Final Evaluation

Final evaluation final images adn wrok

Describe how the work is linked to your preparatory work (i.e. photographers research or shoots)

My work and final mages link to my research as various artist have influenced the way I photograph things as well as the techniques used to edit my images. to produce my final outcomes.  Artists such as Amanda Clyne, Jeremy Tourvieille and Ansel Adams are those which my work since the prep shoots up till the exam shoots have been huge influence on my images.  

From studying Ansel Adams I have learn to how to explore tonal range in all forma of photography and how import it is to create a large range of tones when assessing my work against his zone system model.  This has helped me to develop my images and work to ensure that camera settings like exposure shutter speed and f stops are optimum the the style of photography I want to carry out and how I can achieve highlights, shadows and shading as a result of the manipulation of these settings. But most of all I have learn how light is captured and how to manipulate it in any situation.

The work of Amanda Clyne and her work with abstract slice portraits has made me realised that photography is a medium of artwork.  With this there is scope to experiment and create abstract images via the medium of digital composite images. At the begin of the project of AS photography I was very against editing as i felt it deducted the true art of photography however after studying more abstract photographers and artists I am now more accepting and use edits in almost every image I take. This in turn has helped to develop my editing skills and be more confident with experimentation the exam shoot 1 has shown how I am now able to perform extensive edits that showcase experimentation and this has allowed me to see my work from an artistic standpoint and less of a scientific view. 

Along with Clyne's work Jeremy Tourvieille had really sparked my interest for digital composite photography which is a medium I never had really herd of. After conducting me research I begun to understand a see how manipulation and combination of images can work together to produce images with strong compositions and purpose. Again in shoot 1 his influence was keep even linking back to my time lapse project in the prep shoots and the sliced sky in prep shoot 3  I feel I have really developed the technique of presenting images in different ways that not only please the eye but the mind. When assessing my final images I feel they incorporate realism with a twist, as they are all composite images there is a hidden story behind their creation and as the audience I find it fun to wonder how these edits are created. This has helped to really make my Photoshop and editing skills blossom from the simple dodging and burning to layering and slicing I feel all my work has developed and relates to the research conduced into these 3 artists.

When evaluating my response to the exam paper I feel out of the 2 shoot only one of those has done justice and that would be shoot one, this is because I felt the images created were strong images and displayed my development of techniques in editing very well. in conjunction to shoot 2 where I bit off more than I could chew and was stuck with a weak set of images that lacked purpose and a strong composition. As the topic is chose "sky" was such a broad vague title I got off track with the second shoot and I should've focused on a specific kind of sky to help narrow the focus. this may have improved my confidence and plan in my mind so that I know what needed to be done.  The main issue I feel was a problem was the composition,therefore in the future I will need to meticulously plan each shoot along with looking at professional photographers work so I know what I can include in my images. 

Although shoot 2 didn't go to plan, Shoot 1 I felt was my best photographic showcase from an editing standpoint. I really feel due to the development of my work, down to research I was bale to try and experiment heavily with abstract techniques like slicing and layering. Along with the simple techniques like use of curves and levels I feel that the images in my final series really showcase the complexity of my editing and photography and this is the part that I am most happy about. A few months ago I would've never edited a photo and now I've compiled 4/7 different edits into one image.

Overall I feel that my images in my final series are strong, complex and different. To add i think they follow the idea and brief that the exam brief indicates with very very strong themes around the sky. 

I feel I really have developed a personalised approach when it comes to this series and answering the exam brief, as it is unique in terms of the final outcomes and very different in comparison to normal everyday photography and due to my outlooks as a photographic artist; which I have developed from conducting research into photographers and artists alike.

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Final Images

Work Record shoot 2

"CITIFIED SKY"

  AO1:

plan: my plan is to photograph the sky in an urban environment to create silhouetted images that have the outline of houses and streets but focus on the tonal range and colour of the sky.

  the series will be shot on my road with a tripod , and further editing in Photoshop will help to produce my final images for this shoot.

