My Edits:

These are my final edits that have been inspired by Dafna Talmor. I really like how they turned out, especially as all my images are able to work together as one piece despite being so abstract and visually different from one another in terms of colours. I think my composition has enhanced my edits to be the best they can be whilst still looking visually appealing along with my use of jagged edges that create a contrast between the different tones within each edit.

Comparing my work to Dafna Talmor’s:

Talmor has carefully taken apart her original image[s], making them all a variety of shapes, and pieced back together into a constructive landscape by hand, choosing not to have the different pieces line up perfectly and instead have leave some negative space in between certain parts of the image. I, however, took apart my image and pieced it together digitally. I chose not to include any negative space in between each piece, instead deciding to use the highlights and shadows to create contrast between the different areas of my image and make a different type of negative space.

We’ve both chosen to use colour in our work however we’ve both used different saturations. I decided to keep my photo a deep blue, aside from the white highlights and the darker shadows, allowing all the different elements in my image to merge together as one whilst Talmor chosen to keep her images their original colours, forming a more natural looking constructed landscape as all the pieces follow the same colour scheme.

Digital Exhibition:

Using photoshop, I edited my photos onto a plain exhibition wall in order to show how I’d want my photos to be mounted. Overall, I’m content with how my final outcomes came out and think that they’d look interesting presented in the way I’ve chosen.

Felicity Hammond is both an artist and a photographer who often uses a range of mediums when presenting her work in exhibitions, often aiming to immerse the viewer in her work via use of instillations, vibrant colours, lights and textures, ensuring the presentation of her work is just as engaging as the work itself. Her work tends to focus on “political contradictions within the urban landscape” as it’s something that she finds “fascinating”, often expressing her thoughts and feelings through her series’, displaying her work in a half-framed way with materials she’s gathered from old construction sites.

“In her work, Hammond focuses not only on the physical appearance of buildings, but also on their social impact: for whom are they intended and whom do they force out? Whether it concerns new residential homes or commercial properties, so-called “regeneration” is usually a euphemism for strictly entrepreneurial investment rather than any actual improvement for the local area and its inhabitants.” – ArtViewer.com

Image Analysis:

The photo being presented on a wall that looks incomplete and through what looks like a piece of ripped cardboard adds to the photo as it represents how humanity has ripped the Earth of its materials in order to create thousands of buildings, most of which have ended up being abandoned. This makes the piece even more visually interesting to the viewer as they get to see the photo from different angles and perspectives, changing how the image is perceived.

Dafna Talmor is a London based artist who tends to focus on photography and spatial interventions. She ‘s well known for her constructed landscapes which she creates by experimenting with her photographs in the darkroom after taking analogue photos and splicing them together to create new landscapes. Her process often involves removing man-made “interruptions” so she can use the leftover negatives to create her own, using much thought and care so her work isn’t “arbitrary”

“The thing that tends to be cut out initially is anything that is very obviously man-made, things like roads, structures, bridges; anything that is somehow interrupting the so-called ‘purity’ of the landscape…I realised I was creating my own man-made interruptions through the negative space that was left behind…I wanted a specific reason behind my cutting these negatives” – Dafna Talmor

Image Analysis:

Once I had a group of edits that I felt content with, I decided to bring them into photoshop and experiment on them by using the ‘patch’ tool and the ‘polygonal lasso’ tool in order to create constructive landscapes out of my 4 different images. I was inspired by Dafna Talmor’s work and decided that I wanted to do something similar with my own images which led to me using a lot of straight/jagged lines to try and create constructive landscapes with unrecognisable origins, similar as to what Talmor does with her work.

Experiment 1: ‘Patch tool’

I found working with the patch tool interesting as it would bring out new colours from within each image, giving the new edit a new life due to how different it was from the original. However, I also found that it was difficult to control as it would lighten and darken certain aspects of the edit when I didn’t want it to, sometimes making the edit seem messy or blotchy. Despite this, some of the results I achieved were still satisfactory as the lack of control made room for some interesting edits in terms of composition and tones, however, they weren’t what I was aiming to create.

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Experiment 2: ‘Jigsaw’

Although this process was much more time consuming compared to using the patch tool, I found that it was worth the time as I thought the results looked more complete and professional compared to my first experiment as I had more control over what I was doing. I find the jagged edges bring the different parts of the image together in order to create an interesting composition/layout and the colours [or lack thereof] compliment each other well, drawing attention towards the lighter and darker areas in the images rather than allowing all the colours to fuse together like my first experiment did.

