Paper Texture Final Piece

In photography, texture is the visual quality of the surface of an object, revealed through variances in shape, tone and colour depth. Texture can add vibrance and create intrigue in images which otherwise would be bland and uninspiring – it is also one of the formal elements.

The Formal Elements

The formal elements are characteristics or information displayed in photographs which creates interest in photographs, and including these in your work typically increases quality and leads to production of better images overall. These are as follows:

Light: This is used in images to highlight certain areas of an image to create a sense of importance on certain aspects, whereas a lack of light can be used creatively to create intrigue in photos. Whether or not the light is natural or artificial can also be used to show clear artistic intent in images.

*Light example – in this image, the light source is out of view from behind the woman which consequently displays her whole face in darkness, creating a sense of mystery and intrigue*

Line: Objects or parts of an image that act as lines can create direction in a photograph to highlight certain areas, or they can be used to outline and highlight important parts as well as showing movement or energy.

*Line example – in this image, the lines of the bridge all lead the viewer’s focus towards the dog, highlighting its importance as the subject of the image*

Repetition: Objects, shapes or lines in a photo can be repeated to create rhythms or patterns in an image.

*Repetition example – in this image, the repeating patterns of light along the floor and walls create a consistent rhythm throughout the image which build on atmosphere*

Shape: Geometric or organic shapes can be used in an image which will stand out due to being easily identifiable, which can be used in conjunction with repetition to create simple but effective photos.

*Shape example – in this image, there is very clearly a use of geometric shapes (triangles) alongside repetition to create a simple yet intriguing photograph*

Space: Negative (empty) space can be used alongside positive (full) space to add depth to a photograph or make it more shallow, which could be used to highlight objects in the foreground or background.

Space example – in this image, the use of negative space in the background combined with a low aperture very clearly highlights the fire hydrant as the subject in this photograph and adds a sense of importance as well as intrigue as to why it is considered to important

Tone: A range of tones (light to black) can be used similarly to light to highlight parts of an image as well as affecting the mood or atmosphere as an image; for example, darker tones create a dull mood which when intentional can be used to capture a strong effect in photographs.

Tone example – in this image, the dark tones highlight the importance of the hands and the light tones clearly showing the wrinkles and texture of the hands imply that whoever this is has been through struggles/hard work

Colour: Colours can be used to add life to images and create vibrant moods, and can also be used to highlight certain aspects due to some colours being more dominant than others.

Colour example – in this image, the dull atmosphere created by the black and white surroundings and out of focus trains and people is contrasted by the vibrant colours of the sign which clearly stands out

Photographer Research – Francis Bruguière

Francis Bruguière (15 October 1879 – 8 May 1945) was an American photographer who experimented with multiple-exposure, solarization, original processes, abstracts, photograms, and the response of commercially available film to light of various wavelengths. Some of his most famous photos are experimenting with light and the texture of paper to manipulate the image into being abstract.

Above are two of Bruguière’s images which I find to be effective. He has created shapes with paper and experimented with different levels/angles of light onto the paper to explore how it will affect the presentation of the images in terms of its texture – these images also make very effective use of the formal elements, for example there is a wide variety of dark and light tones which blend together nicely alongside the low aperture softening the focus on the background to create an abstract effect as well as a sense of intrigue to the image. Furthermore, there is clear use of lines but they are slightly out of focus and instead of directing focus or highlighting certain regions of the image they are present all over the image whilst simultaneously not being overused which helps strengthen the abstract effect further as everything mixes together smoothly to make it hard to pinpoint one clear subject in both of these photographs.

Photoshoot Plan:

I decided to focus my photoshoot on the texture of paper, taking inspiration from Bruguière’s work to try and create paper shapes and using the lighting of the photography studio to explore how manipulating the light will affect the quality as well as the degree of abstraction in the image produced. I also wanted to try include aspects of the formal elements into my images to try and produce more effective and fascinating final images.

Post-Photoshoot Refining and Selecting

*My paper texture photoshoot contact sheet*

After the photoshoot, I imported my images into Adobe Lightroom so I could begin my review and selection process to identify poor photos (flagged as X), good photos with improvements to be made (yellow and 3 stars) and photos which I found were most effective and wanted to edit and refine for my final piece (green, 4 or 5 stars).

