After observing and analyzing the work of Keld Helmer-Petersen, I took 4 images that I think best suit the style of his work, and used Photoshop to mimic the silhouette-effect that he produces in his work, in order to respond to his work successfully.
The following images are the images that I decided were most like the work of Helmer-Petersen:
In order to give my images the silhouette effect, I used the Threshold option on Photoshop. The following images explain the process I used to achieve the image above:
Step 1) First, I opened the image that I wanted to use for the project. I decided on photographs that had clear boarders and contrasting colours, that way when i edit the image with Threshold, the boarders will remain more obvious.
Step 2) Next, in order to edit the image, I chose the image option on the top toolbar, and then selected Adjustments, and then Threshold. Clicking this option immediately opens the threshold level adjuster.
Step 3) After clicking threshold, the option to adjust the threshold is made available. By sliding the arrow left and right, the image changes from containing more black, to containing more white. I adjusted the image so that the outlines of the subjects were clear, but there wasn’t too much black in the image.
The image above is an example of how an image looks after the threshold has been adjusted in Photoshop. This editing tool is very useful when editing images to look like the work of Keld Helmer-Petersen, as it allows for the image to show as simply black and white, and emphasizes the shape and detail of the image due to it’s simplicity.
Started taking photographs in 1938 when he got a camera as a graduation present.
Interested in German inter-war photography and the new objectivity movement.
inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch.
1948 – Published 122 Colour Photographs.
Began to experiment with the contrast in graphic black and white expression influenced by constructivist artists and their fascination with industry’s machines.
Pushed limits of the media
Throughout his career he worked with “cameraless” photography (a darkroom technique in which objects are placed directly on light-sensitive photographic paper).
Barth is a contemporary Photographer who was born in Germany and lives and works in Los Angeles. She focuses a lot on the nature of vision. She enjoys exploring the way humans see things, compared to the way a camera sees things. A lot of her work is purposely captured out of focus, and some of her work also creates a bokeh effect. This is when light appears in images in a type of spot formation, as it is not sharp and in focus. This means that most of her work is abstract.
Barth Mood Board
Analysing Barth’s images
This image uses a variety of successfultechnicalelements. For example, her image looks to be taken outside in natural daylight. This image is also very bright and almost unnaturally white. This could be due to many elements. For example, she could have used a high ISO making the camera allow more light into the image. She could have also used a slower shutter speed which would make the image look overexposed. Lastly, she could have also used a White Balance setting that made her image have a lighter tint.
Thevisual elements are also very interesting. Although the image is highly unfocused and not sharp its clear that the scenery the photographer was standing in front was very aesthetically pleasing. I like how this image has captured a bokeh effect, as it helps add a more interesting visual point to this image. I like the composition of the image because there are many successful elements to it. It is interesting how you can vaguely make out some distant buildings in the background, a long road with symmetric tyre tracks through the snow in the ground, and also some snowflakes falling in front of the lens.
Firstly, there are many technicalelements that make this image a success. The lighting in the image is interesting, it seems to be taken in daylight outside. This image is also very blurred, and not sharp or in focus. The ISO of this image seems to be quite high as the image is very bright, as due to the high ISO the lens is allowing a lot of light into it. As the image is very white it is possible that the photographer used a type of White Balance setting like daylight, for example.
The visualelements are also helpful when making this image successful. The color of this image is attractive to the eye because it is very white and plain, and the tonal contrast in this image is also very high due to the present black and white tones. I really like the layout of this image as the trees fill the entire frame in the background, and I like how the photographer has captured this image with random people in the frame.
There also may be an underlying concept in this image. The photographer has chosen to capture street photography in this unclear manor. She may be trying to voice her opinion on everyday life. Because she chose to capture the photo unclearly, she may be trying to portray life as being unclear.
Mood BoardMy response to her work
2nd photo shoot
Editing my images
This my my original, unedited image.
This is my final, edited outcome
This is my original image
This is my final, edited piece.
This is my beginning image.
This is my edited outcome.
My final 3 outcomes
This image contains many technicalelements. This image was taking at night, when it was dark. This helps make my image successful as it meant that the lights coming from the town were even brighter in contrast to the black sky. The image was taken using manual focus, which allowed me to purposely make it blurry in order to achieve the bokeh affect. The ISO was set at 12800. This helped make the lights in my image stand out even more because the higher ISO helps to make light more noticeable in the image.
The visualaspects of this picture are also interesting. This image contains a lot of light. All the colors seem to blend in together nicely, as they are similar shades and tones. This means that the photograph is very pleasing on the eye, as it all seems to go well together nicely. Because the photo is also blurry and out of focus, it has an interesting overall “soft” looking texture.
This image also includes many technicalelements. Like the other images, it was taken at night in the darkness as this helps to emphasis the small specs of light as it highly contrasts with the darkness. I also used manual focus on this, to be able to blur everything within the frame.
This image is very visually simplistic compared to the others. This is due to small amount of light captured. In a way, although there is less light, this image almost stands out more than the others due to the darkness surrounding it. I also cropped this image on Photoshop so that the object pictured was on the first third of the image. I think the rule of thirds helps to make this image more successful as it will attract more of my audience’s attention.
The technicalskills used to take this image really help to make is successful. To begin with, I took this image using manual focus, this allowed me to focus my lens on the rain drops, while creating the Bokeh affect in the background. My ISO was set at 6400, as it was dark outside, and I wanted as much light to be seen as possible. I also had an f/5.6 for this image. This helped let a medium amount of light it, and also helped slightly blur the background. The shutter speed was set at 1/60 meaning that it didn’t have much of a long exposure, which allowed the image to come out focused.
