Cropping and Removing on Photoshop

For this experimentation of my images from the St Malo shoot, I used partial inspiration from Stephanie Jung in addition to Henri-Cartier Bresson.

HER WORK:

Stephanie Jung is known as a fine art photographer who is based in Germany. Studying in Visual Communications until 2010, she discovered her passion for this experimental form of photography. Since 2012 she is working as a freelance photographer, focussing on fine art photography.

Stephanie Jung’s work is known to consist of cityscapes in a double exposure manner, either created through shooting multiple exposures directly within the camera or processing multiple images after in a combinative manner. I really wanted to create this effect experimentally with my St Malo images initially inspired by Henri-Cartier Bresson as I believe that these images symbolise the ‘hustle and bustle’ alongside the rapid pace of life within cities, with things consistently changing and people always moving.

MY IMAGES:

This is my favourite experimental piece using double exposure because I feel that all the images involved have worked very cohesively and I am really pleased with the outcome. I feel that this encapsulates many different parts of St Malo and ties all together nicely to show the culture.

First of all, I used my image of a graffitied alleyway and used colour selection to select only the large hot pink design as this was the main focal point and the most establishing piece of the image. I then created 2 layers of a low-shot building I took and reduced the opacity, flipping one version upside down and onto the right. I did this because I thought it would add a deeper texture and context of St Malo. I then opened up an image I took of an elderly woman conversing with a homeless man in a kind nature, used the quick selection tool (defining it using the Alt button) and imposed it into the image into the left corner as if it took placed within the alleyway.

The subjects within this image were taken as double exposure through a slow shutter speed within the camera, however I thought it would be appropriate to add this image into here. I created this by simply using the quick selection tool and selecting different subjects walking through the street and dragged them into the image, playing around with the sizing to make it appear more realistic and fit to scale. I chose to use this as my background image because not did I like the low angle I used, facing up towards the top of the building to make it appear as if it is towering over the camera – distorting the depth of the image – but I really liked the composition within in it. For example, a classic motorbike peeking out from another building’s corner alongside and old fashioned café placed ever-so-slightly behind, only just visible. Alongside this, I really liked the way the buildings gave off a rustic tone, looking old-fashioned and filled with memories, having flowers placed onto the windowsills. It looked like a location that would’ve been around many years ago, standing still in time.

For this image, I duplicated the layers and increased the tonality and saturation of one. I then arranged these into a distorted way to give the effect of a double exposure. Afterwards, all I had to do was duplicate each layer over again until I could create a mirrored reflection.

I think this worked really nicely as not only does it appear as if they are more people in the image, making it busier and more chaotic, but it adds vibrancy and volume to the image in a ‘bounced’ way.

Similarly:

For this image, I used the same technique of duplicating the layers and changing the tonality of one, then slightly shifting it. However, I then opened up a separate image of this couple in black and white. I used the quick selection tool as traced around them, using the Alt button to go back and make miniscule fixes. I then inversed the selection and cut them out, and brought them across onto my street image.

I think this worked really well because the contrasted shift between the neon colours adjacent to the black and white figures can be looked at as if they are frozen in time.

For this image, I made one layer monochrome whilst the other in a bright neon tonality because I felt that this would add a more urban edge to it, nodding to the bright graffiti fond through the alleyways within St Malo streamed across the grey walls. This was already a double exposure image due to the slow shutter speed used when it was taken, however I wanted to create it over the top in Photoshop as it makes it look even more chaotic. I particularly like the way the stop sign located towards the left hand sign of the image looks because it appears unusual and is completely wrong.

I used the same background I used on my second image and made the subjects in it appear more translucent as I felt this would add an ominous and almost ghostly effect.

For this experimentation, I used my image of a small boy on a carousel looking down at his pocket whilst he goes past. I duplicated this layer 3 times, making each layer less visible and a different scale of tonality. I arranged them placed slightly behind each other as I felt this would give a motion blur yet in the theme of a carousel, something associated with bright colours, music and happiness.