     

Research influences:

For this shoot i decided to conduct research on the work of Paul Reiffer and Nicholas Buer

both artist are heavily influential in the field of skyline photography, Reiffer with the sun and Buer with galaxies in the dark. I have chosen these artists as their image have larger focus than just the sky and I feels important for me to develop my images in looking at the bigger picture rather than just clouds.

  Buer photographs landscapes and cityscape to create spectacular images.

t   A range of techniques are used by him such as using filters when photographing in addition to all the correct camera setting needed to produce such stunning images. from his work i can see how he uses the sky as a main part or at least 1/2 of his composition As the exam brief if have chosen focuses on sky i feel this is a key element of his work that i can use a recreate.  Additionally his dayscapes depict a wide range of cloud formations that give another type of texture to the images.  the image below seems to have warm tone based on the colours in the image but also because of the feathery clouds giving a warm comforting background with the way they help diffuse the light softly. These are the technique I will try to incorporate in my shoot.

The image below on the bottom left is another photograph taken by Buer and the use of the skyline as a silhouette is a key point for me and i will try to use this in my photographs.

Paul Reiffer on the other had shoots a variety of sunsets as a part of his main focus. His work showcase techniques like long exposure and the use of filters.

movement is a key element of his pieces as shown by the image above as this is done by the long exposure. The colour of the sky is also heavily saturated as a result of this. Therefore Reiffer is able to extract a kaleidoscope of colour from his landscapes. Even though i wont be able to use ND filters or have extremely long exposure I will attempt to recreate some of his work by editing my images so that they can have a similar feel to that of Reiffer's high end landscapes.

In addition to the colours i will also try to develop the technique of producing silhouettes

         Contact sheet:

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                Straight images:

      AO2:  

Camera settings:

The ISO was set to 200 to avoid the image becoming grainy and to let as much light in as possible so that the shadows don't bleed through the rest of the image. the f stop was set a 11 as i was hoping to get the clouds in full focus with the foreground in somewhat focus but less so than the background to give a greater perception of depth. The shutter speed at 1/100 i thought was adequate as i didn't want to overexpose the image on too long of an exposure and i wanted to keep the detail of the foliage or buildings in the foreground which would've been shadowed out if I had increased the shutter speed.

Edits

i only liked 3 out of all the images i took and felt that the others where not wha i wanted to achieve therefore only 3 images have been edited and presented as a final series.  

image 1:

 I put the image into adobe camera RAW and begun to add various things. i increased the clarity as well as the saturation, along with performing a lens correction and dehazing the sky.

after that had been done i created 2 curves layers and begun to burn and dodge the images, bring out the clouds and darkening the foregrounds to achieve the silhouette look that Reiffer and Buer photograph so well. 

 after doing so I felt like the image was lacking highlights and to increase its dramatic presence I added in a layer of levels.  It allowed me to stretch the range of brightness well especially as I had taken the image in a RAW format. It can adjust brightness, contrast, and tonal range by specifying the location of complete black, complete white, and mid tones in a histogram.  this enabled the image to gain the brightness I wanted and then the images edit was complete

Image 2:

· Image 2 was of my street with the pylon central to the composition. The first step to my edit was to create a photo filter layer to warm up the tone of the image. I wanted to replicate the tone of the images I researched as I felt they where aesthetic and pleasing to the eye. 

to do this I created the layers of curves and once again burned and dodged to bring out the definition of the clouds and especially those that surrounded the pylon as I wanted to keep the pylon a central part of the composition and not get its focus lost within the bright clouds. Furthermore I added levels to bring up the highlights and brightness levels and the image was then complete.

Image 3:

This image was edited in a similar what to that of the 2nd by burning and dodging to create the high lights as well as the silhouette 

 in the foreground as with all the images I have tried to keep a 1/2 or 2/3 ratio between the sky and the silhouette to ensure that the sky is still the primary focus of the shoot as that is the exam brief I'm linking my images to.

