FMP

Initial Idea

For my final major project I have decided that I want to take images and create a final show on how technology has/is taken/taking over our lives, how we crave new technology and live off all thing technological and advanced, I don't want my project to be misinterpreted as 'Materialism' I would like my project to have a clear distinction between how technology has taken over our current everyday life. This project is a way for my to capture the essence of all of my thoughts on technology and our societies craving for the new and improved product, and because I have had these burning thoughts for years, this photography assignment is a perfect way of me to put across all my ideas to other people, who may not think the same way. Ever since I came up with this idea I have been sprouting out ideas every minute, from the bizarre entirely photoshopped madness to, some with a much more real feel to it. This overall theme could be the perfect project for me to show of my skills at image manipulation but also my creativity in coming up with all of the ideas and plans, The good thing about doing this FMP is that it is all down to me and I have complete creative control. I am thinking of taking around 7-10 final images all to be printed and hung up in my exhibition space, I do not have a definite idea of what I want my set to be like or how I want my images displayed, however I was thinking of maybe using really old technology such as analogue televisions and like cassette players to create a small digital robot, if possible just stood up in the centre of my layout, also I was thinking that maybe my walls or wall on which my images are displayed would be a kind of bright silver or chrome if I am able to. As you can see, I have many ideas for things topic of FMP and I am more than keen to get started.

Research

There are many photographers who do the kind of thing that I am interested in and also doing my project on. Even though I have know tons of photographers who specialise in image manipulation and photo retouching I have decided to incorporate all kinds of different media such as, images, films, tv shows videos, and even music. Each of these methods of research are really vital areas of resource, I am going to start by studying photographers and imaging. My favourite photographer is an amizing photo-manipulator called Aaron Nace. Aaron Nace’s work is incredible and is really somthing that I aim to achieve. His work makes the viewer think, which is what I am dying to create, if I can make other people doubt their perception on reality then I am ecstatic. Aaron host a daily tutorial show, in which I find myself glued to the computer screen when I see these tutorials because he is really helping every photography who is starting. Here are two of my favourite pieces of Aarons work: 

This image a stunning example of his manipulative style and abilities, every aspect of this photograph is on point from the concept to the edit to the wardrobe, every. The idea is a cheating man being caught however it has still kept the glamourous feel to it with facial expressions on the woman on the bed character. I can normally tell that a photo has been taken by Aaron because his lighting side of things is always to the extreme and perfectly chosen, I chose to share this image because I feel on this he has perfectly nailed the lighting. The colour scheme also adds to the overall feel to this image, with the nice warm inviting light, to the bare, basic, overcast lighting of the man out side. I never look at an image of Aaron's and find imperfections, each photo blows my mind which is something I would really love to create for my viewers, lot's of my style has been influenced by him.

This is another one of Aaron's brilliant manipulation with the model hanging by her extended hair, and it seem with every image I view of his, I find myself asking, 'how did he do that?' which is what I also want people to think, there are billions of photos you can view without feeling a thing however if my images could make people feeling anything but "This is nice" then I have reached my goal. This image creates a brilliant mood and if yet again lit wonderfully, I am obsessed with his lighting, from the window to the model, and even all the shadows.

The second photographer I would say inspires me is Erik Johansson whom is a professional photographer based in Sweden, he does some unbelievable commercial photo retouching. Erik’s work is the kind of photography that you take a second glance at. He has really inspired me over the duration of my photography career. Erik's work is mainly huge conceptual images and also he plays around with reality, like he creates infinite loop images. whereas Aaron Nace mainly used models and lighting, I wouldn't say Erik's work is better than Aarons however it is very well thought out, so here are two images of his work: 

Many people would not see this as photography however I see this as one of the best photos I have ever seen, it reminds me of the classic MC Escher image of a man hold a mirrored ball with a portrait inside it, however this is the reverse of that image, a photographer taking a self portrait in the woods which is a perfect location to create this image because not only do the arms get disorientated, also the trees all curve inwards which is what would happen which viewed in a mirror ball. The main thing I enjoyed about this image has defiantly got to be the fact that it makes you question your own mind, also the overcast lighting was a perfect idea so that you don't have to mess around with disorientating clouds/weather. 

