Guillaume Amat used old archival images from world war two and went to the locations where they were taken. He then digitally manipulated the images to add the archival images the into the same place in the image where they originally were. I believe he made this set of images as a reminder to people what happened in the war and how the scars of war are still there if you look hard enough.
This is work have recreated from my own images of the sand dunes and archival from the J.E.P archive. I chose the sand dunes (Blanches Banques) as my chosen area as it was used as a prisoner of war camp in war world two. I edited the images in three different ways: The first was in the style of Guillaume Amat’s images, where he roughly blends the two images together. In the second I laid the the old image over the new images with no manipulation to show the whole of the second image. The in the last of the experiments, I superimposed a frame around the archival image like my previous shoot but without the use of a model holding the frame.
Photoshoot Plan: I want to take some simple portraits to edit in the style of Nigel Tomm, I have already looked at his work and the concept behind it using found images from magazine to manipulate the stereotypical ideals of beauty conveyed. I now want to take my own photos which I can edit in a similar way and experiment further with. As a starting point I want to take photos on a plain white background in the style of a model headshot focusing of facial features and angles. I want to use bright natural light to illuminate my models face evenly, the model will be wearing neutral colours which will match the colour scheme.
I am happy with how this shoot turned out, not all of the photos will be able to be used after going through the images I am confident I will have enough to start experimenting with. The lighting on the day was extremely bright, this gave the images a nice glowing colour however it made harsh shadows caused my model squint in some photos. My favourite photos from this shoot are the ones taken from a side angle with the model looking at the camera directly, the one of the model looking back over her shoulder follows a traditional style of female beauty. It gives a feminine, gentle look to the image which can not be achieved as well by portraits taken at a straight on square angle. Many of the images i found in magazines were taken at this angle and i wanted to replicate this in the images I take.
Martin Parr traveled to the Tokyo subway photographing sleeping commuters, many of whom travel for hours every day. Photographed from above, the 24 colour images give the impression that one is standing on a busy commuter train looking down at those lucky enough to get a seat. I have chosen to research this photographer and this particular project of his because it relates well to both my own project idea and the exam title variation and similarity. With my idea to create images using buses as my transportation and location this project gave me some inspiration to think about different ways that i could include variation and similarity within my idea of taking photos from the bus, with this in mind I got the idea to get the variation in my project from photographing a variety of bus routes in different ares, and also at different times of the day, creating the similarity within the photos by always taking the photos from a bus, just like Martin Parr created all these photos on the subway. Whilst looking at Martin Parr’s work I also came across another of his projects which linked well to my project, ‘The Last Resort’, a series of images created between 1983 and 1985 at the seaside in New Brighton.
GB. England. New Brighton. From ‘The Last Resort’. 1983-85.
GB. England. New Brighton. From ‘The Last Resort’. 1983-85.
Between 1938 and 1941, Walker Evans took his camera underground, where he photographed subway riders in New York City. In order to discreetly capture these candid Subway Portraits, Evans came up with an undercover method of taking photographs. He concealed his 35-millimeter Contax camera by painting its shiny chrome parts black and hiding it under his topcoat, with only its lens peeking out between two buttons. He rigged its shutter to a cable release, whose chord snaked down his sleeve and into the palm of his hand, which he kept buried in his pocket. For extra assurance, he asked his friend and fellow photographer Helen Levitt to join him on his subway shoots, believing that his activities would be less noticeable if he was accompanied by someone. With these methods, Evans managed to capture people immersed in conversation, reading, or seemingly lost in their own thoughts and moods. His subjects’ faces display a range of emotions. He also succeeded in accomplishing a difficult challenge in making truly unposed portraits.
After looking at Rinko’s work I found that she focused a lot on the nature and things that weren’t manmade and had appeared naturally. So I thought that it would be best to do this shoot in a woods, however on the day that I was planning to do the shoot the weather was very over cast. So if I had gone to the woods it would have been very dark, which isn’t what I wanted. So instead I went to Queens Valley Reservoir which is very open had has no trees covering it, the light here wasn’t that good but it would have been better than what would have been in the woods.