      AO3:

when evaluating this shoot it didn't go as planned and I wasn't as happy with it. this is because the images do not reflect my true style of photography and neither does the editing.  The images to me lack a clear focus and the compositional  elements are very week. However I did try to reproduce images that I research in my own style but the techniques and equipment used by both Buer and Reiffer is very costly therefore I feel I was not able to create images that link heavily back to the research.

although I am not completely satisfied with the images I feel in some way I have done to the best of my abilities to try and photograph the sky.

 I feel that some elements of the images as a series link to my research and those elements are, the warmth through the clouds and the glow it  gives off; this is characteristic of Reiffer's work and I feel I have done well. However to improve these images I must travel to a significant location that has a wide skyline. by taking the images at home I limited my frame to what I could see from my garden which may have derailed this shoot completely.

    AO4: best edited images

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Work Record shoot 1

INVERTED SKY

 
Plan:

The plan for this shoot is to photograph contrasting areas of the sky in order to perform a digital composite series that focus in slicing and inverting images. Hence the series is called "Inverted Sky" .  The shoot will be done on my canon 5d mk1 with a 7-300mm lens for the zoom 


Research influences

AO1:

I conducted research into 2 artist for this shoot, one of which who is a photographer the other a portrait artist.  

From my experimentation in the proprietary shoots the work of Amanda Clyne who is an artist that composes portrait by slices that creates heavy distortion and adds a different visual element to the piece. 

Amanda Clyne was a corporate lawyer who, after the trauma of 9/11, left her New York firm to become a painter. She studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York before graduating with the Drawing and Painting medal from OCAD University in 2009. In 2014, Amanda completed her MFA (Visual Arts) from York University. Her work has been featured in many publications and blogs, including New York's Hyperallergic blog, Canada's Flaremagazine and Italy's L'Espresso. Most recently, she was awarded an Ontario Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant. Her work has been exhibited in Europe, the U.S. and across Canada and is in the corporate collections of such companies as Mercedes Benz, Holt Renfrew and Astra Zeneca. 

Reference: https://www.amandaclyne.com/about

Her work interests me as you have 
to really look hard at her pieces and take time to put together the pieces of the puzzle as such.
we can see that the painting is separated into many thin irregular strips, that when composed together form an intricate technical piece of art.
I feel her work is very strong in terms of creativity and abstractism as it brings a different compositional dynamic to just normal photography or artwork that is usually very mundane and repetitive. However her work allows the audience to explore different themes and perspectives when viewing her pieces as a result of these slices creating optically illusions.  and this is why her work influences me so much and the outcomes of this shoot.


From Clyne's artwork, I am looking to adopt the similar technique of image slicing. This instead of physically will be done digitally in the photo manipulation program Photoshop.  The photographs taken for this shoot will again be focusing on the clouds and especially areas of the sky that have high contrast and cloud detail, which in my further editing will allow me to explore a more abstract route of digital composite images.

Images sourced from:  https://www.amandaclyne.com

The second photographer i have conducted research into and who has influenced my work is Jérémy Tourvieille. Tourvieille is a specialist in creating digital composites and explore themes of models through his photographs which he then produces these artworks from.
Although similar to Clyne and her work, the use of black and white and the style of editing that Tourvieille carries out, is very different.

The image to the right shows a model face and shoulder which seems pretty normal, however when looking deep we can deduce the composition is not just a single face but 3 in total. The incorporation of the 3 images distorts the focus and the original image which had been layered over. The distortion in this image may connote to the distortion of beauty and body image through the media. As well as this it may hint to the distortion of the mind and mental health, the 3 faces describing 3 different personalities or mind sets present within a person and how these cannot be controlled.  This is why is feel that Tourvieille's images are so strong and also meaningful.

From this series entitled "mapping" I am going to explore the ideas of layering in compositions and the use of inversion which is an idea I have developed from viewing his black and white images.



