Few hours to deadline.

I'm relatively excited for the finish line in this particular module, this semester has flown past so fast, feels like just yesterday that I first enrolled and moved in. But hey, more importantly, I have a few more things to show before I finish this journal off and hand in.

Animation

A few weeks ago I bought a Lily flower in order to take some studio pictures of it for photography, I decided it would be a good idea to take pictures of it as it was growing so that I could later create an animation of it. Well I have now finished it, in order to process it I had to fix the white balance, contrast and brightness in Lightroom before using Quicktime pro to create an animation of it.

There is a higher quality version of this animation in my portfolio but here is a youtube link.


As you can see, youtube has squashed it a little so please watch the original in the portfolio folder.

Selections
I just wanted to create something simple, so I used one of my photographs of the Lily, separated the in focus sections from the out of focus sections with layers and overlayed one of my smoke photographs on top of the out of focus section.

Whilst the effect is not incredibly attractive here I can use the same techniques on more deserving subjects and ideas to create more stunning images.

Wrap up
To finish things off I have decided to use a large image and do loads of different things to it which I have learnt to different sections of the image so that I can demonstrate some of photoshop's tools.



There is a lot more knowledge that I hold which I couldn't fit on this image but I'm sure this will be enough to demonstrate my understanding of how to use the program.

Running out of time

I was slightly bored earlier so I simply took one of window's sample images :



and simply honed my general photoshop skills by trying to retouch it. Here is the final image, I experimented some more with blur filters, dodge/burn and adjustment layers.



To create the pixelated fade effect that I pulled off in this image all I had to do was merge all layers that I had been working on, duplicate the background layer, add the pixelated "mosaic" filter to the new layer and create a layer mask using a black to white gradient.
Also, from this image I can very easily see the importance of calibrating the colour your monitor transmits. On photoshop the image is on the verge of purple whereas on the web, it is a much more vivid blue.


Recently I have been planning to create a very artistic image based on Nine inch Nail's "Art is Resistance" community/network.

here are some examples,



But since I'm running out of time I'm afraid I just don't have the resources available to start such a project. I will have to get round to it at some point over the Christmas holidays.

To compensate, I quickly and efficiently transformed the "Art is Resistance" logo/flag into something with more meaning and reason to the AIR cause.



I used similar means that I incorporated in my triptych image, such as the way I cut the images to fit the desired shape. For this image I used various stock images from sxc.hu and some others from more readily available sources such as google images. To finish the image off, I added Curves and Channel mixer adjustment layers to desaturate and alter the contrast and colouring in the layers. After that I decided some good old film noise and diagonal scan lines would top the image off nicely. After that short work I think I created an image that backs up the resistance's meanings and also displays my photoshop knowledge reasonably well.

To read more into "Art is Resistance" please check the following websites.

Art is Resistance
Open Source Resistance
NIN wiki

Present and Publish

I have had some refreshing new ideas on how to create images for "Present and publish"

Since it's almost Christmas and I was thinking what I should do for people's presents/cards I thought I might try my hand at making my own Christmas cards.

For this simple one which I am going to show you all I did was use an A4 sized work piece in photoshop, marked out score lines so that I will be able to fold it neatly and added a frame for photographs using some brushes. I then added an image which I decided to use for this particular card and edited it slightly so it fits in more with the Christmas card theme, In this case I basically desaturated the image and added grain before putting it in place. Then all that was left to do was to add the cliché text and there we have it, a festive card!


For my next piece, again I took inspiration from some work I have seen on DeviantArt, the concept is called "Triptych" and it is simply the combination of 3 similar photographs into one digitally combined image.

Here are some examples.




So for my Triptych I decided to use these three photographs from my recent work in the studio.





Since the colour range in the background is slightly different in each individual photograph is slightly different and I want the images to be very similar I decided to use black and white images of the photographs and I also decided to crop each image down so that it has a much more up close feeling so that the image as a whole creates a much stronger impact. Once all three images were together on one work piece I chose to create a colour balance adjustment layer so that I could warm up the highlights and cool the darker tones and in doing so I feel that I created a rather stunning piece of work.

Present and Publish

For my present and publish section of digital imagemaking I had the choice to use free software to create an image slideshow but I chose to create one manually due to complicated issues such as music rights, watermarks etc. I created this slideshow using Sony Vegas 8 (video editing software) and it shows some of my recent digital imagemaking pictures.