As this shoot was meant to focus on photograph the small little things that I was normally pass by without thinking, it made me look at the environment surrounding me in a way that I’ve never seen it before. It made me slow down and really look around and appreciate the beauty of the things that were around me. I think that this shoot was successful, but I do wish that the weather had been sunny as I think that this would have enriched the quality images.
When looking at Rinkos work I found that it all has this style which, is very bright and light, so when it came to the editing process I wanted to experiment with this technique. But I still wanted the images to have their natural colours and not be too manipulated, so they still had this sense of pureness to them.
This was the first image that I took when doing the shoot, at first I passed by these bunch of roses that appeared to be dead on the side of the path. Because they looked like they had been stood on, but when I picked them up they were not destroyed at all. I thought that by having my hand in the shot gave the image a human touch which I really liked. To edit his image, I slightly increased the vibrancy of the image and increased the contrast to make the image more appealing. Lastly increased the lightnes of the image, this has given it this slightly hazy effect, I have dont this with all of the image from this shoot. I did this to keep the images to be in the style of Rinko work.
Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. Today, Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on ‘Animal Locomotion’ in 1877-78. He used multiple cameras to capture motion and stop-motion photographs that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography. In the 1880s, he netered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate movements. He also edited and published compilations of his work, which greatly influenced visual arts and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography. Muybridge became successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects. He converted a lightweight carriage into a portable darkroom to carry out his work while he photographed the American west. Muybridge took enormous physical risks to make his photographs, using a heavy view camera and stacks of glass plate negatives. A spectacular stereograph he published in 1872 shows him sitting casually on a projecting rock over the Yosemite Valley, with 2,000 feet (610 m) of empty space yawning below him.
Muybridge in Yosemite Valley 1872
Eadweard Muybridge – Horse in motion 1886
The study is called ‘Sallie Gardener at Gallop’ or ‘The Horse in Motion’; it shows images of the horse with all feet off the ground. This did not take place when the horse’s legs were extended to the front and back, as imagined by contemporary illustrators, but when its legs were collected beneath its body as it switched from “pulling” with the front legs to “pushing” with the back legs.
In 1872, the former Govenor of California, Leland Stanford, a race-horse owner, hired Muybridge for some photographic studies to scientifically prove how horses moved during gallop. There had been debates about whether a horse were off the ground at the same time as trotting or galloping. Muybridge began to experiment with a range of 12 cameras photographic a galloping horse in a sequence of shots. The human eye cannot break down the fast movement of a horse trot and gallop. Up until this time, most artists painted horses at a trot with one foot always on the ground and at a full gallop with the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear with all feet off the ground. Muybridge proved Stanford was right; horses have moments during their gallop where they are completely airborne however, Muybridge hadn’t quite perfected the process of capturing movement quickly.
Between 1878 and 1884, Muybridge perfected his method of photographing horses in motion, proving that they do have four hooves off the ground during their running stride. In 1872, Muybridge had settled Stanford’s question with a single photographic negative showing his horse trotting, also full airborne at the trot. Muybridge later made additional studies, as well as improving his camera for faster shutter speed and faster film emulsions. By 1878, spurred on by Stanford, to expand his experiments, Muybridge had successfully photographed a horse at trot. ‘Scientific American’ was among the publications at the time that carried reports of Muybridge’s ground-breaking images.
Disc for Zoopraxiscope showing the movement of a horse gallop
Stanford also wanted a study of the horse at gallop. Muybridge planned to take a series of photographs on June 15 1878, at Stanford’s ‘Palo Alto Stock Farm’ which is now the campus of Stanford University. He placed numerous large glass-plate cameras in a line along the edge of the track; the shutter of each was triggered by a thread as the horse passed [in later studies he used a clockwork device to set off the shutters and capture the images]. The path was lined with cloth sheets to reflect as much light as possible. He copied the images in the form of silhouettes onto a disc to be viewed in a machine he had invented, the ‘Zoopraxiscope’. This device was later regarded as an early movie projector, and the process as an intermediate stage toward the motion pictures of cinematography.