Anthropocene overall Evaluation

For this project, I enjoyed learning about what Anthropocene was through the use of images and artist research and think I have been able to capture this in my own images. I managed to do a handful of different photoshoots and though I didn’t get a large sum of photos for each photoshoot I think the ones I chose to be my main images turned out well. For my pollution photoshoot I focused on pieces of rubbish I would find while outside. this photoshoot wasn’t exactly taken in a set time as I just took photos when I found something that would work well. Most of my photos were found on the beach which I found to be a very common environment for pollution to occur. this largely included the waste of plastic scattered along the sand.

Another photoshoot I did was overpopulation. The environment I chose for this photoshoot was mostly St Malo where I was able to capture images of busy streets which included people, cars and buildings. I think some of my photos did well to represent overpopulation, however, I think it would have been improved if I had focussed on this photoshoot a lot more and managed to get more decent looking photos.

My other photoshoot was the photoshoot that was inspired by Michael Marten where he focusses on rising sea levels. This photoshoot was only taken in the environment of beaches as the sea was a necessity to this photoshoot linking to Marten’s work. My photoshoot included many random beaches where the tide was either in or out and then I could come back and a later time where the tide times would be opposite to what is was when I took the first image. I found this photoshoot to be quite challenging as it required some planning to be able to know when the tides would be good to go back and get more photos. I found that my photos had mostly consisted of high tide images so I was limited to which ones I could use that included high and low tide. I liked my final image of this shoot as it also demonstrated using the AI skills to alter the photo and make it into my own.

My final presentation of images was mostly using mount board but arranged in different ways. The pollution photos were included in 3 of my final pieces. with the singular pieces of plastic, I chose to print them all on A5 and then put them all on a large piece of mount board all together to create the arrangement shown on the virtual gallery above. I think this worked well as they are all very similar photos so putting them all together looked right and two photos were landscape so they were able to fit in well underneath the three portrait photos. My other pollution final piece was with the use of AI. i positioned these photos one under the other as one was the original photo and the other was the photo that had been affected by the outcomes of pollution. Both these photos were printed in A4 so that the piece was quite big. I liked this piece as it has a deeper meaning behind such as how the world could eventually turn out if pollution carries on. My third piece was laid out in a different arrangement than the rest as the sizes didn’t match up to what I originally was planning to do. This meant I had to do one landscape beside a portrait and then another landscape. it would have worked better if the portrait was A4 but as they are all A5 it didn’t work as well. however, I do like the images that I produced as they were ordinary photos with the addition of AI to create scattered plastic around to further demonstrate pollution.

The overpopulation photos final piece only included 2 of my photos and I printed them one under the other in A4 and put them both on mount board. this photo was quite basic and i didn’t like it too much. My Michael Marten inspired piece was printed in A5 due to the AI giving it a lack of quality so making it larger would have looked worse. however, I did like this final piece.

Michael Marten (Artist Photo)

My Photo

I think my inspired photo turned out well and I was able to capture the same effect as Marten’s photo. Both images represent the rinsing tides and how a landscape can be completely altered with one simple change such as water. Marten has done well to stay in a very similar position and been carful not to change the angle of both shoots. as well as this, the weather hasn’t changed and it still provides a grey sky. This is a similarity but also a difference when looking at my image.

The similarities are my photo are also kept in the same position as well as the weather being the same. However, the difference is that my take on the image was created using AI so that I added my own ideas into an inspired piece. So both images are the same as the left image but just with the input of the sea using AI. Another difference is I decided to edit mine into black and white rather than keep it in colour like Marten has done. I decided to do this so that the AI would be even more discrete as there was a slight colour different when the artificial sea joined to the actual sea in the original image. I also decided to place both photos in the same format Marten usually does by placing the two images side by side.

Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre (Artist photo)

My photo

I found it difficult to find somewhere in jersey which can relate to the artist image so I used the skills of AI to change an image that I had originally taken to be more inspired by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre.