Erik has been inspired by MC Escher by more than one of his images, this picture also has a hint of Escher's work, with the reality switch, I would describe Erik has the Digital Escher. These photo's are pushing the boundaries of surrealism, and I love them. This shot of the escalator to walk way and vice versa is fantastic, and it yet again makes me doubt my own mind, to the point where I don't know what I am actually seeing. I love the overall green/cyan colour tone, also with some nice blue sky in the horizon.

Evan Sharboneau would be my third choice, Evan is someone who takes images in the a similar style to the two previous photographers, but he is more of an experimental photographer because his photography varies from high-speed, to photo manipulation. Evan is another photographer I find influential mainly because his style is so unique and interesting.  Evan's channel on YouTube helps the viewer to understand and also learn new experimental and trick photography steps. Evan has also wrote an EBook on trick photography which is something which I would defiantly love to do. His photography is a prime example of what I would love to incorporate into my final images, which his editing style which I find very unique. Here are two images of his work: 

This has been one of my favourite pictures for ages, the timing of this photo is absolutely perfect, I haven't seen an image that has literally made me say "wow" out loud. This photo can turn any viewer into a fan of his photography because you must respect the timing, lighting and concept. With this photo he must of had 1-3 attempts at it because he has dropped a soloution of strawberry milkshake in a glass of milk and as you can see the entire glass hasn't been changed pink. Also I am glad that one of his earlier attempts failed so that there is some pink liquid on the bottom of the glass however the glass is still bone dry. Evan would have found this image difficult to time as it is however when he had to put his face behind the glass and then take the image throws a whole other dynamic in the works. He has also done a good job with lighting to not get any glare from the flash off the light.

This is a brilliant example of Evan's photo manipulation and his levitation photography, but the most interesting thing about this image is defiantly the lighting and also the location, middle of the road in the dead of night with a kind of flood light effect on it, I really think that he has nailed the edit on the fake shadows underneath him which has came out perfect. The dim colour tone in this image is very desaturated yet cold. Also the very feint air of breathe is also another feature that draws your eye to the image.

I'm not too sure where it would fit in however after doing extensive research I really have enjoyed viewing some levitation photography, I just find it really incredible if done right, and it doesn't particularly mean the model has to be levitating it could mean that they were holding an unusually large/heavy item which seems effortlessly, however some images where the model is floating or flying if you will look absolutely stunning. Here are a few examples: 

Here is an excellent example of the kind of thing that I would love to produce, something with such a perfect concept, brilliant editing, clearly, and amazing lighting, everything about this image in my eyes is perfect, I see this image to be a kind of brother and sister argument kind of shoot, if not then that is something which I would defiantly incorporate, however I do love the image the only critique I would give is, if the female model had a reason to be clearly throwing/smashing the male to the ground, such as if he had stolen something that belonged to the female.

This image really stood out when researching levitation photography because the use of colour gels and tone mapping. This photographer has been braving in crossing the warm colour tone entering from the left to cross with the harsh, cold blue lighting being projected onto the models face from the fridge on the right. Also I love the concept here which I am guessing was a midnight snack from leaving the nice warm room to enter the cold fridge at night for something to eat but the fact that he is in his robe says it all and also holding the teddy bear in his hand is another brilliant touch, the last fact I will point out that using this robe as a part of the costume is brilliant for levitation with the robe's belt hanging down.

This image, I found on flickr, and it immediately stands out to me because I have seen tons of levitation photography,however non really camera related, as such. Just the fact that someone came up with an idea of taking a picture/macro of a flower, whilst levitating is amazing. I think the thing that makes this image different to other levitation photography is the square crop in this, also the overall yellow highlights and green shadows. This picture also really gives off the 'amateur photographer' vibe, with this obvious back garden set, with the shed in the background, but also the out of focus flowers in the foreground, I really enjoy that there aren't too many nice flowers so it does give off the kind of home grown garden. This photographer uses a table to rest on, and two ladders to rest his feet on, and then also took the background image to use as a layer so he could edit out the ladders and table.

