Profile
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Michael Kai explored and developed an enthusiasm for photography at a young age. Upon completing high school, he worked as a journalist and documentary photographer in former Yugoslavia immediately after the war. He pursued further training in photography, completing his degree in photo design at the University of Applied Sciences Dortmund, Germany, in 2006, and then enrolled at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. Michael Kai has a keen interest in travel. Before moving to Melbourne, he lived and worked in Vienna, where he gained experience in the photographic industry, particularly in the areas of managing, assisting, and professional retouching.

Communication objective
"This Side Up” is a body of work about optical illusions, designed alternatives, and manipulated room perceptions. It is based on the way people interpret two-dimensional into three-dimensional images. Parallel perspective is one way to visualize images three-dimensionally, but objects tend to tip over (inversion) in some circumstances. I researched ways in which to adapt these circumstances through photographs. I inserted people and objects as reference points and encourage viewers to question whether the world Is really the way we see it, the way we believe we see it, or perhaps a construction of our perceived environment.

Tools used
I sorted and labeled my library of photographs in Adobe® Bridge. The Raw plug-in helped me get the most out of the digital raw files. Adobe Photoshop® was my main tool for working on the photographs. To convert a photograph from central perspective into an image with parallel perspective characteristics, I distorted parts of photographs and adjusted color and brightness of other aspects, so they would match backgrounds. I frequently used shadows and layer masks to make this illusion effective. I designed the logo in Adobe Illustrator® and brought all images and text together with Adobe InDesign®.