Above are 3 images I found weren’t effective and flagged as X. I feel these photos aren’t great since I didn’t properly adjust aperture the way I planned to in order to highlight texture, and it turned out to be out of focus too – furthermore, I feel these don’t use the formal elements effectively since for example the texture which was my main focus of this photoshoot hasn’t been shown clearly and the lines of the paper don’t highlight some regions and instead are just present without really contributing to the mood these images are trying to build.

Above are 3 images I found were improvements compared to others, but at the same time weren’t my best images – after experimenting with settings and identifying weaknesses in previous photos, I adjusted settings further and found that it was producing more of the effect I wanted it to (the 3 photos above were all taken at ISO 200, f/stop 4 and shutter speed 1/20 sec) and also managed to capture these images more in focus which improves the overall quality. I also found the formal elements were being displayed more clearly here, since in the first and last image displayed I used a light from a phone to manipulate the shadows and dark tones into highlighting the texture and in the middle image I experimented more with lighting to try and achieve an abstract effect and although it was semi-successful I found it to be too underexposed and out of focus to use it as one of my final best images.

Above are 3 images I found to be some of my most effective and selected to edit and present in my final piece. By this point I had done lots of experimenting with the settings and lighting so I was able to capture these images exactly how I wanted to in my pre-photoshoot plan, and also captured them in focus (except for the middle one which has some intentional line blurring to highlight texture in the background). I believe these images are ones that use the formal elements most effectively out of all my images.

In the first image, I decided to use my phone light rather than the studio light after some experimentation to cast a shadow of the paper onto the wall as well as using this light to highlight the texture of the paper itself, and I also captured the paper in a way where it acts as a leading line to the part of paper sticking up which acts as the subject of the photograph due to most of the photograph being 2D and flat whereas this aspect of it is sideways to show dimension and depth. In editing I will crop the image to focus more on the right half since that’s where the subject and main focus of the photo is as well as adjusting shadows and brightness to explore the effect this will have on the lighting and texture.

In the second image, I used a line of paper in the foreground but also intentionally captured it out of focus so the main subject of the image is still on the texture of paper in the background, which stands out due to me positioning the lighting in a certain way to clearly highlight it. In editing I will crop the image to focus further on the texture as well as experimenting with gradient overlays and contrast to see what effect this will have on my photo and the intention behind it.

In the third image, I aimed to focus more on capturing the formal element of lighting effectively by positioning my artificial lights and paper in a way where there would be a range of light and dark tones due to the projection of the paper’s shadow. I also found there was effective display of texture on the paper as well as lines from the bottom right towards the top left which lead to the shadow, clearly contrasting the dark and light tones. In editing I will experiment with cropping, because even though I like the raw photo as presented above I want to see if manipulation of the image in terms of cropping and composition will strengthen the atmosphere created by the other formal elements.

Image Editing and Manipulation

Below is the first set of my edited images after experimenting:

In Photoshop, I have cropped this image to a 1×1 (square) resolution focused on the right half of the image which I find effective as it focuses more on the tonal differences between the paper texture in light and the one in darkness – it also contains a lot of negative space with soft focus which helps further highlight the focus of the image on the texture of the paper as well as the clear contrast between light tones on the left and darker tones on the right.

I once again cropped this image to a square resolution, although I think it is significantly less effective in this particular photo since there is a clear excess of negative space with too much focus on dark tones rather than contrasting the two whilst keeping texture as the main subject. Furthermore, I also found adjusting the brightness and contrast as well as making it black and white still didn’t help create more of a focus on the texture so for my next edits I will try crop this in a different manner as well as manipulate the image to create more of a balance between the texture and tones.

I found that the square cropping works particularly well for this image since it creates an effective composition with light tones on one side and the darker tones of the shadows being projected onto the other. It also helps maintain the balance between focusing on the contrast of these tones as well as the texture since the intentional blurring on the texture is more noticeable which means the image has no real subject which helps with the abstract effect (although you can still clearly identify it is paper, so I will try crop it in different ways to try and better achieve this effect).