Whilst researching levitation photography, I stumbled upon this  photographer from Tokyo, and she takes constant self portrait levitation, she says this in her 'about me' section: "I use a Canon EOS 5D Mk2, the 5D Mk2 has a 10sec. timer as it's longest timer set up. This means that I can get away as far as 10 second distance from the camera after I press the shutter release button.  First, I get a composition and a focus manually.  Then I press the shutter release, run to the right position for a levitation as checking the camera's blinking red LED counts down 10 seconds and jump by my intuition. In this manner, I need to jump over and over to get the right shot. Ask someone to press the shutter release button When I take my levitation farther away from the camera than 10 second distance, I ask someone (mostly my friend) to press the shutter release button. First, I ask my friend to be a stand-in in a proper position to get a composition and a focus. Then I go to the position to levitate, and my friend come to the camera (we switch our position) to press a shutter release button in time with my jumps.EOS 5D Mk2 has a 10sec. timer as it's longest timer set up. This means that I can get away as far as 10 second distance from the camera after I press the shutter release button. First, I get a composition and a focus manually. Then I press the shutter release, run to the right position for a levitation as checking the camera's blinking red LED counts down 10 seconds and jump by my intuition. In this manner, I need to jump over and over to get the right shot. Ask someone to press the shutter release button, When I take my levitation farther away from the camera than 10 second distance, I ask someone (mostly my friend) to press the shutter release button. First, I ask my friend to be a stand-in in a proper position to get a composition and a focus. Then I go to the position to levitate, and my friend come to the camera (we switch our position) to press a shutter release button in time with my jumps." She calls her website yowayowacamera, and I have recently found out that yowayowa is a Japanese term meaning "weak" or "feeble."
She also says "Since I'm yowayowa, it's really heavy to carry SLR cameras around." 

This is one of her self portraits taken at a train station, and this must of been an extremely difficult image to take, because the train waits there for around 60 seconds before moving to the next stop, and with a 10 second self timer to wait for, she would of got around 3 attempts at the most to get this image perfect. It is such a brilliant concept, for someone getting off a train, and the jump has been so perfectly posed, that the woman's legs have kind of looked like they don't exist because she has tucked them in so much, they go into her skirt.  

Here is a video of one of my favourite, philosopher/comedian who is talking about materialism, which was one of the topics which I wanted to put across in my project. An issue Joe talks about is how "we look at the internet and modern technology as if it is innocent, and benign, but I don't think so, I have a theory about technology that it is like a symbiotic life-form, that we need it, like it needs us, and it dies off like old computers die off... ...Old computers, those things are dead now, just like Neanderthals, it's almost like we have a narrowly defined viewpoint of what life is, and it's almost like technology is a life-form, and it's a life-form which exists in a non-biological way connected through information; through the internet, and that we need it to stay alive and it needs us to stay alive. Do you ever think on how dependant you are on technology?" I find this short speech on technology is just perfect, on how I try to describe to other people how modern technology is becoming a main factor of our existence, we are completely dependant on it, and it is becoming a new way to live. This is why I feel that the next stage in human evolution, we will become more adapted to the things we hold onto, like our backs will become hunched over and our fingers very long for typing, it is all fitting into place, and  these are just my thoughts on evolution, the internet, technology as an organism. 

Images Plan

These are just possibilities that I would like to jot down just incase I decided to go ahead with any. Image 1: I am thinking of having a photo of a father and son holding hands walking away from the camera, with the kid pointing to a electronics store and shot from a low camera angle, however each of the father and son's heads shall be replaced with current high brand products. The second would be an image of a man with around 20 different wires and cables wrapped around themselves with 3-4 inserted into their face/body preferably all the wires would be either white, grey or black. Also the overall image would have a cool sort of grey tone to it this image would be shot portrait and with a beauty dish, a large soft box and maybe backlit. This image would also have empty plug sockets scattered all around the face and body. Another little thought I had was to change the original 'I want you - Uncle Sam' poster and have the image of the guy pointing and howing a new piece of technology and the slogan would read 'I Want You! To Buy This Product' which is a really hard hitting fact at big global companies pressuring us into having the latest technology. I just feel that the worlds obsession with technology is getting extremely out of control, and this project is not to 'have a go' at people but just to open their eyes to how their world works, because it is easy to barrel through life emotionless and numb, and I just  find that this type of photographic media will help other understand and change for the better. This next idea came to me very naturally however I think it would be a huge job and composite image, however I was thinking of having a shot of around 5-7 people (kids to adults) in a library all looking and selecting books, however all the books have been replaced by the popular Apple product, 'Mac Books' I just feel that this image is showing how advanced our society is progressing and that we are evolving, more and more and just showing how dated our old methods of research have became, also in this image I would have the kids sections all filled with Mac Book Air's to show the youth's side of things, and also people on Kindle's reading E-books. I really feel that this idea would be an absolute dream to produce and would hopefully come out looking brilliant. As an overall colour tone I want everything having a sort of silver to chrome aspect which I feel sums up the future, with everything looking brilliant. Another thought I had, is of a 40 year old male, and a 14-16 year old young boy fishing in a lake, however the fish would be replaced with portable hard drives leaping from the sea/river, and also on the fishing rob, the string would be a USB cable connected to a USB stick, to show the real change in the future, with most animals and creatures dying out and showing the technologies, start to advanced thinking. I have recently been having thoughts about using the same person model for 4-5 photos just so I can have some consistency in my overall project. One of the images I have planned is a photo of the model - Liam, stood near the wall in the high street,  looking at random people in the street, however his head will be replaced with a cctv camera to show that the council/police are always watching you, and I may also edit in some subtle radio waves in the air. The next would be a shot of Liam sat at a public bench with some kind of remote imprinted into his skin with an opaque screen of internet in front of him. 