For this shoot I wanted to recreate the style of alexandra Waespi which can be seen in the image above. I did this shoot in my bedroom using a black piece of sugar paper as the backdrop for the images. The reason that I did the shoot in my own home rather than in the studio at school, was the I wanted to use natural lighting rather than artificial, and I would also have more control about the amount of light that comes through.
For this shoot I used a bunch of flowers that I had gotten my mother for Mother’s day. To create the images I slowed down the shutter speed of my camera to around an 8″ of second, I found that if it was any slower the definition of the flowers was lost and if it was any faster the image did not have the effect the ‘drag’ effect which is what I really wanted. To crete the ‘drag’ effect I eaved the flowers around in different patterns and variations, I would take one images then look back at it, decided it I liked the pattern that had been created, if not I would try a different pattern if I did I would try and create it again. When editing the images all I did was increase the vibrance and the contrast in the images, this made the images more impactful and more appealing to the viewer.What I like the most about these images is that they tie into the themes of ‘variation and similarity’ because every image from the shoot has a completely different look and feel to it which is something that I really wanted to achieve.
For this shoot I wanted to create a response to the works of Fontana as I really liked the simplicity created through his highly saturated images. What drew me to his imagery was his use of using the textures and patterns found in nature and man-made objects to create impressions of the landscape around him in a way which would not have usually been percieved. From this shoot I would aim to achieve a new style of photography which I could then go onto incorporate into possible future works especially the aspects of colours, something I don’t normally consider when doing shoots. To create the desired effect I would probably have to manually increase the contrast and saturation within my settings of the camera in order to produce the outcome for the photos I would like. Using Fontana as my main source of inspiration I decided to have a look at some of his works which I found to be of particular interest:
Once I had gone over a few of Fontana’s imagery I decided it was nearly time to go ahead with the shoot itself. However before doing so I wanted to create a mind-map for the goals when taking photographs, by doing so for me it would reduce wasted time as it would allow me to quickly identify what I wanted to capture in order to achieve the results needed. Not only would this stop wasted time but allow me longer to focus on the things that I may not have realised if doing the shoot there and then. Here are some of my ideas:
Once I had completed my mind-map I decided it was time to actually go ahead with the shoot. To do this I wanted to explore the area North of Jersey as this area had the highest number of agriculture out of Jersey as it would provide me with the subjects needed to achieve the aims of the shoot. Using my mind-map as my primary source of inspiration and ideas I explored the footpaths which surrounded the North coast looking at how the blue sky could contrast the hills. Here are the results of my shoot:
Once I had completed the shoot I then wanted to go onto select out ten images that I thought were most effective and related most to not only the topic title of textures and patterns but also saturation. By doing this it would allow me to reflect on each image and make in easier to choose out a selection of five from that so that I could later on pick one overall image that I thought best reflected my intentions for the shoot. Here is my selection for the ten images I thought were best suited to the topic of saturation regarding textures and patterns:
After I had selected the ten images that I thought worked best regarding the topic title I decided to then whittle them back down to five images, by doing this it would allow me to analyse each image in more depth looking at things such as the visual and technical aspect of the pieces that I thought made them work well and link back towards the title of saturation and make my overall choice of best image easier. Here is my selection of the five best images from my shoot:
I selected this image because I loved how the orange contrasted the blue sky with the tree breaking up the dominant two colours. What I liked about this was how the two main colours compliment each other, however to stop both colours from becoming to eye-sore to the viewer the use of a lighter shaded tree and its shadow provide us with an implicit focus to what we almost instantly draw our eyes to. I also really liked the symmetry present within the photo as the skyline and pathway with the tree line up against each other as it presented the viewers with an overall sense of aestheticism. When looking over the image I found that it related well in response to saturation evident through the orange grass and the overly blue sky, this sense of other-worldly colour for me gives the viewer the impression of an over exaggerated landscape which has certainly been edited.