Overall, I found that my second experiment looked best and I decided that I was going to use those edits for my final piece and scrap my first experiment.

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My Edits:

Although these aren’t my final edits, I still want to evaluate what I’ve done up to this point before I change these photos further and end up with a completely different set of images.

Comparing My Work to Felicity Hammond:

Hammond’s work is carefully made in order to portray how fascinated she is by “political contradictions within the urban landscape“. She tends to tint the shadows and highlights in her work, in this photo in particular she tints them blue and a greenish-yellow, which makes her work seem more dramatic, building a post-apocalyptic-esque scene which further emphasising how she feels about the environment. This is similar to what I did to my images as I used different tints in order to emphasize certain aspects of each image. In this image, I tinted the shadows a strong blue to draw more attention towards the ocean and used some green highlights to create an almost dusty visual as I attempted to depict a polluted scene.

Our work also shares some differences such as how Hammond built her photo, giving her full control of everything in her image which is well presented due to her experience as both a photographer and an installation artist. This helps give her photo a unique and rare touch as it looks like a dystopian environment but still includes aspects of urban environments. My image on the other hand, was a photo that I carefully took when outside, unlike Hammond, I didn’t collage my photo or add anything to it in order to create my own world, instead I decided to keep the image the way it was.

After looking through all my Felicity Hammonds inspired experiments, I chose some images that I wanted to use and further edit as I liked the way they turned out and wanted to group them together. Whilst Editing, I kept referencing Felicity Hammond’s work as I knew I wanted my edits to look similar to hers in terms of the use of colour and in terms of representing the environment.

My Edits:

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In order to create this edit, I decreased the saturation of everything other than the blue as I wanted the ocean to be the main focus of the image. Then, I decided that I actually wanted to create a more polluted environment which led me to tinting the midtones blue, to emphasize the water aspect of the image, and tint the highlights a pale green which made the path in the image look older and slightly decayed.

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When editing this image, I decided I wanted the foliage in the foreground to stand out which led to me lowering the saturation of every colour in the image other than green and yellow. Next, I decided to try tinting the highlights of the image a pale yellow which gave off the impression that there was a lot of pollution in the air which I decided I liked the look of as it expressed how humanity has taken over rural areas in order to equate for human life.

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The editing process for this image was similar to the previous edit. I started off by lowering the saturation for every colour except for the orange as I wanted the building to be the main focus of the image. However, for this image, I decided to crop out some parts of the image I deemed unnecessary [i.e.: the blank space in the sky and part of the building on the left]. After that, I tinted the highlights a pale orange, once again making the image seem polluted, and increased the sharpness. This allowed the cracks/scratches in the building to be visible, representing how there are flaws in how humans behave in regards to the environment and how things need to change.

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For this edit, I began by lowering the saturation of every colour other than blue, instead increasing the saturation of the blue in order to make the waterslide stand out more and ensuring it’s the main focus of the image. Next, I decided to tint the shadows a deep blue whilst leaving the highlights white, making the image seem more intense compared to the other images as I wanted the blank space to represent the lack of nature due to humanities effect on the planet.

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As I was looking through my photos, I noticed that there were quite a few that involved rubbish/objects in grass, bushes etc and I decided to compile them together and edit them slightly in order to improve them and create a mini series.

Editing:

The original photos:

Final Edits:

In order to enhance the photos, I decided to decrease the saturation of the grass, making it a muted green, whilst increasing the saturation of the objects in the images, making them the focus. I also created a small ring around each object and subtly made it seem like each object is glowing in order to further draw the eye towards the objects.

After looking through my images, I picked out a few that I knew would work with my idea of juxtaposing nature and manmade/industrial landscapes and began experimenting via editing.

First Experiment:

I began experimenting by decreasing the saturation of any greenery in order to make the industrial/human impact stand out within each photo, increasing the saturation on something [like a car] to help exaggerate the impact, similar to how Felicity Hammonds uses colour to dramatize her work, adding to it’s dystopian-esque nature.

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Second Experiment:

This time, I decided to switch it around and increase the saturation of the rural aspects in each image to make them stand out more. Immediately I realized I preferred this much more compared to my first experiment.

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For this photoshoot I went on a walk around and took photos in a variety of areas and from a range of different angles, making sure to take plenty of natural environments, rural environments and some rubbish that I found along the way as I knew I would need a variety of different photos for my project. I decided to go on a walk around 1pm as I knew it would be well lit outside and I would have the opportunity to take bright photos of the locations I chose to go to.