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.

Another Panoramic image.

Today was actually the first day I took this well known short cut into Derby City Centre, I immediately recognised the photo opportunity. My aim today when I set out was to try and find something old and derelict which I could transform into something relatively contemporary via the use of digital means.

With the use of colour refining and a panoramic image I think I achieved my goal. I feel I have proved that it does not take modern design, architecture and corporate funding to create a contemporary scene.

I chose to over expose the sky when converting my RAW images for a few reasons, I wanted the main subject to be the foreground with no distractions in the sky whatsoever, the sky wasn't exactly interesting at the time, it was rather overcast but still I decided to blow out the sky to white because I wanted no distractions whatsoever, no matter how simple. Another reason for this decision was because I knew how much easier it would be to stitch together to create the panoramic image, the clouds could easily have moved whilst I shot the series of images and that could have had the possibility of increasing my editing time.

Via the use of a couple adjustment layers I was able to give the impression that the plants are becoming part of the art on the wall.

Self Portait Panorama

The idea for the creation of this image came from some of Chad Coombs' work which you can see in my last post.


This was created using 12 images that I took in my bedroom and then later stitched together manually in Photoshop. I originally attempted to use the automated photomerge capability which Photoshop has, but with computers being as intelligent as they are, it obviously did not work as intended, whether this was down to my own fault or just the programs I don't know but I decided to stitch the images together using the free transform tools in photoshop to attempt to create one seamless panoramic image.

Once my image was fully stitched together I needed to clean some of it up a little. In total I used the healing brush tool, blurred selected areas, duplicated specific areas and made changes to the levels and hue/saturation in certain areas to round off the image and make it believable.

At this point I decided that some of the images did not fit, I am talking specifically about the image where I am brushing my teeth, I am simply too close to the camera, and with it at the very end of the panoramic image I would not be able to fit myself in when I crop the image down due to the perspective so I had to remove that image, I think this was a decision for the better.

Whilst I was happy with the image I had arrived at at this point I still felt it was missing the dream like feeling which Chad Coombs' images of this style hold. In order to replicate this feeling I merged the visible layers, duplicated the layer, placed a high pass filter onto the top layer, set the layer properties to hard light and then desaturated the image a little in order to reach the final composition.

I do realise that the image still needs to be touched up a little in order to properly finish it, but for now I am content with my work.

Inspiration - Chad Coombs

www.theunsceneart.com










I really enjoy viewing Chad Coombs' images. They are extremely thought provoking due to the way they have been taken or edited. There is a large relationship between Chad's images and fantasy or dreams, he presents his images in a very unorthodox way, for example his panoramic images are rarely seamless, he even makes an effort to distinguish the transitions between each individual shot in the image.

I would like to follow some of Chad Coombs' ideas and visions and encorporate them into my own digital imagemaking module.