On my photography trip in Prague, I went off the beaten path of fellow photographers to capture my own obsession, the swans. That resulted in a total capture of 2,090 pictures of swans from over the bridge, under the bridge, up close and personal at feeding spots on the riverbanks where residents and tourists attracted the birds by the thousands. One afternoon after a long and interesting session of shooting with the group, I strayed off and happened upon this little idyllic scene of my favourite subject at rest.

This picture is neither landscape nor animal nor floral, but a category of its own I call dream. I have a need, a kind of itch, to make it dreamier with extra photoshop massaging till it turns soft as if melting, as they do in dreams, and as they do in Salvador Dali’s paintings where clocks and things melt... However, Monet and Van Gogh the Romantics inspire me when I am transforming the photographs into painting, while Dali triggers my imagination when I am creating fiction.

Albeit not every photograph can or should be made into a painterly picture. It all depends on the subject captured, the purpose or spontaneity of capturing it, and on the perspectives of its viewers or admirers. Certain pictures that are perfectly fine as they are should be kept away from my playful digital painterly brushes and filters. I can show examples of such photographs in my next post.

Stay tuned.