Development/Practice Images


For my first image to practice I decided on the image of a young model being 'wrapped up in technology' so for this image I just decided to do a quick mock-up of this, using myself as the model! and with only two wired cables. In my final shoot for this image I expect to have lots of various wires in all shape dynamics and colours, and actually be completely wrapped and tangled in all these usb cables, ethernet wires and all kinds. So this is just to show you what I have done so far in just a very quick practice shoot, with a plain white wall and one flashgun, here are some of the un-edited images that I quickly took just to have a go with editing in plug sockets.

This is the image prior to any sort of editing and clearly under-exposed. With just two wires and plugs around my neck, however this will have a lot more editing to it, because most of my project is all post processing and I am just trying to get as many props and as much of the final image created in the shoot before moving to photoshop. This one came out far too saturated, and yet still dull. However on this image I held the wires too far away from my face and where I was going to put the sockets.

In this image I had a go with putting one of the wires close too my face and then rotating away from the camera so then I could just put it in as took, without adding any post-production and also the left plug was placed too far up. so this had to be taken again also.

This one was the best for the actual pose however this was also the only one where the background got ruined by the pink triangle. This just needed a levels fix, a contrast tweak and also just easily mask over the pink corner. the background, lighting and pose are all off here however this was one of the only useable images, however when I do my final image, I will have a main light high and right on the model with a low fill light on the left, also he will literally be wrapped up in technology. 

This image was a necessity for the overall image so then I had something to work on, when trying to find a source to input the plug. I was on the border of putting in the on/off switch but I don't think that it will look 3 dimensional and work properly, but this was just a foundation of the input.

Here was the final image of the early development:

As you can see I used the last of the three images and just played around with the levels and took out the pink corner which wouldn't be a problem in the final shoot. And then obviously added the input into my skin, the way this was done was by using the last image(up) and then used the transform tool and messed around with the proportions. Then just used a couple of lightening brushes in two different colour, on in blue then blurred it a little then just a clean white one, and then repeated on another input, however the vignette was natural.


My next photo I tried out was the image of the U.S Army poster, for this all I needed to take was an image with an infinite white background. Clearly this is the practice image, in the final photoshoot, I will have a dodgy looking male, with a weird smile at the camera.

Getting the background to this faded yellow colour was my first task, however with a simple hue/saturation adjustment layer, or by changing the highlights on the curves adjustment layer, to this murky yellow.

This is how I found my curves layer worked out, which I felt went really well.

The next step in this image is for me to get the picture more like a painting, and this was an actual painting so I had a little difficulty of editing.

This was my attempt of trying to make someone into a painting, I think it went quite well, this was done using various filter effects, I think however it turned out a tiny bit blurry and vague, I do like that aspect. 

Here is just a print screen of the original text on the U.S. Army poster, so this was my starting point for how I wanted my text to pan out. 

Here was my practice attempt at my 'I WANT YOU' image, and I think it went rather well apart from the red on the original poster is a tiny bit darker than what I selected for mine, and also the outlines seem different.

Here are the two side by side:

The next image was going to be a few people talking to each other but instead of a normal photo the people have text/speech bubbles above their heads to show that you can just have a normal conversation without some form of technology being brought into it.