I have included it with my portfolio but I have also uploaded it to youtube so that it can be viewable on this page...



You can also view all my uploaded images and photos via my Flickr page, here is the link to a slideshow of all my uploaded data : http://www.flickr.com/photos/xsjcol/show/

Pinhole camera

Again I've taken inspiration from my random browsing of Deviantart where I found a fair few traditional images taken with a Pinhole camera.





I decided to use this photo below to try and develop into something that resembles the above photos because I imagined that it may turn out quite well. In retrospective I think I could have chosen a more suitable image, but still, this shows my understanding of knowledge well so it will have to do.



To start off, I decided to convert to monochrome using the channel mixer so that I could also change the lightness and darkness of each colour in the image. I then darkened the edges to try and imitate the vignetting effect that comes with using a pinhole camera, to do this I made an elliptical selection using the marquee tool and inverted the selection, not forgetting to feather the selection so that whatever I did to the image would blend in well. I then darkened the edges using the Brightness/contrast tool.

To create that traditional pin hole style shot I thought it would be best to add some blur to the outer edges using a similar elliptical selection before and the Lens Blur filter.

To add film grain to the image I added the film grain filter to a new layer which was already filled with 50% gray and set the layer properties to "overlay" and decreased the opacity of the layer a fair bit since the original result was a bit too intense.



I think that I managed to imitate the traditional images rather well but my technique could use a little bit of tweaking in areas to make it look authentic.

Smoke

From browsing Deviant art I came across some really astonishing pictures of what is described to be smoke. I was transfixed and also inspired by the amazing photography, so I decided to try my hand at it.

I also found a flickr group which is dedicated to this kind of image making, which you can see here

Since myself and Colin decided that it would be less than practical to take these photos in the studio we had to set up a rather ghetto scene in our flat. It consisted of a pinned up black tee shirt and a desktop lamp to attempt to light the smoke correctly. We used a spoon to disrupt the incense smoke and attempted to light the smoke with the desktop light.

Here are two of the original images that I decided to develop.



From here I had to alter the the contrast, white balance, levels, curves and I also erased some of the excess smoke in order to try and fully separate the background from the smoke.



From here I chose to invert the image and colour it using either the hue/saturation tool or the gradient tool on "overlay" mode In an attempt to imitate some of the pictures demonstrated on the flickr group.






For the final "Severance" image I decided to make selections using the polygonal lasso tool and a soft feather to colour individual parts of the smoke.

I think I managed this technique rather well, I could improve a lot simply by using a controlled environment such as the studio to capture the photos.

Filters, dodge and burn

I originally thought this image was really bland and not very interesting at all, I decided I would try and make something of it with the help of photoshop, here is what I ended up with and I am quite surprised that I managed to make it so much more attractive to the eye.



I decided that I would attempt to create an ethereal and dream like feeling to the image when I first started. I decided to duplicate the original image onto a new layer add a "smart blur" filter and then set the layer properties of the filtered layer to "overlay", it instantly made a huge difference to the image, but the colours were still rather bland. In order to fix this, I added a colour balance adjustment layer so that I could change the colour of both layers at once instead of just one. I decided to enhance the blue in the water so that you can pick out the reflections more clearly and I also increased the reds so that the leaves don't look as dead as they do in the original image.
To finish off this image, I decided to burn and dodge the image in strategic places to enhance the overall look of the image. Instead of using the traditional dodge and burn tools, I used a new way which I recently learnt off an on-line tutorial, what I did was created a new layer, filled it with 50% grey, set the layer properties to soft light and began painting away on the layer with a white brush if I wanted that area to be lighter or a black brush to darken the areas. Once I was done dodging and burning I had arrived at an image that had met my ideas, the scene was looking much more glowing and ethereal, all that was left to do was to decrease the opacity of the dodge and burn layer since it was just slightly overpowering and to crop the image so that I could create a much more striking composition.

Colour settings

Original


Digitally processed


Original


Digitally processed


All I have done to enhance these images is simply alter the colour temperature and exposure in Lightroom, exported them to Photoshop where I've messed with the colour balance, saturation, levels, curves etc in order to try and create a soft white background and a bright, interesting foreground. I really do like how I've played with individual colour's saturation, luminance and hue to create lovely green coloured stigma's.

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is More Panoramics.