Both images represent destruction of buildings and landscapes. in Marchand & Meffre’s image, the destruction is visible where the windows are smashed in, leaving empty holes in the building and where the sea wall has crumbled, leaving debris scattered everywhere. In my image, the destruction is visible where the wall has cracks in it and marks down the sides. it also has rubbish scattered on the beach near the building and the air pollution coming from buildings in the background. Both images are examples of destruction of manmade things, however, both images are in similar environments where they are near/surrounded by natural landscapes such as the oceans and the beach.

The artists image does well to create some juxtaposition where the destruction is directly opposite to the sea which creates a contrast of colour and feeling as the sea is bright and the destruction is not. My image doesn’t do that as I decided to put it in black and white and so I am unable to see the colour differences. Another difference is where the photographer is positioned when taking the photo. in Marchand & Meffre’s photo its clear they are alongside the building and capturing the image from that position. However, in my image I decided to take it straight on and include a large portion of background and other surrounding areas as well as the main focus which is the building.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be used in photography in many different ways. it uses the skills of a computer generator to either create images, alter existing images, or even get rid of certain things in an image. It can have a largo effect o photography as it can completely turn the phot into anything the editor wants

Using my own photos, I wanted to experiment using AI by testing what it can do and how much it can change my images

In the future edits

For these two images, I wanted to create images where I could demonstrate what the world could be in years to come. With the affects of pollution, climate change has already taken a large affect and it is only going to get worse. I decided to edit my photos by adding more plastic waste on the beaches and also editing in bad air quality as a result of air pollution. I also decided to edit the buildings to make them look rundown and damaged which could be an affect of weather conditions

I did this by using the rectangular marquee tool and I selected the part of the image that I wanted to change/add to. I then pressed generate and typed into AI whatever I wanted to add e.g. ‘scattered pieces of plastic’ it then takes a bit of time to generate and when its complete it gives you 3 different ideas of scattered pieces of plastic. If what they give isn’t what you want, you can regenerate or you can change the wording of what you originally put until you get something that works well.

Photoshoot 1 related: Waste

Photoshoot 4 related: Tides

This was my inspired piece on Michael Marten where I used AI experimentation to add the sea into my image to demonstrated rising sea levels which is his main focus. I selected the while bottom half of my image and typed ‘sea’ and it gave me a few different versions but this one worked the best.

Selection and Editing

While selecting images, I found that a few of my images would work very well together as doubles to each other.

Double 1

Before

After

For this photo, I decided to crop the image so that the colour of the street met both corners of the photo. This is so that the image looks cleaner and more controlled. I also thought that the photo was very underexposed and badly coloured, so I fixed this by bringing up the exposure, shadows and vibrancy in Lightroom. Later, I had the idea to colour some parts of my photos black and white in order to make them appear more striking. This is the first example of this that I did, where I coloured the man and the pictures in the shop, and made everything else black and white. This makes the photo more focused on what the pictures in the shop actually are and what the man is admiring.

Before

After

For this photo, I cropped the top of the photo slightly to remove the white blind in the top left corner as I felt it made the photo look too spacious and inconsistent. Then I decided to bring up the shadows and the saturation to bring out the blue and red in the photo. I then applied the same technique as before, this time making the two subjects of the photo black and white and only letting the red and blue stand out.

I then combined the two to present them as a double in the virtual gallery. I also decided to flip the second photo vertically because I found that the streets in both images lined up well.

Double 2

Before

After

For this photo, my focus was to make the stairs look daunting to the old woman standing at the top. Firstly, I brought up the saturation and vibrancy to exaggerate the green and blue. I then cropped the image using the rule of thirds to place the right side of the image perfectly into a third of the image. In addition to this, I made the buildings and the people travelling up the stairs black and white, which blended the colour of the buildings together. In turn, this made the buildings negative space, and also makes the stairs look even more daunting for the old woman.

Before

After

In this photo, I wanted to create a similar effect to the previous image. To do this, I brought up the exposure and shadows just to make the colour look neater and more consistent. I then made the building, street and people in the far background black and white. This creates a similar negative space to the previous photo, as these objects become less apparent to the viewer.

When combined, I think these photos work fairly well together. However, I think this is the worst out of the selection because, although the images look good standalone, when put together they don’t significantly relate to each other.