I had to just take a normal photo of two people arguing and then find a iphone text bubble on google and simply mask it in, however in the final image there is going to lots of different people all having various conversations but with the bubbles being as out of focus as they are in the fore/background.

Here is the original image I found that I could work off, I didn't use the entire conversation because I just wanted something simple just for development. 

Here is the original image for the image that is going to be taken of a male model called Liam, and this is just the early development image and there is going to be an opaque screen in-front of her displaying 'Facebook' which I think  will show off everyones obsession to the internet an also how I think the future of technology will pan out This image was inspired by a programme on Channel4 called: Black Mirror.

I screen captured this off facebook and I plan to layer it into my image.

This image took a lot of lighting layers to blend some glare off the fake-screen onto the subject's face, with hints of blues and whites.

I also included this tiny cursor I also screen captured, of just a simple cursor and added another layer of blue onto where the original selection would be. which works perfect, also with the screen shot of Facebook, and the cursor I had to think about the reflections and which way the screen would be to the model, which is in reverse, so it made me think.


Here is the final outcome of early development. 

When you click on the full screen you will be able to see the subtle details that I have created in photoshop.

Thoughts On Project

My idea came from my inner thoughts I just get myself into these weird frames of mind and I think about the world and how it works, and the fact that technology has become something that we basically live off, and we crave new and more advanced technology is quite sickening, with the way that a  social networking site such as 'Facebook' has become something that is a instant reaction when you are on the internet. Think about it other than 'Facebook' there is nothing else that you would find yourself checking daily and compulsively unless your career was based around something else. Seeing children from an unusually early age becoming so used to technology and internet capabilities and mobile access is good and also bad, good in the sense that children have access to so much more information but also bad in the way that the internet is a very dangerous place is used inappropriately but also I find it is horrid how children are becoming more digitalized than going out and exercising but more than that, having fun. I rarely ever walk down the street and see children riding bikes or playing football, most are too busy wrapped up in their games consoles or just general internet. It would be dumb saying that technology is a bad thing because it helps us in so many aspects however I think that nowadays people are just too materialistic and they never take a step back and actually see what they are doing. I think in years to come that humans will evolve into skinnier people with really long fingers and arched backs because our lives so far are like 30% overruled with a computer/technology. I really want these thoughts and feelings to be expressed throughout my final project, because I see photography as another form of communication, if a deaf person couldn't hear how I feel about modern day overusing of technology I would love them to see it and grasp it in their own perception. The feelings I have as the world as a collective entity overusing technology and basically living of the newest form of technology are some that I have never aired before or discussed with anyone else so I would like to use this wonderful opportunity of my final project to show people and educate people on the matter, I also see the irony of this by ranting about how technology is taking over our lives and major companies being big brain washing industries, and yet still using a high-tech camera to report my images on.

Brief


Unit Title
Final Major Project


The aim of this unit is to capture a creative set of images for the desired theme, which is, the importance of technology and it's evolution into a necessity instead of a luxury. Show your creative and technical skills as you take around 6-10 photos. These photos are to be held in an exhibition where you must produce a layout and set design for your images to be showcased. You must show off how you have edited these images and also how the lighting helped create a mood to the overall image. This show is to take place on the 14th of June 2012. Your set layout must have the same recurring theme as the images. You must also provide any personal project work/portfolio to accompany your piece. You will have to mainly work alone on your project but also share ideas with others, In your research you may show different styles, such as videos, images, even music, whatever you think portrays the research aspect of your project. Look at any other photographers that have held similar exhibitions and give examples, along with any photographers who have had a similar idea and been a big influence.