I wanted to see what would happen if I shot a panoramic with the same subject moving throughout the individual pictures. I was hoping that it would all blend together, but when I ran the automated stitching facility in Photoshop it practically erased all of the cars except a couple as you can see. So I gave manual stitching another go, I used the Skew and distort tools on each individual layer to help line up the images, then I decided to mask off parts of each individual layer so that the car could flow in and out of each image softly without much distortion. I think I pulled off the effect rather well. I then desaturated the image and added some noise to imitate a traditional black and white image.

Final 8

After some hard work for the past few months in this module I feel that I have arrived at a very strong set of images that show both my development of photography skills and my knowledge of the 4 subject titles; Time, Light, Focus and Viewpoint.

I started out with very few ideas of what to do for each title, but with time and development of my work I came up with photos which I am proud to present as my final 8.

Time

It was relatively hard to pick out 2 photographs for this title. Even though I am happy with the work I produced I don't feel that I managed to produce the perfect photo that I was planning to, each one I would take would be slightly off what I really wanted when I got home and reviewed them.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/2.5 | 1/2 second | Canon EOS400D

The reason I chose this image over some of the others that I took in the same outing was because I felt that this one portrayed the feeling of movement much better than any of the others, When I study this image it doesn't take long for me to feel like I am travelling down the motorway at speed. It is the shutter speed which creates this feeling, it has nicely distorted the road to create this feeling of movement. I also believe the composition of the image helps to create movement, unlike some of my other photos the majority of the road is still visible instead of trying to compose just for the central reservation, the only downfall that this composition has brought to the image is the inclusion of the lights. As I said when reviewing the images earlier, even with the aid of a tripod, the car still doesn't ride smooth enough to create relaxed light trails, and due to the relatively short shutter speed the lights aren't able to blend into each other like they would possibly do with a much longer exposure (road would need to be nice and straight as well).



ISO100 | 55mm | f/7.1 | 1/6 second | Canon EOS400D

I took quite a few photos of this same waterfall in Markeaton park with various settings, the reason I chose this one over all the other candidates is mainly due to the composition, It's nice and up close to the foamy water allowing you to take in the flow and movement of the subject. Since I wasn't using a tripod (bad planning I know) This was easily one of the crispest photo's with nice smooth details in the water. If I was to try and shoot this shot again I would like to try a longer exposure at around 1-2 seconds and try and hold the composition as similar as possible, but for now, this is easily presentable for my final 8.

Focus

out of all of the 4 titles I think this was the one I had most fun with, I had so many ideas of how to exploit this title and whilst trying to portray my visions proved slightly tricky I think I managed to pull off plenty of shots which I am exceedingly happy with.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/1000 second | Canon EOS400D

This was a fairly obvious choice for my final 8, when I got back to my flat and uploaded this image I instantly noticed that the final picture had put through all my ideas and opinions on "focus" and I already knew that this would be a strong contender for my final 8. The composition is strong, roughly keeping to the rule of thirds. I really like how the focus pulls your eye into the leaves and then leads it out towards the glowing grass on the left. The out of focus background and lower third subtly bracket the focus of the image to help aid the composition. Above all I think that the colours of this photograph helped me to choose this image, the colours are not too warm and also not too cool, they perfectly reflect the feeling of the Monday morning it was shot on.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/100 second | Canon EOS400D

As I said much earlier in my blog, I wanted to create a contrasting image to the leaf shots that inevitably became a choice for my final 8. And this is what I came up with. I have already described earlier how I have developed my ideas to arrive at this photograph. Your eye is guided in to the focal point of the centre of the flower from the out of focus petals inwards towards the centre. The only real improvement I would like to make on this would be the viewpoint, I think it could become a better image if you could see more of the centre of the flower and also some of the transition between in focus and out of focus in the foreground.

