This is my story on how I recreated one of the most famous pictures of all time
Phillipe Halsman's collaboration of Salvador Dali 'Atomicus'
Such was the challenge that the BBC decided to document our attempts at this shot!
First we started by building the set configuring props and lighting
okay the next thing is to figure out the direction of the light so Ben is going
to go up there and hold a light just as a temporary measure so that we can find
the direction of the light and the position of the light source before we
figure out which modifier we need to use so I need to be absolutely sure of the
direction of the light based on my calculations that's better that's better
that's exactly where it's got to be that's like it is in the picture just
touching the skirting and then Darla is here and when he jumps his shadow joins
onto there
right so things are going really well Ben's trying to figure out how to get
this dolly what's the perception of memory clock floating in the air to
replace one of the cats and we've got the chess spended which is pretty much
in the right position and the set is coming along really nicely Tim's over
there trying to figure out how to suspend the easel so we're trying to use
the original techniques of suspending everything by wires and not using
Photoshop to get as realistic reproduction of this historical picture
as possible but you're never gonna get that accurate no is it no you want this
one stop moving it's this one look I'm tugging on it see how easy that was
so no it wasn't wielding a massive
uncontrollable 12-foot beam around that one's in the way jobs are Gooden Wow no
no go and do a test jump bending you cough right let me lock the shutter up
are you ready go capturing the water correctly was a key part of the shot
so we tested it again again again again again again again again again and again
you don't need to be a magician to master the art of Illusion as the one
shows artists in residence Audubon she has been finding out
as an artist I wouldn't normally be throwing water at a flying toaster while
a chair hangs in the air but today I'm doing something pretty surreal and I'm
doing it in tribute to the master of surrealist art Salvador Dali born in
Spain in 1904 Dali defined surrealism bizarre and imaginative
interpretations of everyday subjects this painting the persistence of memory
is thought to be a meditation on time but it's another of Dolly's works that
deals with time that I'm hoping to help recreate today this 1948 piece Dali
atomic Oz featured Dali himself frozen in time surrounded by flying cats and
floating easels it was a collaboration with photographer Philip Houseman that
image was captured long before photo editing software had even been dreamt of
so how hard is it going to be to recreate the exact same shot using the
exact same basic techniques guarantee base photographer Carl Taylor is going
to give it a go Carl why did you want to recreate this picture well Ari this
photo has really inspired me and inspired my work and my career in many
ways what really interests me about it is the amount of activity and motion
that's frozen in time how did they get this original shot they had to suspend
everything on wires to make it look like it was floating in the air but because
they're throwing water and cats into the picture yeah it took many many attempts
what was the most difficult thing to achieve everything happening at exactly
the same time and you can see in these shots here where they failed many of
them I think about 28 attempts to Dali was happy with the final result
to recreate the photo exactly Carl has spent weeks building a replica of the
set today it's standing ready with its floating props hang him in the exact
positions the difficult part was matching the lighting though what I use
is a technique which is ray tracing where you find out where the
shadow point of an object is and then trace the line to the object we can
determine approximately where the light source was the part of dolly will be
played by local actor dave hyatt but there's one thing we won't be recreating
so obviously we can't use cats so what have you used to replace them well I've
got a toaster because I liked the energy of things popping out of the toaster was
kind of similar to the energy of the cats right and then here I've used the
melting clock which is from another of Dolly's famous painting here persistence
of memory with everything in place we are set my role is to throw the water
into shot just before Dave jumps and it all has to be captured in the
millisecond it happens by car and that ain't go
- hi - hi okay so we go again blah blah blah blah blah he's super happy for
pollen are they were born atomic gator I went too early so damn close
so what's the news car the news is good adding on our 29th attempt we captured
that and it is so close to the original an Italian Houseman got their shot on
the 28th tape asked to just one more not a bad result for this collaboration of
artist and photographer watch part two for a full detailed explanation on the
science the theory and the lighting behind the recreation of Darlie atomic
Asst