What I really loved about this image was the over use of blue to create the impression of an artificial sky, complimented by the patterns created from the tree branches I found that this worked well due to the overcast impression it paints on the photograph. For me I found that the use of the negative space taken up by the blue really brought the image together due to how it prevents the pattern of branches from completely covering the entire composition. The image itself relates well to saturation from how the use of an overly blue sky creates the impression of something to perfect to be true, with the photograph linking to texture and pattern through the branches which grow in random directions that produce a hige sense of aestheticism against the blue sky.
I chose this image because of how I loved the golden colours of the grass contrasted to the rippling water. For me this image represented two over exaggerated aspects of nature, especially as an island where we are surrounded by water presenting both the land and sea side by side in a sort of aesthetic and beautiful state creates the transition between the two as a natural mirror. I found that the gold presenting throughout the image as the main reason for choosing the photo due to it adding character to the water, reflecting the overlapping pattern of the grass as it grows. As a result of this I found that the two contrasting textures present in this image, being the rippling water and the overlapping grass as complimenting each other as one provides a more abstract representation for the other. The saturated golds in the piece also link it to the title through the coloured reflection that would not usually been seen by the everyday eye.
For me I selected this image because of its use of neutral space to create a more abstract impression of the landscape and whats in it. For me the tree against the blue sky was what brought the image together due to how it broke up the otherwise dull composition of the photo, what I found was how the messy texture of the grass completely contrasted the smooth matte texture of the sky which sorts of juxtaposes it. I liked how the composition that took into consideration the angle of the hill made use of the sky and contrasting orange grass surrounding it so that it would not become too overpowering. Overall I find this image did reference well regarding the topic of saturation, however looking at texture and pattern it did not serve a great load towards possible patterns except through grass.
Finally I selected this image because of the natural gradient created by the sun, sky and grass to produce this sort of golden natural film over the waters surface. For me this piece worked well because of how no real use of saturation editing was used due to how vibrant the surface of the water was on that sunny day with only a bit of cropping being needed. I really liked how the composition of the piece was based around a fifty fifty colour wise, with the golds taking the top and the blues the bottom, because of this for me the piece was well balanced with no aspect overpowering the other and creating an aesthetic product. However when looking over the image I did not find it had a great deal to do with saturation due to there being no actual reflection of a saturated landscape.
After looking over the visual, technical and conceptual aspects of the five selected images I was happy enough to come to a conclusion regarding which image would be best to reflect my intentions around saturated photography whilst also looking at the title textures and patterns. Here is my final decision towards the topic of saturation:
Final Image:
I chose this image as my final photograph to sum up my chosen topic because of the contrasting sides to the landscape it presents using highly saturated colours. For me the dominant use of yellows and golds in the photo bring about great aestheticism whilst highlighting how areas of our environment provide us with varying textures and pattern (such as ripples in the water and the overlapping of grass), something that the everyday eye would not take in unless looked upon carefully. Symmetry played a part in this decision due to how it presented the image as visually pleasing, stopping both the water and land from becoming too overpowering.
To plan out my shoots I have split up the map of all the bus routes into sections, I will then start by picking a route from each section and taking this bus to the end and back. I will also be starting by doing all my first shoots at a certain time, such as 14:00, once I have completed all shoots at this time I plan to do a second set of shoots at a different time such as 10:00. I plan to capture different perspectives by sitting at different levels on the buses, for example on the lower and upper levels of the double decker buses, by doing this I hope to create two different atmospheres in my photos, one as more of an invisible onlooker and the other as more a member of the crowd and community. My plan is to begin with these 10 routes the cover a wide area of the island, they are routes 12a, 22, 28, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1a and 16.
For this experiment I took six photos to start off and then I went through the process of Creating the GIF. These are the six original photos.
-The process
Upload your images to Photoshop.
Open up the Timeline window.
In the Timeline window, click “Create Frame Animation.”
Create a new layer for each new frame.
Open the same menu icon on the right, and choose “Make Frames From Layers.”
Under each frame, select how long it should appear for before switching to the next frame.
At the bottom of the toolbar, select how many times you’d like it to loop.
Preview your GIF by pressing the play icon.
Save and Export Your GIF.
After following the process the final GIF I was left with looks like this. I feel it shows variation and similarities of keyboards, monitors and the mouse, which is the bases of the project I will be working towards.