Light

With this title I have been keeping my eye out to see if I can capture any interesting shadows, reflections, bends in light or silhouettes to present for my final 8, I chose to do it this way instead of taking the general cliché route of just shooting sources of light, I think that I have acheived my goal, and here is what I have to show for it.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/320 second | Canon EOS400D

This photograph highlights both my points of reflection and shadows, it was shot at sunrise so even the short grass is able to create remarkable shadows. There is a good variety of interest in this photograph flowing from the focal point of the large brown leaf through the rest of the picture weaving in and out of the luminated blades of grass and other fallen leaves. To me this photograph screams Autumn, one of my favourite seasons due to the elegant, warm colours and crisp objects. The reflections of the sun in the Leaf is what first attracted me to this photograph, it was exactly what I was looking for to represent my ideas in my final 8, it has incorporated both Reflection and Shadows into the image. For now, I'm really unsure of how and why I may want to improve this image, I am currently 100% happy with the outcome and I hope you are too.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/6 second | Canon EOS400D

This photograph is under this title due to it's shadows, I think they are some of the most dynamic shadows I have ever photographed, it was lit by two lights from above and due to the structure of the Lily plant it has created some very interesting shadows on both the plant and the backdrop to create an impressingly soft image. The only thing I would really want to change in this photograph is the colours, I feel that the white balance may have been a little bit off and it has brought down the image ever so slightly due to the bland colouring. I think I may have to fix this problem digitally for my digital image making coursework.

Viewpoint

As I said earlier, Viewpoint has been the hardest title for me to photograph for, I just can't seem to envision a shot before I actually go out and find a subject. I'm always on the lookout for new, weird and wonderful viewpoints that will shock and amaze the viewer, unluckily I don't think I found anything quite as dynamic as what I was looking for but I hope my selections will satisfy their viewers.



ISO200 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/40 second | Canon EOS400D

Whilst this viewpoint of the train track isn't substantially dynamic or even elegant, it does do well in meeting the needs for the title "Viewpoint". It nicely shows the use of perspective, if you allow the image to control your eyes you will see that the train track leads you over a bridge, around a corner and into unknown territory, something that of us have to do on a regular basis, take risks. I think this viewpoint can stir up a good amount of conversations on theory and that is why I am choosing to present it as one of my final 8. Again, there are a few changes that I would like to make to this photograph, one is the colour again, the photograph overall appears to be a little on the bland side, that couldn't really have been helped at the time due to the time of year but it is something that I may choose to fix in post processing later. the other thing that I am not quite sure on is the depth of field, at the time, I couldn't really stray from a wide aperture due to the need for light on this early morning and because of that I have got an image where parts of the image is out of focus where I want it to be in focus, so if I was to shoot this again I would make sure that I bring a short tripod so that I could keep the same sort of viewpoint but use a smaller aperture and a longer exposure time to compensate.



ISO400 | 28mm | f/16 | 1/500 second | Canon EOS400D

With this image I was able to use a rather small aperture due to the bright, natural light available, this allowed me to have pretty much everything that I wanted in focus. The main focal point, the sawn down tree grabs your attention and then pulls your eye through, down into the photograph and along the see, the composition of the photograph helps the objects do this. I am extremely happy with this photograph, but there is still a few things I would like to tweak, unfortunately for some reason I used an ISO value of 400 for this image when I certainly didn't need to with the amount of light available, because of my mistake I have ended up with a slightly grainy image, this could have been easily avoided. Thankfully, other than that mistake I would be able to do the rest of my ideal changes in post processing there's nothing to really worry about here, I would like to remove some of the distractions such as the two boats and the random rock in the water and I would also want to fiddle with the colour balance so that I could enhance what is currently in the photograph.

Portfolio

Time

Last night I went out and decided to try and improve on my earlier time images like I suggested in this post.

So I cleaned the windscreen of Colin's car, set up a tripod in the passenger seat and away we went towards Nottingham. I first set up my camera for a shutter speed of around 10 seconds, but my plan wasn't fool proof. Even with the aid of a tripod over hand held, there was still enough shakes to make the lights go all wobbly and induce sickness in the photograph as you can see here.




So I decided that I should speed up the shutter speed even more like I foresaw in my previous blog post on this subject. As I gradually shortened the exposure time, the lights became much more manageable, but I still felt like they were out of place and not producing the kind of image I was looking for.






What I did notice from these pictures however were that the road and central reservation were quite attractive and that the colour of the lights was a little too overpowering. So to develop from this reflection I decided I would try shooting in black and white or mess around with custom white balance settings and also compose the image with more focus on the central reservation and road, trying to avoid the sickly lights.












I feel that from my development of my original idea I have managed to arrive at a usable set of images for my final 8 of this module. I just need to decide which one to pick. All of them portray the subject title very well with their soft motion blur due to the 0.5-2 second exposure time and they also put across the development of my skills over the past few months.