This image on the right is in black and white and a digital composite image, however what interests me as a fanatic of digital composition is the way he has so smoothly performed a composition with such an irregular shape and stitched it so well with something as delicate as the human face. 
As clouds are very irregular and random I am going to explore the addition or irregular stitching as well as just strips in my composite images. This may help in the better perception of depth and like the images to the right.  Additionally i feel that these composite images are not only fun the create due to their abstract nature but viewing them from and audience perspective for me is one of the best parts. This is because to the normal mind and eye they look so surreal and impossible yet in digital programs we are able to do so. therefore the audience is left feeling puzzled as well as respectful and mindful of the work gone into producing such an image.

To develop my work since the proprietary shoots I am going to edits that use complex techniques and refinements that i have previously not attempted however and therefore depicting my development as a artist by creating my own style of photography



Images sourced from:
https://www.facebook.com/jtourvieille

My final outcomes in A04 are linked to my research rather than my straight images as I am exploring digital composite techniques that cannot be shot RAW but are edits.












contact sheets:

   Straight images:

·         AO2: 

Camera settings:

the camera was set to a high f stop of 32 so that the whole image was crisp and clear, also to minimise the glare and the exposure as the sun was behind the parts of the sky i was shooting

EDITS:

 For my development I decided to carry out series of digital composites that in corporate the techniques of images slicing, dodging and burning, inversions, layering and using various Photoshop functions to create my desired series of "Inverted sky".

  Image 1:

I chose this raw image as a result of the high contrast areas between the blue of the sky behind the grey scale of clouds which I think works well when inverted.

  For this edit (the first) I felt that the images was already good enough and performing extensive editing into it would ruin the final outcome. As a result of this the only changes I made to the original image in terms of tonal range, exposure and colour where those done in adobe camera RAW. I took the images all in RAW formats as those files hold a great amount of detail that allow a larger scope for detailing and holding information (photographic data) that i could need when editing like shadows or highlights.  I did have to use the stamp tool and cover up the slight lens flare to left centre on the bottom of the image.

  I begun the main edit by using the ruler function to mark out equidistant lines both horizontally and vertically. after doing so at every 1/2 of on the markers, I began to select alternate columns using the +select tool that allows new selections to be added to the current. Following this procedure I put all the selected columns onto ta new layer and used the Ctrl I function to invert them producing the final image (labled Ii in A04)

This image was an formed of the combination of the slicing i have research conducted by Amanda Clyne with colour bu then using Tourvieille's use of black and white, in my case inversions and a contrasting dynamic

Image 2:

Similarly to this the previous image I have chosen this image for it contrasting sections.  This image however has a large space centrally in the composition, due to my research and development i know when inverted the contrast at this point would create a focal element. This would mean that it will have an overall stronger composition to me and the effect of the inversion will clearly visible. 

    Again I started out by creating my guide lines, as visible there are a few sets at different distances, the is because I tried to do a variation of slice sizes however I was not overall happy with he final outcome therefore I went back and deletes the rest of the guides I didn't need.  The other layers you can see are a set of curves. By programming one curve layer "lighter" and the other layer "darker" by adjusting the curve of the graph; you are then able to use the dodging and burning technique.  By using this technique I was able to highlight areas of the images like the feathered edges of clouds and other areas to bring out definition in conjunction with darkening areas that where overexposed. After doing this the slices where then cut like the technique about but to develop the theme I used the transform tool tool resize some slice and stagger them up and down to create a difference affect. This is why some areas don't match and others do. 

(IIi in A04 see below)

Image 3:

By far image 3 is my most edited image which was inspired by the movement of clouds in relation to the slicing and layering of both  Tourvieille with his 3 image layering and Clyne with irregular slicing this time. These images of which are 3, taken for their increase amount of cloud texture. each images posses unique cloud formations which have abstract features that i have tried to exploit

The images where layered on top of each other with minor spot healing carries out for dust on the lens and saturation for the colour correction of the blue so that all the images differed.  After this the bottom and top layers where inverted and the opacity was tweaked so that I can extract the features of each layer.