Set Layout:
A thought I had was, to find any source of modern or old technology, smashed and hung up all over my boards which I think would increase the message that this piece is trying to show. If I could do it I would prefer to have all of the tech I have collected and burn/melt it into my wall space, to give a very cool looking set. However I have been thinking about my set, for quite a dew weeks now and I think that I would love to have my set, painted entirely white, and I mean everything white like a full coffee table painted white a wine bottle, a wine glass, a pen, plain white paper, a picture frame, an apple, a chair, everything. and then this would give off the impression of new, and fresh, like a clean slate because subconsciously that is the vibe that white paint gives off, a brand new feeling, which is also how I want my viewer to come away from my exhibition space feeling, like they are living their lives as slaves to technology and how it can all just become something that is in your house, not something that you feel obligated to check/use. I think that in doing this, white on white theme, it will also bring up a point that I also feel strongly about, which is, brands. Obviously painted white, brands will not be seen which is exactly what I aim to achieve, I find it funny how certain people can buy a polo shirt for £3 or something, like a plain blue polo shirt, and then there are some people who can go into a shop and buy  the exact same looking shirt but with a flying bird on it or a capital LV for something ridiculous like £250, these people are only doing this because they have been a metaphorical sheep for there entire existence, and just because famous people do it they go and spend there hard earned money, it is sickening. So by painting everything white nothing will matter, no-one would know but the wine bottle I painted could be an antique for £4,000 and not pay any notice to it which is just hilarious. Researching any other people who have done this white on white theme has proven rather difficult, however just when I felt like giving up I stumbled across a photographer who is doing exactly what I planned but in more detail, he is taking well known objects painting them white and, taking a photo every day for a 100 days, which I respect so much. Here is the link. He has done lots of objects already from a Duracell battery to a Trojan condom, this person is creating something so beautiful, and has given me so many ideas to think on.


Final Images

Experimental Photography

First Thoughts
The first thing I thought when this brief was issued, was quite frankly 'Woo-Hoo' this experimental brief allows me the freedom I want to create something, extremely interesting and creative, experimental photography is quite self-explanitory it really is just experimenting different types of photography. This brief allows me to create my own outcome, I can take any style of photography that I have been interested in and try out the more creative aspects of it, and truly play around with the boundaries of photography surrealism. To get started I searched different types of photography and selected a few of the ones which stood out to me, which were: Portrait, Advertising, Panoramic, Macro, Tilt-shift, Creative Editing, Strobe, Landscape, HDR, Long Exposure, Black and White, High-Speed, Smoke Art, Still Life and Night time photography. All of these techniques have been something that I have subliminally enjoyed when just accidentally viewing photos and would love to have a go at doing dome myself. With this brief I intend to break free from my comfort blanket of photo manipulation and really try something that I don't know too much about and just see if I can produce some excellent images. My first thoughts of this project were mainly just various types of photography that I could do, I have always wanted a brief with as much freedom as this brief and now that it has been set, my minds is coming up with different  ideas for what to do in my final images. Firstly I got this brief and thought that it would have to be very bizarre images when I read 'Experimental' I was quite worried however, upon researching this style I found myself quite excited about doing this brief. 


Research
For my final images I plan to choose 4 different styles, and take 1-2 images per style, I have decided to also do 6 different paragraphs for each style of experimental photography that I want to create.


As soon as this brief was set  forward I immediately starting researching different types of photography that I could experiment with, such as the ones I have previously mentioned, from the list of photography styles, I decided to chose a select few that I would enjoy trying my hand at and the first and the one I was most interested in was definitely most interested in trying was High-Speed Photography, I find this style very extraordinary and skilful, so I would enjoy trying out this type. High speed photography is photography which is photographed at very precise moments, creating some fantastic images, such as a water balloon being popped, and keeping it's form. This is helped by the aid of using a flash-gun so that you can stop what is going on in normal time. For this type of photography I want to do an image of a water-balloon to really show off the high speed aspect of the image, for my research on this I found this collection of images( http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=water+balloon+pop&m=pool&w=907335%40N22 )

This image really stood out to me because this was the only image in the entire set which was different, this was the only one where the photographer had placed a model in the shot and still captured the balloon bursting perfectly and still had brilliant exposure for the model. When I choose to take my image for this, I plan to do something different.

A second style of photography that I am interested in trying is advertising, such as arranging your lighting set-up and focal points to more compensate for the product instead of the model, which is something that I am not too familiar with however I am very interested in trying out. This style would force me to try out and experiment with other types of photography, I always enjoy a challenge and this is one of the reasons I picked this style. The best way I found for researching this style was to type in a brand name that I knew was fairly popular, and then search through various images until there was some more advertising themed photography. 

I found this image where it most looked like the photo was taken to emphasize the brand instead of a model's head-shots. In this the photographer has set up the lighting to be quite basic, with a soft box positioned to the left and above the camera to creat some nice soft shadows and to bring out the light on the logo. However when I choose to take my images I do not want mine to just be the standard model type shot, I really want my creativity to shine through.

