Homage to Little Shop of Horror

John Manna Photography / September 2018

IMAGINATION-ART BLOG POST #3

As temperatures cool and memories of summer start to fade, my thoughts shifted to fall activities that I enjoy in my state of New Jersey.  Harvest festivals, pumpkin picking, hot apple cider, Halloween and my favorite horror movies.

Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unlikely places. My wife was gifted a large leaf house plant for her birthday, and for some reason I immediately thought of the carnivorous human eating plant from Little Shop of Horror, Audrey II.

If you are interested in using your camera for more than snapshots and selfies, composites can be a lot of fun, and are only limited by your imagination.

I began this project by photographing items readily available in my household.  I try to resist using stock photographs, so I created this homage to Little Shop of Horror fan art utilizing eight images I photographed separately.

I started with photographing a cantaloupe melon that was on hand, and than covering the mellon with photographs of houseplant leaves utilizing Photoshop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Shop of Horror fan art
The next step was to use Photoshop to cut out the plant leaves from the background, add thorns to the leaves and position as arms.

 

I used different plant leaves to give the appearance of hair on Audrey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needing a ferocious mouth, I resorted to enhancing my own dentistry, tugging, pushing and reshaping utilizing Photoshop’s puppet warp feature.

 

 

In the movie, Audrey II was planted in a coffee can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I felt that the image needed grounding so I added a plant stand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final results with plant stand.

About the Author

John Manna is a New York / New Jersey Metro Area based digital artist photographer who looks for inspiration in turning everyday images into whimsical works of art to be enjoy for generations to come.

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