll try to re-create the original nature—timeless fields, even though planted by man, without ugly electric cables, houses, roads, cars—anything that was added recently, except for the objects I add to tell a story, to say something. Often abandoned objects, unexpected things.”

At the same time that he's removing things, Rauzier will place any number of photographically found objects, whatever he feels he needs to complete an image. Basketballs sit motionless in a still desert, dogs float on high-backed chairs along a shoreline, abandoned bicycles are strewn about an otherwise abandoned road. Many of these he will shoot in the studio, using a medium-format camera to avoid having to join together more images than already necessary.
Stitching

“In order to achieve panoramic images, I first tried panoramic cameras and wide-angle lenses,” Rauzier explains, “but was frustrated by not being able to control the distortion and ending up with a very typical panoramic and wide-angle effects. I began to shoot four to 10 pictures and stitch them together. After I mastered the process, it became a constant buildup until it was thousands of pictures.”

Of his equipment, Rauzier says, “I've used several cameras, mainly Fuji and Nikon. For studio work, I usually use the latest digital Hasselblad. Not using the same equipment all the time keeps me up with the latest technological advances that go along with the Hyper-photo's constant need for more precision and growth. I'm always looking for the best equipment and am not tied to anything in particular.”

Rauzier will use his Hasselblad in the field when he can, but prefers to carry his SLR cameras when he travels, as they're lighter and less expensive. When shooting with the high resolution of a medium-format camera, Rauzier makes fewer exposures in the field, but due to the extremely detailed and time-intensive nature of his work, there's still a never-ending struggle with the limitations of technology—restricted depth of field, blur due to the wind, flaring, etc.

“I shoot very systematically, shot by shot, with a graduated tripod,” says Rauzier. “I know that I've got the entire scene when I've shot all I can see! I try to not forget any details, even without interest, because when I skipped over some areas that apparently held no interest, I had holes in the image that were very hard to fill. It's better to capture everything, more than I need. I carry many memory cards and fill them quickly. The files are more than 30 to 40 gigabytes for a flattened image. I have no desire to be reasonable and reduce the size. I can't. It's a mutilation.”

Continues Rauzier, “I use Apple computers and Apple displays. I tried many programs, but now I use only Photoshop. It has many shortcomings for me, 3 GB of RAM maximum, but it's the only one that can manage the 30 to 40 GB files I'm making now. I need a 1 terabyte scratch disk and will soon use a RAID server. It works very slowly on the hard drive, but it works.”

Even though the time spent taking the image is less than the time spent putting it together comparatively, there can be a tremendous color shift between the first press of the shutter and the final shot of the image, especially at sunrise or sunset. In order to match images so flawlessly, Rauzier has to adjust each of them, often even single aspects within each image, with levels, color balance and hue/saturation.

Says Rauzier, “Practice, practice, practice is the only way I've been able to get good at it.”

Realization

“I can say I now take pictures everywhere I go,” Rauzier says. “When I was in L.A., I planned to take the big city, cars, freeways; instead I shot trees, cactus and flowers! I had an idea of L.A., but I discovered something else, very exotic and rich for my creativity. So I can't plan too much ahead of time. I know it when I see it. I shoot all that's interesting and have a huge library of images. Some pictures I took a few years ago and never put together, but I know they're on my hard drives as well as in my mind.

“For example, for “On Time,” I shot the beach of Étretat one year ago. I knew I'd do something with it. This beach, the atmosphere, and the shock I had in seeing how the stones had disappeared was so moving for me that I couldn't work on it before I had a great idea. When a man showed me his collection of alarm clocks, I had suddenly the idea for that image.”

Even after completing an image, for Rauzier, there's no time to rest: “When I finish an image, I'm very frustrated and depressed and need to start another one immediately. I'll soon show this work more often on screens as slideshows or movies of the Hyper-photos. It's the only way to see all the details and it's a fascinating trip. And eventually technology may catch up.”


To see more of Jean-François Rauzier's work, visit www.hyper-photo.com