Photoshoot 1- Inspired by Laura Hospes

Laura Hospes

I chose Laura Hospes as one of my artists as

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However, I am unhappy with how some of my images inspired by Hospes turned out as I found that the lighting was too dark and therefore when

Editing

Photoshoot 2

I chose to take my last photoshoot in Saviours forest because forests convey the message of Chaos is nature.

Chaos- Conveys a certain message and make order out of the chaos in nature. Structure (Visual Highways), balance and harmony. Vertical growing trees chaos is the variety of tree heights, shape, colour, grow in different places, tilt, break and grows branches in different places. Chaotic mixtures of leaves, trunks and branches. To control chaos set up a tripod defines perspective. However I wanted to capture that chaos as I captured the chaos of Mental Health in my previous photoshoots.

Talk about my camera position ie crouching (worms eye view), standing on objects and eye level.

Do I capture the forest floor and the horizon.

Contrast- Noon on a sunny day gives high-contrast light. sun up and clear sky direct light shines through the canopy, leaves, branches and trunks with dark shadows filling the forest.

Could use high contrast

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I used the following camera settings Shutter speed:1/100 Aperture: F14 and ISO: 3200. Along with these settings I photographed against the light shining through the trees

I don’t want high contrast therefore I am taking my images in the evening just before sunset when the contrast is significantly reduced giving my images a soft lighting under a cloudy sky in almost foggy conditions.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

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Editing

Studio Passport Portraits

Ride Out Images

Contact sheets are useful whilst producing a piece of work as they show all images from an organised photoshoot, including the good and the bad.

Collection

Before editing any of my images in Lightroom, I have organised my photographs so that I can identify which are of the best quality and which are most likely going to be used in my project. So I made a quick collection in Lightroom and placed my images in this folder, to do so I flagged which ones where going to be moved here, then after I rated them out of 5 stars. This was based on three aspects; the quality, likeliness of being used in my project, and the composition of the photographs, even before being edited.

Original Images Before and After Editing:

To start off editing this image, I thought it was a good idea to crop off a section from the left of it, as I’m not sure if the man crouching down was relevant to this family photo, also you cannot see his face, meaning he is not adding anymore value to this image. I also altered the textures and black and white tones of this photograph as it adds more detail to the clothing of my grandparents and making the children’s faces more visible.

I have taken this image of my grandparents getting married and cropped off the white cardboard frame that the original photograph is normally taken it, and also cropped off their heads. This is in preparation for my Kensuke Koike artist reference where I am recreating part of his work, which is included in his ‘Red String’ project, as this image fits this idea perfectly. I have changed the clarity, vibrancy and shadows of this photo to make the details such as the flowers and veil more visible.

Here I have edited an of picture of my dads side of the family, including my great grandparents and my grandmother when she was young, by keeping the original small white frame around the image but still cropping away the white background. Additionally, I have changed texture, clarity and dehaze settings to make the photograph in an attempt to bring it to life to this old image.

Fixing lesser quality images:

I have taken some images of my uncle (above), I was unaware that the exposure on my camera was far too low, meaning that the quality of images was compromised. However, I have found a use for these images in my project, when doing a Kensuke Koike artist reference I will takes parts of the image where my uncles face is, and make a photomontage also using pictures of my dad and uncle to link to the theme of family identity.

Furthermore, these image came out with a yellow tint, so to fix this I made the photos black and white, cancelling out of the colourful tones and bringing out more texture by editing the whites and blacks, this also added depth to the wrinkles in my grandad’s face. I like how this made them look more old fashioned, linking to other parts of my project when I’m using old family photographs.

This image of my dad is better quality compared to the ones of my grandad and uncles, so my plan is for the majority of the photo montage to be of his face, and for the rest to be composed of the lesser quality images. Even though these images aren’t as good as some of my other (for example of the miners lamp/ statue, I think they fit in with my project better.

Other Photographs

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Image selection is an important step when doing a project. It narrows down the images you want to edit.

DAY 1

MY INSPIRATION: lara gilks ‘beneath the ice’

CONTACT SHEETS:

Here I deleted the photos that didn’t come out well or ones I didn’t need to edit.

STAGES ON PHOTOSHOP:

FIRST ATTEMPT:

For these images I used Photoshop to adjust the colours of the original photos. I used Lara Gilks ‘beneath the ice’. On photoshop I changed each photos brightness and contrasts and then I added an image of steamed glass and lowered the opacity to give the same effect as Lara Gilks photos have.

SECOND ATTEMPT:

I wasn’t happy with the first attempt because the edits came out with a soft faded colour and wouldn’t look good when printed so I used the curves on Photoshop to add more depth to the photos.

DAY 2

For these two photos I used 3 different photos and lowered the opacity and merged them together for a multi/double exposure.

EXPERIMENTS

FINAL PIECE

GALLERY: artsteps

COMPARISON

I tried my best to make the photos similar to the artists ones

EVALULATION

What went well: I really liked how my first photos came out because I really liked the idea of how Lara gilks beneath the ice looked and how the models looks like they are trapped under ice. Instead of using a steamed glass in the bathroom like she did I used images off the internet and put them on photoshop and lowered the opacity. They turned out well as I was expecting

Critique: With my second photoshoot I didn’t have any inspiration or artists I had in mind, I could of spent a bit more time on having a artist reference.

Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) was a french surrealist photographer whos work generated controversy as it revolved around her gender identity and feminism. She was one of the first to experiment with this and her work was based off her as a person e.g the picture below, ‘I Am In Training, Don’t Kiss Me’ which is arguably one of her most famous works. Cahun’s works combined writing, photography, and theatre. She is most remembered for her highly staged self-portraits and that incorporated the visual aesthetics of surrealism. During the 1920s, Cahun produced an number of self-portraits in various guises such as aviator, dandy, doll, body builder, vamp and vampire, angel, and Japanese puppet.

In early-20th-century France, when society generally considered women to be women and men to be men, Lucy Schwob decided she would rather be called Claude Cahun. It was her way of protesting gender and sexual norms. Some of Cahun’s portraits feature the artist looking directly at the viewer, head shaved, often revealing only head and shoulders (eliminating body from the view), and a blurring of gender indicators and behaviors which serve to undermine the patriarchal gaze.

During the early 1920’s she met In 1937 Cahun and Moore settled in Jersey. Following the fall of France and the German occupation of the Channel Islands. They became active as resistance workers and propagandists. Fervently against war, the two worked extensively in producing anti-German fliers. Many were snippets from English-to-German translations of BBC reports on the Nazis’ crimes and insolence, which were pasted together to create rhythmic poems and harsh criticism. They created many of these messages under the German pseudonym ‘Der Soldat Ohne Namen’, or ‘The Soldier With No Name’, to deceive German soldiers that there was a conspiracy among the occupation troops.

IMAGE ANALYSIS

Claude Cahun’s photographs are captured in an abstract way that makes the viewer look for the deeper meaning behind them. The photo is likely taken indoors, with the lighting being predominantly focused on the models. The dark eye makeup and black background contrasts with the light outfits and headwear. The layout of the photo involves two models, perhaps Claude and a friend or just Cahun by herself with the help of layering techniques. The model in the front is making direct eye contact whilst the one in the back is looking slightly to the left – this makes the viewer more likely to focus on the one in the front, as the eye contact combined with a lighter costume and darker makeup essentially makes you feel more drawn to her.

I flagged all the photos I liked and managed to lower my photos from roughly 800 to 200. From there, I went through all my photos again and marked all my best shots yellow, making it easier to distinguish them from the rest of my photos, leaving me with a total of 47 photos, including the older photos from when I was younger.

Current Plan + Ideas

At the moment, I plan to create some double exposures with a few of my photos, similar to some of the images below:

I also plan on experimenting with colours and their saturation which includes adding or taking colour away from certain parts of photos or taking away parts of photos all together which will lead me to having a mix of oversaturated photos and darker colourless images that I can choose from and develop further.

Some examples of this:

After taking my images, I put them into separate folders in Lightroom. For example, I had a folder purely for my more abstract images, as well as each shoot. I did this for my abstract images using a colour label (red), as well as using a separate folder and the flagging system (P and X keys). Below are contact sheets of my favourite images, as well as a gallery of my favourites for each shoot.

When I was selecting my favourite images, I was looking for clear, straight images, in which the subject had a suitable facial expression, and was framed properly. I also didn’t want to select images with too much over/underexposure, and images too grainy – a small amount is okay, due to my editing I hope to do, but too much would make it too difficult to develop my editing. – I had to be especially careful in my 2nd shoot of this. Additionally, when selecting images from my last shoot I had to be careful of shaky images, one of my issues in that shoot. When I had selected my final favourites from each shoot, I then rated them with the 5 star rating, and exported them as blog-friendly images (100 pixels on the long edge).

Photoshoot 1

Best images

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Abstract Images

Best Images

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Photoshoots 2 and 3

Best Images

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Photoshoot 4

Best Images

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IMAGE SELECTION/SUB-SELECTION

When taking my photos I didn’t have a set idea of what I wanted to photograph, my view on the identity project was that I wanted to create a visualisation of a teenage perspective of identity, showing possible self destructive behaviours which are camouflaged by the vitality of youth and teenage culture.

In order to make a fair selection I went through each photoshoot I did and created a 1-3 star rating system- 3 stars being most likely to use and 1 star being least likely to use on Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Then I colour-coded images with 2+ stars to create a sub-selection of images which I am interested in editing. These images are the ones I believe thoroughly show my inspirations in my individual perception of what I want to portray.

From this selection I then picked my final images that I wanted to edit/experiment with in Adobe Lightroom Classic, I colour-coded these images red.

After this I colour-coded images that I wanted to present as a set that carry a certain theme as when I present my images in a physical sense I would like them to be displayed as sets of polaroids so they have a more autobiographical sense.

When editing these images I want them to have a raw and intimate effect to them which portrays somewhat taboo subjects such as sexuality, restraint and self destructive behaviours. I believe the images I’ve chosen portray these feelings and once they go through the editing process I hope they are successful in the delivery of these emotions to the viewers.

I will focusing on the theme of geographical identity, i will be showing this through the use of physical documents and identity in the style of Annegret Soltau. E.g. Map, passport, citizen’s card, birth certificate, book about location, words in that language.

I will be creating a series of images using people from Hautlieu as my models. I will be using Annegret Soltau as my inspiration. My project will be made using both computer software and also doing bits by hand e.g the sewing aspect.

The photoshoot

For my photoshoot, I will be creating a series of deadpan images, similar to old passport images.

my idea of what I want it to look like