After this, I decided to manipulate my images taking an alternative approach with gradients to see what effect it would have on the photos, the formal elements as well as the ideas behind each photo.

Below is my second set of edited images:

This time, I tried cropping the image manually without a set resolution to experiment and tried focusing more on the left half of the image whilst cropping out the projection of the shadow. I found this strengthens the balance between light tones and dark tones, since they are clearly contrasting and work well with the line which leads the eye from the light to the dark – however, I also think there is excessive negative space on the top left corner which is distracting and weakens the intention behind the image as well as weakening the strength of the composition (unlike my previous edit, which created very effective composition). I also experimented with a light blue gradient overlay to see how it would affect my image, and although it works well with contrasting the dark and light tones it hurts the effectiveness of texture since the blue makes it harder to see, consequently damaging the effectiveness of the formal elements overall.

Similarly to the previous image, I cropped this manually and focused on more of a horizontal cropping since an issue I found before is the excessive negative space in the top left of the image which has now been removed – I found this has slightly improved the composition as there is still traces of negative space slightly out of focus which highlight the texture of the paper on the left, although the red gradient has also made it harder to frame this texture as being of importance in the image. Instead now with this cropping the blurred leading line takes up most of the image, almost being the subject despite that not being my intention so overall I think I should use elements from both the first edit of this image and the second to try and create an effective final product.

In contrast to my previous editing of this image, I tried cropping it horizontally (similarly to the image above) to explore how this would affect the composition of the image – I found it was somewhat effective since there is a clear contrast between the darker tones on the left and top right and the lighter tones on the right (also clearly separated with use of lines), as well as still highlighting the texture of the paper with the yellow gradient overlay. I think for my final edit of this image I will try a composition which is a mix of my first and second edit, but keep it in black and white to create a further emphasis on the contrast between tones.

Final Images – Creation

Below is my final set of edited images:

For my final edit of this image, I decided to edit it very similarly to my first edit since I believe this is creates the most effective composition in order to make successful use of the formal elements – firstly, this composition clearly shows a contrasting split in the image where the left half focuses more on light tones and soft texture whereas the right focuses more on 3D space and shadows (emphasised further by me reducing the brightness slightly), as well as leading lines from the paper which lead to the dark-toned shadow being projected in the background. Overall, I am satisfied with the final results of this image since I *achieved some of the goals set in my photoshoot plan such as light manipulation and composition to enhance the formal elements.*

For my final editing, I cropped to make the composition be a blend of my composition from the first edit and the second edit, having some negative dark toned space to contrast with the light tones but also not having too much. I also found this composition to be more effective since now unlike my second edit most of the image is no longer focused on the out of focus paper lines, which now instead act to divide the lighter tones in the middle which highlight texture and the darker tones under the paper in the bottom right of the image as a result of the lighting I used – furthermore, to make the final presentation of my images consistent, I avoided using a gradient overlay and instead opted to keep the image black and white which consequently also improves contrast between tones. Overall, I found my final edits of this image to significantly strengthen the use of the formal elements since now there is a visible wide range of tones as well as some focus on texture towards the left side of the photo.

For the final edits of this image, I first cropped it to split the image into two halves where the left half focuses on dark tones and negative space to contrast with the curved lines and light tones on the right half which I found created a very effective composition. Afterwards, I experimented with importing the image into Lightroom too where I then turned down the presence of texture in order to try focus more on emphasising the other formal elements which I found to be very effective since this also creates an abstract atmosphere to the image due to less creases and texture being present on the paper. *Overall, I am satisfied with the final variant of this image as I believe it makes excellent use of formal elements such as space, tones and lines to create an effective image.*

Final Presentation

*Experimenting with presentation in artsteps*.

Evaluation

On the left is a photo from Francis Bruguière and on the right is one of my final images. I think I was able to replicate Bruguière’s use of the formal elements, most notably the visible differences between dark and light tones and subtle lines which create space and contribute to the composition – however, unlike Bruguière, I have used mostly negative space to present my dark tones which means the paper doesn’t fully fill the frame and therefore it does take away from the abstract effect.

2026 Photography A Level Blog