Portfolio Prep; Image 3:

This photo was a project where we were told to recreate a famous painting. The painting i chose to recreate was "American Gothic." by Grant Wood. 
The style of the original painting is very old fashioned, and captured the lifestyle of two people at that time. I wanted to recreate this image, but put a bit of a modern twist onto my own. With this idea, i decided to use both my brother and his girlfriend as my subjects, because of their style and look. However, I wanted to keep the staple properties of the image, so i kept the looks and angles of the subjects. I also replaced the pitchfork with a skateboard to keep with the modern theme. But i also wanted to keep the pitched roof idea, so i shot the picture in front of our local church, which keeps with the idea of people in their local environment, which is in the original painting. The colours in the painting are very low key and washed out, and "dull" in a way. None of them are very vibrant, but i think that was the idea to reflect what the painting was about. Because my image is almost the opposite, i tried to use extremely bright, vibrant colours and tried to show a lot of contrast. I think that this worked for my image and that is why it's one of my most successful images.

PORTFOLIO PREP; IMAGE TWO.

This is the second image that i'm most proud of. it's a black and white 35mm film shot. i was really happy with the outcome because i thought i captured a lot of detail and contrast between the shadows and highlights. Before this shoot on textures all my previous black and white film shoots that i had attempted i was really unhappy with and the quality was awful. However, this shoot came out brilliantly, all the images i took came out really clearly, but this one in particularly was my favourite. It represents the task; texture, you can see the threads of the rope and the focus has captured what i wanted it to. It's one i'm most proud of. It shows that i can produce effective film and darkroom work and not just digitally based photos.

PORTFOLIO PREP; IMAGE ONE.

 This image is one of my favourite images that i've taken from the course. It was quite an early shoot, and the brief for it was fashion. There were a lot more posed and staged images, i used my brother, his girlfriend Jess (both pictured here) and her sister Megan, because they had quite a different and alternative look, and i wanted to take them in an urban setting. The reason that this was my favourite image from the shoot was that it was natural. I caught them in a moment where they were both laughing and i just think it looks really natural, and effective. I think it shows not only the brief, (being fashion) but it also shows emotion and the relationship they have together rather than a dead pan faced model in a dress. My original inspiration for this shoot was 'The Satorialist." i liked the way he took really professional looking images of people in streets and busy environments that didn't look set up or staged.

 This is an example of The Satorialist's work. It just shows his technique and does show how he influenced the image above; a moment between the couple ( the eye contact ) and it looks natural.

Using photoshop to experiment with one of my own studio shoots.

ORIGINAL IMAGE: studio shoot. This image was a result from the first studio shoot that I ever did. It hasn't been photoshopped in any way because I thought it would be easier to manipulate an un-edited image. i was quite proud of it in it's raw form anyway, I think i got the lighting right, and it looks really quite natural. it will also show how the effects manipulate it in it's original state.

      PHOTO SHOPPED USING "CURVES":  The use of curves on Photoshop have created a use of strong contrast, a heightened colour tone, it looks warmer and the light used in the studio has been emphasized. It's certainly created a brighter image, more likely to catch your eye and the colours give a certain warmth to the image, although it doesn't look very natural, it does look very edited.

PHOTO SHOPPED USING HUE AND SATURATION: With this image i decided to play around with the hue a little bit to see what kind of shade i liked. i decided finally on a blue/ violet tone. i then decreased the saturation a fair bit to ensure that it didn't look overly bright and to make sure that the actual quality of the photograph wasn't tampered with. it certainly gives a different look to the image, it is interesting in the way it gives a cooler tone compared to the previous warm effect from the curves. Although, i don't think it's a great edit for this particular image. 

PHOTO SHOPPED USING INVERT:  This image is very  different to all the other edits, it's quite a striking and extreme edit. It does give of quite a weird and eerie feel, her eyes and teeth in particular are really obviously different and almost scary. i really don't think for this particular shot that it's a great manipulation to use, it has distorted the image quite a bit, and the shot itself is has a different feel, I don't think they work well together.

PHOTO SHOPPED USING THE FILTER: "DARK STROKES:"  I really like this edit on this particular shot. i went through all the filters available on Photoshop to see what would work and what wouldn't. i chose this filter in particular because i think that it left the right balance of the natural look from the first image, but it also has created an effect, that i think emphasizes the difference between the light and dark, and i like the way it softens her features. 

THREE PERSONAL IMAGES TAKEN WITH THE COMBINED STYLE OF TOM HUNTER (TRADING PLACES SEQUENCE) AND DAIDO MORIYAMA.

 #1. NEWSAGENTS.

 #2. SWEET SHOP.

#3. TATTOO PARLOR.

The idea behind this shoot was to combine two different artist work. We were given two random artists and asked to create three final images that show a combination of both their styles. We were given Tom Hunter and Daido Moriyama. It took a while to choose how we were going to go about it. in the end, after a lot of research into both artists, we came across a series that Tom Hunter had created, entitled"Trading Places." in this series Tom photographed various people in their place of work, behind counters, in garages etc. So we decided to take this idea further and do our own version. So we went out with this idea, and we wanted to create 3 very different images, so we chose a newsagents, an old fashioned sweet shop, and a tattoo parlor. But to then to inject the style of Moriyama, we chose to put in the way that he uses black and white, very high contrast and highly exposed images. So we edited them in this way, and these are the outcomes. We were really happy with the outcome and i think we really achieved the idea of the task, we used both artists techniques and created unique, strong images.