The visualcomposition of the photograph is also very interesting. The colors captured in the photo are very captivating, as they are bright and they stand out. This makes my image successful as it is eye catching, and will attract peoples attention. There is also a contrast in colors within my image due to the colorful lights and the plain, dark background. This further helps the colored lights stand out. The rain on the glass is also very helpful in making the light more prominent.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940s and 1950s for his abstract colour photographs.
Helmer-Petersen was born and grew up in the Østerbro quarter of Copenhagen. He started taking photographs in 1938. At an early stage, he became aware of the trends in international photography; in the 1940s he subscribed to the US Camera Annual and in this period became familiar with German inter-war photography, which had developed at the Bauhaus and in the Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) movement.
The international prospect and an interest in contemporary art and architecture contributed to the fact that at the age of 23, Helmer-Petersen, as one of the first Danish photographers, began to work with an abstract formal language. Inspired by the Bauhaus and Albert Renger-Patzsch, he published in 1948, the bilingual book 122 Farvefotografier/122 Colour Photographs. This was an audacious debut by an auto didactic photographer who wanted to assert the position of photography as an independent art form. Today, the book is considered to be a pioneering work in the area of colour photography.
Examples of his work
My Images (Unedited)
Process Of Editing
Firstly, I went on image, adjustments then threshold.
I then decided to play around with the sliders to achieve the photo below.
Then I decided to play around with brightness and contrast to improve the look of the photo.
My Images (Edited)
Here are my final four photos edited with the threshold effect. I really like how these images turned out because I think they are quite similar to Keld Helmer-Petersen’s style of photography. I really like this style of editing because it gives it a very unique and abstract feel to the photo.
PROCESS/AIMS: For this photography skills photo shoot, we concentrated on capturing different photos relating to shutter speed, exposure and white balance. Trying out different setting, at different intensities (i.e 1/20, 1/8, 1/4 for shutter speed) in order to see what effect this will have on the final photos.
SHUTTER SPEED:
In order to capture the effects of decreasing the shutter speed, we had a person walk across a white backdrop. The motion blur seen by the subject shows us that a slow shutter speed has been used meaning that a crisp image was not take. It is also clear that the shutter speed was very slow due to the overexposed background, as more light is let in the longer the shutter is open. The effect is caused by the relative motion between the camera, and the objects and scene, motion blur may be avoided by panning the camera to track those moving objects.
WHITE BALANCE:
White balance is a setting on your camera which is used to control how colors are captured in different types of light. When you correctly set your white balance, you are taking into account the “color temperature” of the light in your scene. Color temperatures range from cool (blue tint) to warm (orange tint). In these next photos I experimented with changing the white balance of the images. I firstly set my camera to the daylight setting which in effect made the images slightly warmer in appearance. the white walls of the school clearly shows this when compared to the image below. I set my camera to the auto white balance setting which in turn made the white very neutral, not overly warm or cool toned.
EXPOSURE:
ISO in Digital Photography. In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The same principles apply as in film photography – the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain. In these next couple of images, the changing of ISO can clearly be seen. It was an extremely bright and sunny day therefore I knew that turning up the ISO to a higher setting (such as 800 or 1600) would result in very over exposed images with little potential. Setting the camera down to ISO 200 resulted in a more manageable image that is well exposed.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940s and 1950s for his abstract colour photographs.The pioneering effort with 122 Colour Photographs brought Helmer-Petersen a grant from the Denmark–America Foundation to study at the Institute of Design in Chicago. During his stay at the school, he both taught and studied under (with others) the American photographer Harry Callahan. Helmer-Petersen began to experiment with the contrast in graphic black and white expression influenced by constructivist artists and their fascination with industry’s machines and architecture’s constructions.A selection of the photographs that Helmer-Petersen created in Chicago was published in the little book Fragments of a City (1960). This offers a portrait of the city in thirty five tightly composed graphic images and is a radical example of Helmer-Petersen’s graphic and formal experimentation.
My Response
Editing process
In order to recreate Peterson’s work, I went through previous photo shoots and selected four images which I thought would go well with this mid tone idea. I then opened them all up on Photoshop and went up to image>adjustment>threshold. I then adjusted the slider until I was happy with the final outcome (These steps are shown below through the screen shots taken). I then changed the image sizes, in order to make them all the same size. Then on one of the images I doubled the width of the canvas sized and dragged another one of my images next to it. I then doubled the height allowing me to place the other two edits onto the screen, creating a grid of four. I then saved this edit to the size of an A4 paper, allowing me to print it out.
To start, I opened my photo in Photoshop and cropped the photo to my desired size.
Go to image ~ adjustments ~ threshold. The picture should adjust to black and white and a window with adjustments should pop up. Using these levels I played around to achieve the effect I wanted, which was the majority of the picture being made up of negative space.
I find negative space can add an eerie, obscure manner to the photograph. Normally we associate a busy, noisy picture with being the best image out there, but we never really stop and pause to appreciate minimalism in all its content glory.
I used the steps above with all the photographs to create my final works.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a danish photographer, who grew up in Copenhagen. He was gifted a Leica camera in 1938 which started up his career in the world of photography. Keld was good at spotting trends within photography at the time and how it was all war influenced which then progressed into The New Objectivity. Albert Renger-Patzsch was a big inspiration for him and opened him up to abstract photography and in 1948 he published the bilingual book 122 Farvefotografier/122 Colour Photographs. Colour photography was his first style but he began to experiment with contrast in black and white photographer, which is what he is now known for. He was influenced by constructionist artists and their interest with industry’s machines and architecture’s constructions. His photos displayed large amounts of structure and patterns within industrial areas.
Original Images
Editing
original imageImage-Adjustments-ThresholdImage-Adjustments-Threshold
Task
