32 Experimental imagery

Reflections -  Andre Kertesz

Born in 1894 in Hungary,  he emigrated to the US due to the war and discrimination towards jews.  His minimal linguistic skills limited him to the companies he could work for and the companies who wanted him to work for them he turned down because he felt they weren't 'exploring' enough for him.  He had been criticised for taking extra images he wasn't instructed to and he felt it was holding him back.

He did a lot of work with reflections and distortion, which I personally don't like.  I like the reflection images, but find the distortion Images to be too much and it feels like there's too much going on in the image, which is why most of my images are reflections rather than distorted.

Mirrors -

I like how my reflection images came out, I especially like the last four images. I deliberately tried to not include my fingers into the images because I thought it took away from the illusion of the mirror.  The last images is a water reflection rather than a mirror reflection because I tried to make some of my work similar to Andre Kertesz's, and that was the only one that turned out presentable.





Shop windows - Eugene Atget

Born 1857 in France, he didn't start his photography career until 1888.  He originally started off acting and going to acting schools but after finishing secondary school he joined the Merchant Navy.  He was part of travelling group in Paris but due to a throat infection he had to stop acting which is when he tried painting, but did not get anywhere with it.  He then went on to do photography where he started taking pictures of local places like Amiens and Beauvias.  After his partner died in 1926, Man Ray started to publish lots of his pictures La Revolution Surrealist.

 
   I think my pictures turned out better than expected.  I especially like the one with the 'cloud effect' (to the left of this text).  I tried my own way with the mannequins like Atgat's work but only one image turned out the way that I thought was vaguely like his work.  I would have liked to have had more come out in a more creative way rather than just taking a picture of a shop window reflection.

Hockney Joiners - Hockney joiners is a technique used to distort images, in a collage form, but still being able to fully see what the image is.  It was created by David Hockney who was born 1937 in Bradford, he was openly gay and expressed it in a lot of his art.  His Joiner work can be relatable to Cubism, and he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.  The way he came about this technique was an accident, he didn't like the wide eye lens that most photographers were using so whilst working on a painting he took two polaroid pictures and put them together to see they created the wide eye lens effect themselves.  I quite like David Hockney's work with the joiner concept, I feel like it adds dimension and a different aspect to an images. A lot of the time it looks like they've been painted, because of the different colours where he's taken the picture of a slightly different exposure, and I feel that gives the picture a quality of individuality and that's what usually draws the viewer to properly look at the image. 

 






















This is the 'Hockney Joiner' that I created myself: I wanted mine to be more distorted so it took a while to actually see what and where it is, I wanted people to actually focus on this.  I did this the same way David Hockney did but digitally, so rather than using polaroids I used a normal DSLR and put each photograph together on photoshop.  I would like to have re done mine to add more to the picture, try and make it bigger and add more to the right hand side of the picture.

Pinhole Photography -

Pinhole photography is, what I think, an underrated form of photography.  It consist of a what is usually a beer can with a pin prick hole (pinhole) in the side of the can.  This video will be able to explain how it's made and maybe a little bit more information.  It's not just beer cans that can be used, people have used all sorts of shapes and sizes of boxes, cans, pots, biscuit tins etc.. obviously the results will be different.

Justin Quinnell - Bristol based pinhole photographer who is now a lecturer and teacher who believes in using the resources around you to your advantage to teach astronomy and science as well as photography to students who don't particularly have much money to be able to afford DSLR and SLR cameras and equipment.


 My Pinhole camera - I actually used a shoe box, a Dr. Martens shoe box to be precise, but still used 7x5" paper.  With Justin Quinnell's images, specifically the one of the suspension bridge, he didn't develop his image, he left his papaer because it's light sensitive outside for 6 months and because it's like getting a sun tan, the bits that are covered will stay the same but the bits that are exposed will be changed by the sunlight.

With my box and because it's so big it's easier to use a small square of aluminium with a pinhole in it rather than trying to put a pinhole in the box, also with the material the pinhole will come out neater on the aluminium rather the box.


My Pinhole pictures - I like how my pinhole pictures came out, I wish I had time to experiment with exposing the light sensitive paper without developing them but that would have been something I would have wanted to do over the course of a month or more.  The bottom two pictures could have come out better but I was giving my pictures and exposure of between 30 and 60 seconds as the box is so big whereas with something like a can it would have been around 10 seconds, maybe a little less as it was sunny the day we went out.  I especially like how the images of the water came out because they have a ghostly effect to them

34 Image Manipulation

Paul M Smith - Paul M Smith is probably well know for this picture, which is Robbie Williams' album cover for Sing When You're Winning which came out in August 2000.