Double 3

For this double, I combined two photos I got of this very lonely looking man. I then made everything except him black and white. Also I cropped the second image so that both photos lined up perfectly. I feel that this image shows his perspective, he is clearly thinking in his own mind and separated from the world around him.

Double 4

Before

After

I found that this image was very underexposed and the greens weren’t as apparent as I wanted them to be. To fix this, I brought up the exposure and saturation. Also, I cropped the photo slightly to make it a little less spacious.

Before

After

For this photo, I found that it was underexposed and the colours weren’t as vibrant as I wanted them. I brought up the shadows, exposure and saturation to fix this. I also cropped the photo to remove some negative space above and on the sides of the photo.

When combined, I think that these are the best images out of all. Although they do not relate to each other on a surface level, I feel that the positioning of both couples in the bottom left of each photo creates a connection between the two.

Virtual Gallery

In my final piece exam period I learned how to manage my time better so that I have time to manage every single step.

In order to cut the photographs to a satisfactory measurement, I used a Kraft knife and the metal paper trimmer as well as a long ruler to balance the other subject in a straight line. As well as using black thick card used to border the photographs and white mount board on all my final pieces.

Anthropocene Final Pieces:

Firstly, I focused on my Anthropocene photographs and decided to layer them horizontally on top of each other. I mounted them up with white behind so that the colour can pop and so that the photographs aren’t all over the place. The presentation of the photographs mean that they are easily seen by the viewer and they look interesting in the way they are put as there’s only three of them not four.

Presented in the image at the top, I decided to include a photograph I took at the reservoir in St Ouens and I used Photoshop’s artificial intelligence to dry up the highlighted water area in order to make it appear in a different time, potentially something as a result of the climate’s impacts. In the middle photograph I placed two images side by side to contrast each the as the image on the left is of nature and the yellowy branches, whereas the image of the right of it is of the zoomed-up La Collette tower flipped. I thought it was especially interesting to flip this as the black and white imaged flipped looked like some sort of structure that can be climbed up or some sort of puzzle.

Lastly, the image at the bottom is taken in a near by beach near St Brelades called Beauport. Along the trail there is a cliff which ha been photographed, in this photograph on the left where there are normally fields upon fields I artificially placed some virtual houses over looking the bay. I believe these houses look realistic despite being the opposite.

Landscape Photographs:

I placed and bordered my landscape photographs in white mount board to level my image as well as to have a white border around.

In terms of my landscape photographs I focused on taking them in a different positioned and direction despite being in the same location around.

I like the fact they are in black and white as it adds to the photographs and they’re textures, layers and other aspects like the outlines contrasting with the white elements.

I found it important that the photograph is close up as the structures of the land and nature are more prominent whereas if it were at a further distance the detail would not be that clear, there is one photograph which is photographed from a higher perspective and more distanced, on this occasion the photograph is further away but there are details which make the image more elaborate and full.

Urban Landscape Photograph:

In my urban landscape photograph I decided to present this individually as I think it is effective singularly. I mentioned in my plan that I would have presented it by itself.

cropping an image can drastically change an images impact. it allows the photographer to entirely effect the composition or an image in order to frame elements more effectively.

Picture stories are meant to show a story through pictures and not actually the words therefore the writing shouldn’t really be a source to rely on, the naked eye should be attracted to the picture, figure out which photo is the main source of information.

here are some samplers of picture stories, these examples looks very differed from one another as they all have different stories behind them, they all represent a different meaning. Each one has a different colour that can symbolise different things such as emotions, a countries flag colours and what colour makes there chosen photos to stand out. I really like the black and white photos with a brown and yellow background, it has a strong powerful meaning and really helps to engage the viewers eyes onto those photos. I don’t really like the stories that have many different colours and shapes in the background as it distracts the viewers attention away from the photos, it make the photo look less important. However some could view it as the colours attract the naked eye towards the photos, makes them look noticeable especially if they are in black and white as there isn’t any other colours to direct the eye towards.

Original – Portrait

Original – Portrait

Original – Landscape

Original – Portrait

Square–

Original- landscape

Original- Portrait

Circle 1-

Merged/ experimentation