Plan
What am I photographing? and How?
I’m photographing different shaped white paper, as a response to Jerry Reed’s ‘Paper Work’. I aim to capture heavy shadows and contrasting tones by using strong, artificial lighting.
I want to capture geometrical shapes, parallel and curved lines within my images to incorporate formal elements into my abstract photos.
Photoshoot
Editing process
1-
Without a studio to work with I substituted the studio lighting for more accessible LED flashlights. This ensured that the light emitted was not yellow and would reflect the white of the paper more successfully.
When recreating Jerry Reed’s work, I aimed to increase the contrast in the image. I began the process by decreasing brightness and increasing contrast in Photoshop, allowing the shadows within the image to be more prominent. I then altered the exposure, increasing it afterwards to enhance the white tones in the paper. Raising the ‘Gamma correction’ slightly allowed for darker shadows.
Using the ‘Curves’ tool, I decreased the glare on the top piece of paper as well as intensifying the shadows, which, in turn, increased the contrast of the image. Converting the image to black and white removed the red and yellow tones of the photo, resulting in an objective image with no warmth (reflecting the work of Reed).
Finally, I used the ‘Maximum black’ preset to increase the shadows to my desired extent. Most of the yellow and purple tones were present in the dark areas of the image so decreasing the percentage of these resulted in a more contrasted image.
I experimented with cropping to line the pages up withing each of the thirds. Rotating the image clockwise additionally created a more abstract image alongside the cascading effect caused by lining the pages up in each third.
2-
I selected the background of the image using the quick select tool, then, using the eyedropper tool, I selected a cool tone within the background and filled in the selected area. I did this as I wanted to amplify the contrast between the lit-up paper and the vacant space where no light is present.