LIGHT-BOX PRESENTATION 

As part of my final presentation I have constructed a light-box with slides and a holder for these slides. My plan for the making of this light-box is 2 posts previous.

Here are some photographs of the actual presentation before the use of any slides…

Here are the 14 outcomes which I decided to have printed on acetate to be the slides…

I chose these 14 images to be printed on acetate, as I believe from a viewer’s point of view they are very interesting compositions of: colour, texture, shape, tone, layer and text. I chose the images that I had produced with the white background as once printed on acetate the white will be transparent, allowing light to pass through creating a layered visual of various images.

Below are 14 photographs of each individual slide in the light-box not layered with any other slides…

I believe that as slides in the light-box these images are very successful. Below are some photographs of the slides layered onto of each other in the light-box…

Overall I am very satisfied with the outcome of this presentation as it it very similar to what I expected it to look like when having the idea for it. The way that the slides diffuse the light in the box and cast shadows of the objects is something that I believe is very aesthetically pleasing. Therefore I believe this idea came out as a success in response to my initial ideas. It shows response to Maha Malluh and Jim Golden (the two photographers who I’ve looked at in this project) and my idea of the x-ray scan aesthetic. The images display good understanding and control of composition, contrast, colour, texture, shape, tone, layer and text.

FINAL PRINTS

This post covers my final outcomes which i have decided I would like as prints and how I will present them. My following post to this will be looking at the light-box part of my final presentation. For my final prints I wanted to have a balance between white and black backgrounds of the images which I choose.

I have chosen this image as a final print as I believe it is very striking but with a large amount of detail. As a viewer your eyes don’t stop moving with this image because there is so much going on within the image. Although this could be seen as a negative aspect I believe it is successful due to the style of image which i have been wishing to produce throughout this project.

With the two above images I have decided to have them printed as i believe they are very successful pieces in terms of their balance of colours, shapes and text. Also the subjects/objects really stand out on top of the white background in order to create a very striking visual.

The three above images I believe are successful in terms of how they display layers and hidden elements. Hidden (secret) being something I have wanted to explore since the beginning of the project.

As I am also using a light-box as the main part of my presentation, I want to display my prints in a simple and minimal way. I will do this by putting each print individually onto a trimmed piece of foam-board and then place these pieces onto white mounting board. Here is the layout of how I plan to display these prints…

LIGHT-BOX IDEA

After looking into how X-ray scans work, I have come up with an idea to create a light-box as a method of presenting my final outcomes. In order to create this I will have to have my outcomes printed on acetate sheets, so that they can act as slides to go in a light-box. The inspiration from X-rays was that hard materials absorb x-rays in order to produce a layered image, but with the acetate slides the colour on the slides will absorb light in order to produce an image (X-rays and visible light both being part of the electromagnetic spectrum.) This is because the white from the images will be transparent once printed on acetate, meaning various pieces can be layered in order to create nearly endless combinations of images.

Here are some very quick 5 minute idea drawings for how I would like this light-box to look and function…

I plan to have my favorite outcomes of my white background images to be printed on acetate and then put inside suspension files because this will make sure the slides do not bend or misshape in the light-box.

I plan to make the actual light-box either out of scrap wood or a wine crate, as I will need to make it to fit the dimensions of the suspension files.

Here are two simple Photoshop edits of how I expect the images will look when layered in the light-box…

HOW DO X-RAYS WORK?

As I was basing a large part of this project on the aesthetic of x-ray scans, I thought it would be necessary to look into a simple explanation of how x-ray scans actually work.

So to put it briefly, x-ray scans work as soft materials do not absorb the x-ray radiation, whereas dense materials do. The absorption of the x-ray causes a negative image to be projected onto a photographic plate or the absorption is measured and then used to produce a digital image.

For example with bodily x-rays ‘The beam travels through the air, comes into contact with our body tissues, and produces an image on a metal film. Soft tissue, such as skin and organs, cannot absorb the high-energy rays, and the beam passes through them. Dense materials inside our bodies, like bones, absorb the radiation.‘

Merging Photos

As an experimentation I decided to see what effect it would have on my current images if I was to merge them with urban landscape photographs which I have from my coursework.