 

Paul M Smith did a few pictures of Robbie Williams with the whole football hooligan theme, and considering the majority of Smith's pictures consist of him, I find the Robbie William pictures really interesting as he didn't do many celebrity pictures. 

Paul M Smith started out by joining the Royal Engineers to start five years of service as a combat engineer at 16, which was the start of his  "interrogation of the many-headed beast that is masculinity, of what it means to be a man. The most immediate subject of this enquiry was naturally to confront his own reasoning for joining the army".   In other words, It was the start of the Image Manipulation series with his images consisting of more than one of himself.  This series is called Artist Rifles.

He then continued on to do something called Make My Night which is a series of images, again consisting just of himself, recreating a 'laddish' night out. They're all stereotypical pictures you would see on a night out with fights brewing, pints spilling and sick spewing.  I enjoy these images more than Artist Rifles just because I feel these are more entertaining and looked more enjoyable to create. Although I understand the Artist Rifles series more than I understand the Make My Night Out series. 

We did our own version of his work, and to start off with we did a 'tester' one at college just to get use to the photoshop skills. 

There were a few spots where I felt I could improve, and they were just a few layering issues but overall for a first go I was impressed with how it turned out. 

How I made the image- Taking the picture.

• Set your camera up on a tripod, it is important the camera does not move and you keep the same frame for each image.
• set your camera to manual focus, it is important that the focal point doesn't change because as you move the focal point will follow you. 
• It'll be easier if you set your camera to Aperture Priority and set the Aperture to f/8.  The Aperture Priority will set the shutter speed for you so you don't need to worry about that. 
• It might be worth setting markers somewhere so you don't obstruct or overlap yourself.
• for the best image, weird is always good, so change your clothes and tell a story.

Creating the image.

• Open up two of the images in photoshop and choose one as a main base image, then drag the other image tab away so it becomes separate window. 
• drag the window so it's onto of your base image, it should then join in with the other image. 
• change the opacity so that you can see both images, this will then allow you to line up the images so that they are in the same position.
• you then erase only one of yourself in the image. This bit will need a lot of attention to detail otherwise you'll end up with a 'glow' around yourself.  It will also be easier to zoom in to see what you're doing and if it helps to change the brush softness and the brush type. 
• you then repeat the process until you have the desired amount of yourself in one image! 

This is my final image.  As it was that time of year I went for a christmas themed one. 

Boarders -  We've started adding boardings too our images through photoshop through the canvas tool.  We changed the size of the image to 8" by 12" and changed the resolution to 150.  We then changed the preferences to be in inches rather than centimetres and then used the canvas tool. 

These are my introduction to the subject images. 

Vignette - 

Vignette creates a halo around the picture highlighting the main subject in the picture making the rest of the picture dark.  It emphasises a certain point in the image to create a desired effect on the image.

There are different ways of creating this, you can make the rectangle a square or a circle, or you can have it any size and any colour.  The way I created mine was by;

• Opening the image in photoshop.
• Create another layer (cmd+J for a Mac).
• Select the rectangular marquee tool (top left hand corner on the toolbar to the left of the screen) and draw the desired emphasised area of the image.
• go to the 'select' drop down menu at the top of the screen and press 'transform selection' (you can now change the size and position of the rectangle) then press the return key.
• create another copy of this layer (cmd+J).
• while this copy is selected go to the bottom of the layer palette and press the button with the 'f' on it ('add a layer style' button) and press the 'drop shadow' button.
• Move the size slider until you can see a line around the selection (move some of the other sliders until you are content with the size/shape of it) I preferred mine to be two lines rather than framing my subject. 
• At the bottom left of the dialogue box there is something called 'stroke', make sure that is ticked, your selection may change colour, so you can just change that back to whatever the desired colour is.  You can change the colour by going to the bottom of the dialogue box there will be a 'fill colour' box, there you will have a colour palette that you can then change the colours there.
• Change the position of the stroke to 'inside', you can do this from the drop down selection, you an then alter it until content and press 'ok'.
• If the image isn't what you expected, select layer 1, then chose 'adjustments' in the image drop down at the top of the screen, then chose 'hue/saturation' and decrease it, you could also do the same on layer 2, but increase it instead if you wanted to make the vignette more obvious.  

Selfie - 

The theme for this project is that they have no correlation with each other, it's more of a 'my life' sort of theme.



Andy Warhol -

How it was done -

• If its not already a square image then you will need to crop it to make it square.
• once you have you square portrait, go to the image drop down box, then adjustments, then channel mixer. 
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