My third style of photography I chose was Creative editing. I chose this style because this is the area I know most about but still want to try something different in this area, because normally I focus so much on the photoshop side of things that the original photography and lighting all go out the window, where if I combine all three then I am bound to have some stunning results, when thinking of creative editing my mind is automatically drawn to a photographer called Aaron Nace, however I have been inspired by his work many of times but in the occasion I want to make my images different to my normal style so I researched a photographer called: Erik Johansson. Erik, is a photographer who specialises in photo manipulation and photo retouching, and he is truly incredible at what he does. He is originated in Sweden and has just recently came into my  research and has already been a big aspect of the 'creative editing' side of this project. 

This image of a cooking accident is a brilliant example of the kind of stuff that Erik can create just with a camera and photoshop. When you look at this image you immediately think "Oh my god, he's cut his hand off" and when and image can give you that impression just by using photoshop well that really gives me hope.

Another one of my choices to research was, Black and White photography. I find this style can say more about a photographer when they only work with black and white, to see if they can really capture the essence of an image. A different reason I chose Black and White is quite simply because I find myself always working in colour, and this would be a task to see If I can push myself to just stick to Black and White. However black and white, is a vague style of photography, this can now be any of the styles above, but just put into black and white. Most of the inspiring photography was taken in black and white because in the older days colour printing wasn't available and I for one am very glad of this because all of the older photographers capture unreal images that I think would just look wrong in colour. 

This image was captured by Henri Cartier-Bresson and has been a favourite of mine for quite a while, I find that this, has been captured perfectly, I have seen in an article with Cartier-Bresson where he says that it was taken just behind a train stop and he had happened to be peering through a small gap at the exact moment when the guy jumped, he also says that the man was trying to reach another plank of wood which was just too wide for his lens. Brilliant.

Early Development


For my project I decided to start the advertising section of photography in my experimental project first, this is because advertising photography is something I have never tried before and was truly interested in testing. So I got right to it and I thought of doing images of shoes/trainers, because they are something that I actually like, and I like looking at different colours and shapes, so I got together the nearest relatively clean shoes and got to work.

This image was quite simple to take and it gave me quite a lot to think about when taking my final image, I love the use of out of focus carpet and background, however this was taken on f1.8 just so that the brand name would stand out very  clearly, I feel that If I dialled the aperture to something like f4 I would of still had some depth of field but still kept some more clarity in the shoes. I like the choice of an uncluttered background for this image too, just where the carpet meets the wall which helps you understand the camera positioning. 

This image was very close to being in the final images because I love the action and the fact that the subject has been frozen in mid air which makes the shoes which are the main eye attraction in the centre of the frame. The colours that I edited make a big impact on the outcome of the image with the purple shadows and yellowish highlights which contrast well. Another aspect in this photo which made it hard not to put in the finals, is the idea in the viewers mind that the model looks like they have been hung.

For my Black and White image I decided to take a photo which would kind of distort the viewers perception on the overall feel of the picture. This photo was taken in Blackpool at a giant disco ball they have near the prom, and I took this image at this angle which is the big barrier that hold the monument in place, but also kept a tiny bit of the ball at the lower left crop so that it kind of looks like a birds-eye view of a street with cobbled pavements, also the sky was perfect blue and white but I thought to be different I would shoot this in black and white so that it adds another illusion aspect.

Here is the shot I took for my creative editing part of the experimental brief, I took this image using one main light source witch was a flash-gun, bounced, on full power to really illuminate the room/subject. This edit was something I was quite familiar with doing witch is creating lots of various layers and playing around with the curves on each layer, I was very pleased with the end result however this didn't make it into the final images section mainly for the fact that I am too familiar with this technique of editing so I decided against including it because I want to challenge myself more.

For high-speed photography I knew that I was going to take picture of balloons bursting because I have done it before but with bad equipment and really wanted another go at it now with some form of high speed lighting. This was a photo that I took a while ago of a balloon bursting so I decided to incorporate it into my project however I really hate the grain that I have on this image and also the background in this image isn't particularly exciting, however I did get this image quite spot on seeing as I had around 3 attempts of getting it right. I really look forward to trying this again and getting it perfect.

Final Images

Advertising

Black and White

Creative Editing