Below are the outcomes of this experimentation (Originals Left, Edits Right)…

Although this experimentation is interesting and gives the images another element, I personally think that it makes the images too complicated and possibly over-done.

THRESHOLD EXPERIMENTATION

Just as an experimentation, I decided to see what effect it would have on my images by using the threshold tool in order to get rid of any colours and shades, to see what my images would look like in bold black and white.

Below are some of the outcomes of this experimentation…

Personally I was not as much of a fan of this style of the images, as I believe the element of colour in the images I have previously produced have a high visual value to the image. This lack of colour being the downside of these images, I decided that changing the black for alternative colours could work, and here is what I came up with…

But I was still not a fan of this threshold style. I think this is because the colours within my original images give a lot of visual information about the textures, layers and contrasts of the objects within the images, and this is lost within this style. Therefore I believe this experimentation was unsuccessful in terms of image production, however it has helped me to look at the objects in terms of their shape and their placement.

WHITE BACKGROUNDS

After looking at the work of Jim Golden, I decided to experiment by inverting and enhancing the colours of the images which I have already produced, in order to see how a white background with the real object colourways work in comparison with the inverted colours on black. The outcome of these images is something that I am very satisfied with, as I believe that they have an alternative but equal visual value as the original inverted images. I simply used the curves tool on Photoshop in order to un-invert the images and enhance the colours. I enhanced the colours and I like when they’re enhanced they stand out a lot from the white background, due to the strong contrast. This allows the viewer to have focus simply on the objects without having any surrounding distraction in the images.

Here are the outcomes of this experimentation…

JIM GOLDEN

Jim Golden is a Portland based photographer who in this instance has produced various works which explore the idea of collection and objects. His work is very carefully layed out in order to balance composition and the effect of colour on lighting. The layout of these objects makes many things one collective, which is something I really like about his work.

Below are some examples of Golden’s work which I particularly am a fan of…

His work explores a large number of composure elements such as: Colour, Texture, Pattern, Contrast and Shape.

Here is a link to an article which looks at this particular collection of Golden’s work and the ideas behind it…

https://www.wired.com/2013/09/this-photographer-is-a-high-class-hoarder/

FURTHER OUTCOMES

As I was very satisfied with how my initial outcomes came out, I’ve decided to continue producing images using the same editing and composure techniques in order to produce the following images ,which I believe are strong pieces…

EDITING PROCESS

This post will be a step by step run-through of how I am Photoshopping the images…

The first part of the editing process can be approached in two ways, so I will run through both

Part 1-

Approach 1

 1 – Open one object/photograph in Photoshop.

2 – Use the curves tool in order to invert the image.

3 – Use the curves tool in order to get rid of any surrounding tones that aren’t black (as the black tones are removed later in the process when merging/overlapping the objects.)

4 – Once it is only black surrounding the object, crop the image as close to the object without getting rid of any of the object.

Approach 2 

1 – Open object/photograph, and then crop close to the object.

2 – Use the curves tool in order to remove any tones surrounding the subject that aren’t white.

3 – Then open a second curves tool in order to invert the image (as long as all tones around the subject were white before doing this, then once inverted all surrounding tones will be black.)

Part 2-

1 – By right clicking on the image layers flatten all images that you wish to compose.

2 – Once the images are flattened, open up a new blank Photoshop file

3 – Then use the invert tool to turn the image background black.

4 – Drag the flattened images into this piece.

5 – Position the images as you wish (As you can see, the black of the images overlap…)

6 – In order to remove get rid of the black/ blend the images together, double click on the image layer to open up blending options, in which you can edit how images overlap due to the opacity of certain tones within each image.

7 – In this case the black tones need to be removed from the images, therefore, using the blend mode drop down change ‘Normal’ to ‘Linear Dodge (Add)’ and leave the opacity at 100%. As you can see on the left of the image below, this removes any black tones of the image, but any necessary black in between is filled in by the black background.