After assessing the image at this point I felt it lacked vibrancy and colour therefore i layered another images into the composition placing it as the first layer so that the blue hues created in adobe camera RAW can com through. This was done by selecting the tungsten colour filter and tweaking exposure.

This is what the images looked like after all these processes had been carried out.

After this I created the curves layers again so I can burn and dodge using the brush tool to create accentuated highlights and  shadows for detail purposes.















Moving on from this point the final image created was flattened  and I began to cut thin regular strips which I put onto a new layer.
 to make this differ I though about introducing the aspect of movement in the image as clouds are moving artefacts of the sky. I used the smudge tool and lowered its strength to achieve smooth smudges in the directions that the clouds where pointing.  This gave the stripes motion blur that help the outer line and didn't distort the background.

When revealing the background layer this was the final outcome and it almost looks breathing cloud illusion which was the desired outcome.

(IIIi in A04)

Image 4:

The edit for this image is a similar style to that of the first image using the same techniques however relating back to the 2nd images if Jeremey Tourvieille that shows the irregular coastal cliff edited onto a woman face, I deiced to explore the irregularity of the clouds and how I can use that to explore this series of inversion so after creating the guides; they help with keeping everything precise when cutting and slicing as well as selecting. this is because I have switched on the snap on function after measuring and drawing the guides. this ensures that my selection stays precises to the guides and the selection stays exactly where I want it.  I created horizontal slices to ad a different plane to this images as it seems refreshing compared to the other images.

The image was developed further by using the magic wand tool you can see active in the image to the left. This allowed the computer to select areas of the clouds that I wouldn't have been able to by hand. With this function I chose various areas that I wanted to revert or invert to create a sense of increase depth. The effect that I achieved from this gives an ambiguity to which image is in front or behind and/if there is a significant distance between the 2. This gives the audience something to asses when viewing the photograph that will be almost like a persistent unforgettable thought; this could help in further exposure of my work as an artist and people remembering my work rather than forgetting the "normal" traditional photography of clouds people may see. This I feel is an import aspect of photography as I have now learn to develop myself as an artist and have a consistent style.

(IVi in A04)

A03:

My images link to my research from this shoot in variety of ways.  This mostly is because of the similarity of techniques used to create my final outcomes. 
This shoot went really well however i did have to adjust the camera settings due to the amount of light present due to the presence of the sun.  But after the settings where dialled in the shoot went to plan and no hiccups where met along the way. 

Although my images are not paintings they link to the work of Amanda Clyne. This is because she was my first influence in creating these digital sliced images after seeing her sliced portraits which in essence although are on a different artistic media, the style and composition of her artwork is heavily reflected in my final images due to the slicing of the original image and the reformatting of the final image. 

However reflecting and evaluating my pieces I can see they seem very regular and repetitive as the slices have been created out of the same images to develop this further and to further link my images to the work of Clyne in the future I could compose an image from various slices taken from different images as she has done in many of her collections.

In relation to Jeremy Tourvielle my

work link mostly to his work and every image can be clearly associated with his series "mapping" and his distinct techniques have been involved into my images which I have been able to make my own by using the inversion function instead of colour scales or monotone compositions.

the images all have a meaning behind that expresses the distortion of the clouds. this for me connotes to the distortion that is portrayed in the media and as showcased by the cloud, which are irregular objects and like people all individual. It explores the theme of manipulation on what is the true colour and intent of a person? are they just acting the way they act as they are that way or is there an alternate motive. The cloud could be inverted or not who knows, it was about creating that illusion for the eye; eye can only see but cannot tell you the truth from the lie...

    AO4: SHOOT BEST IMAGES (editied)

Ii

IIi

IIIi

IVi

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