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AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

Homework 5: Abstract Colour and Texture

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Julian Schulze

Julian Schulze is a Berlin born and based minimalist Photographer who chooses to focus on geometric abstractions and minimalist compositions with high contrast and wide ranges of colour. His work is very expansive and eye catching ,consisting of architectural features of cityscape environments

His work ranges from everyday scenes taken from different perspectives to mind blowing pieces that play with your perception and that can really make you question what it is you are looking at.

Below are some examples of his work

Image result for julian schulze

Image result for julian schulze

Image result for julian schulze

Image result for julian schulze

I have decided to use Schulze as my inspiration due to his portrayal  of colour and shape in his works, as well as his ability to truly capture the imagination of his Audience.

Shooting

For my Julian Schulze inspired shoot, I decided to go to my local town area and identify buildings and scenes that I thought matched this criteria in terms of colour shape and texture. I photographed high rise office blocks and items in the street to try and truly emulate this style

Contact Sheets

Here are my contact sheets for this project

Final Image Selection

An old CD Hung up outside a shop to scare birds off of the fresh fruit. whole background has been lowered in vibrance and the CD isolated and adjusted

Black and white garage doors, no alerting needed

Open sign outside a restaurant with red LED’s. Red border around the outside to supplement the colour

Black and white desaturated street corner

Illuminated office blocks

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

High contrast images with Keld Helmer-Petersen

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Keld Helmer-Peterson was a Danish photographer who took abstract photographs. He was heavily inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch and Aaron Siskind. This photographer took images of things like buildings, and edited his photos until the contrasts were very high. He published many books that contained heavily contrasted images, like the one below. He took the images in the books using cameras, and also bed scanners. All the images in the book are surrounded by a lot of space and sometimes even text.

 

My images

For my following experimentation, I have chosen 4 abstract images I have previously taken to edit on Photoshop. To edit all the images I have adjusted the threshold, by going to image then selecting ‘adjustments’. For each image I have then adjusted the threshold until i has satisfied that I had a heavily contrasted image that i was happy with. Below i have included screenshots of my process for each image.

The original image

My final image.

 

 

 

My second image

My final image.

 

 

 

 

My 3rd image

My final image.

 

 

 

My 4th original image

My final image.

My final piece

For my final pieces, I have attempted to create images like the ones Helmer- Petersen presented in his books. I think my images turned out very successful as they are very heavily contrasted and all the mid tones have also been removed. Because the paper I took pictures of was very scrumped, there were many different points on the paper that were illuminated by light, and other parts that were more shadowed. I think that has helped my images look very interesting after I had photo shopped them as there is a nice blend of both black and white on my final images.

 

 

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

Layer Mask Experiment

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Intro

Layer Masking is a process that involves creating a layer of color over an existing image and removing parts of the new layer to have certain parts of the photo visible.

Method

I loaded up Photoshop and selected my Image I wished to edit

I then went to Layer-New Fill layer-Solid color and selected a colour from the image that would accent the image and layer and applied it and removed sections of the layer

Here are a few final edits

Instead of using circles, I chose to focus mainly on squares and rectangles in order to isolate different parts of an image to highlight them or to create a nice visual effect.

 

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 1 Abstract

KELD HELMER PETERSEN

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Keld Helmer Petersen was a Danish photographer who gained widespread recognition for his color abstract work in the 1940s and 1950s. He was the pioneer of Danish modernist photography and published his first book 122 color photographs in 1948. He Established a himself as a photographer of architecture and design and while also being known for his color images, he later transitioned into more abstract photography, taking influences from German and American photography as well as international abstract art.

Keld Helmer Petersen’s Abstract photography:

Structure 2 By Keld Helmer Petersen
Black Noise by Keld Helmer Petersen

I wanted to recreate Petersen’s work involving cranes and scaffolding using the threshold tool on Photoshop with my most recent photo-shoot. I wanted to emulate the same sense of atmosphere created by Petersen’s photographs. many of the images that I have Chosen had Petersen’s Photos in mind while editing.

My Final Images:

I wanted these Images to replicate that of Petersen’s Black Noise photograph and evoke the same feelings that his work does. I wanted to create the a similar image, while also using my own style combined with that of Petersen’s. This image, while it mainly takes inspiration from Black Noise, it also takes inspiration from many other pieces of his work.

I decided that the Harbor was not the only place to get pictures of industrial buildings and materials. These photographs were taken in town on a building site that was under construction. I wanted to create a high contrast, B&W picture using the threshold tool, and decided that scaffolding with the backdrop of a white sky would work to my advantage.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation

Threshold Experimentation – Keld Helmer Petersen

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Keld Helmer Peterson was an architectural photographer who did a lot of working regarding experimentation with high contrast images featuring man made structures.

A similar effect can be created using the threshold tool in Photoshop

I found that Graffiti translated well into the threshold tool however it creates a rather boring image. I also like how the barbed wire looks when using the threshold tool as it creates an abstract, repeating but chaotic pattern.

I found that introducing grain into the flatter images helped the image react better to the threshold tool. however i was careful not to add too much grain as it would result in the image simply looking like a grainy black and white image.

This was one of my favorite images of the photo-shoot. The fence reacted very nicely to the threshold tool giving a strong contrast to the white walls littered with graffiti.

This is my favorite image of the photo-shoot, while the original image was taken in very low lighting, the threshold tool works nicely to highlight the main subject of the photo.

Here I experimented with photographing various signs. On the second image the rust and the peeling vinyl on the sign creates some interesting texture to prevent the image from being too flat.

AO1 Develop Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

Keld Helmer-Peterson- My Final Pieces

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Steps on how to use Threshold on Adobe Photoshop

  1. Open your chosen photo of Adobe Photoshop
  2. Go IMAGE-> ADJUSTMENT -> THRESHOLD
  3. Slide the curser up and down to get different depths of black and white contrast intensities
  4. Create a new separate A4 page
  5. Ctrl + A and drag image into page
  6. Ctrl+ T to change the shape of the image

My Own Idea with Threshold

After experimenting with several different images, and trying different levels of threshold to help represent the contracts of black and white I chose these four photos as my final pieces. In these four photos  I have used fairly high levels of threshold meaning the images are more strongly black compared to white.

 

For my final four photographs, I wanted to try closely link the textures and theme together to ensure the final piece looked well put together. To complete this idea I  used a theme of nature, due the fact all my images were well linked as they included, a flowers and leaves in each photograph. This  gave the final image a well grouped together appearance. For the texture of the image I wanted to go with ‘block’ like colour to give the feel that the image has been filled in with white and black pens. To do this the threshold on each image was slightly higher than the middle level on the scale, I did this because as previously mentioned I wanted the piece to be darker using black to reflect that rather than  white, so each image contained more black shades than white shades. This made it a lot simpler when I put the four pieces together as they all merged into each other well together. For the presentation of my four  images which had now been transformed i wanted to keep it simple, therefore i just placed evenly all four images on an A4 piece of paper and this was my final outcome.

On the other hand I wanted to complexly contrast with my original idea of solid colours and little texture. Therefore I began to experiment using different images and different levels of threshold which soon presented me with many different textures. I yet again put another four different images together but this time tried to portray texture and threshold in a different light and this is what I came up with: