Research - Aled Lewis

Aled Lewis is a graphics designer based in London. He has recently produced a series called 'Toy Stories', a collection of photographs of toys with comical quotes edited in. I particularly liked the simplicity and the humour in his photos, please see a sample of them below.

Research - PoisonVectors @ DeviantArt

Poison Vectors is a male digital artist currently residing in Costa Rico. He adds interesting 3D effects to regular portrait photographs to create fantasy poster effect pictures. His work inspires me to experiment with effects and layering more.

Research - Jim Kazanjian

Jim Kazanjian has been an artist for the past 18 years, he studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, graduating in 1990. He now currently resides in Portland, Oregon. I have chosen to look at his latest collection of work, a six-piece series entitled 'Anomalies'.  In this collection, Kazanjian takes buildings and landscapes and merges them together, using the roof from one building, a window from another, the door from yet another, to create a truly imaginative outcome. The images are available to view on his website and to buy as prints. The work reminds me of buildings from old dark folk lore and Grimm fairy tales, possibly even the more recent darker fairy tale adaptations by Disney.

Research - Giuseppe Mastromatteo

Giuseppe Mastromatteo is an Italian born photographer, current based in New York. I have chosen to look at his latest collection of photographs for my research, a series entitled 'Indepensense'. This series contains portrait photographs edited to rearrange the human anatomy, with no regard for blood flow or realism; hands have eyes and ears, faces are torn, and mouths reconstructed. This work was inspired by the likes of Man Ray and Magritte, bringing a sense of surrealism to modern manipulated photographs. I enjoy the way the model's faces are left plain and expressionless, so as not to drawn attention away from the impact of the edit, but to allow us to reflect upon the intensity of it. I hope to have an idea parallel to the impactive nature of this series.

Research - Pierre Beteille

Pierre Beteille is a digital photograph manipulator based in Toulouse, France. The series of photographs I have looked at, entitled 'Selfs', contains 96 heavily edited self-portraits taken between July 2007 and July 2011. They are available to view on both his personal website and his online Flickr account. Nearly all the photographs in this series contain his full face and the top half of his torso, many edited to have a portion of himself falling from the photograph or another part of himself layered in. Some also show his torso manipulated into that of another. Pierre's work is very intricate and unique to him, it reminds me of nothing else I have seen, and it inspires me to push myself to produce an image of this quality.

Introduction

Over the next six weeks we have been set an assignment to create a photograph that has been produced digitally. The theme and idea behind the photograph is completely up to the student so we have free reign over the subject matter.

In order to acheive a distinction in this task I must identify independently and evaluate examples of other's work that use digital manipulation techniques; prepare and digitize independently exciting source materials that exploit the full potential of image manipulation techniques; and present independently own design outcomes demonstrating an informed opinion about the use of digitized material and image manipulation techniques, against a given theme or assignment brief.

EVALUATION

For my final peice, I created a fantasy landscape by pasting the same person into a photograph several times. Inspired by the work of Paul Smith, I used photoshop to copy and paste my model, aided by the use of 'Quick Mask Mode', into a photograph already containing her, a further two times. The challenges I encountered were mostly based around the fact the photographs were taken in different places and at slightly different times during the day, so matching up the levels and contrasts of the model I pasted in to the original photograph proved fairly difficult. The most awkward part to match up was the garden bench I pasted in, as this photograph was taken on a completely different day, and it a completely different lighting. Given the chance to do the project again, I would have set up my tripod and taken all the shots in the same frame and at the same time so as to match them up more easily. All in all, I am fairly pleased with my final peice and have spent a lot of time attempting to match the levels and exposures up.

FINAL PIECE

My final images is made up of three shots from an Alice In Wonderland themes shoot I did not so long ago, and one of a garden bench. Here are the three shots I used, followed by my final piece.

RESEARCH - Paul Smith

Paul Smith is a British photographer, whom in 2001, produced a series of promotional photography for Robbie Williams' 'Sing When You're Winning' album. This series contained 13 photos of various football related scenes, but the only person present in these photography repeatedly was Robbie Williams. Please see below...

These have inspired me for my final piece, to create a landscape containing the same person multiple times. I shall achieve this using the cut and paste method. I will also use the quick mask mode to ensure my editing is spot on.

RESEARCH - Seung woo Back

Seung Woo Back is a Korean photographer, born in 1973, and now currently living in London. His series of photographs entitled 'Real World' are meant to be a set of straight documentary photos, depicting famous landmarks and buildings that he visited whilst travelling. However, the whole set is extremely decepetive as he has taken these famous land marks, and repositioned them completely. Move them to a different street, a different county, sometimes even a different continent. Please see below...

Edit, Copy & Paste

After selecting an image or part of an image you can then copy and paste it across to another picture or to another part of the picture you are currently working with.

You can do this by selecting the copy and then paste options from the edit menu.

You can then move the image that you have pasted to a different part of the picture by using the move tool.

Quick Mask Mode

When you have lassoed a picture and want to make sure you only have the subject you wish to move in the  lasso so as to not copy any background over to the picture, you can use the quick mask mode which allows you to add or take away from the subject lassoed. The quick mask mode is located at the bottom of the tool bar on the left hand side. Once selected it will turn anything you have not lassoed on the picture red.

By selecting the paint brush at this point you can paint any background you don't want copied across with red to deselect it. To select anything extra you do want copied, simply click on the swap arrows above the black and white colour chosers just above the quick mask mode tool.

Lassoing And Moving An Image

To lasso a part of the image you are working with, firstly select the lasso tool from the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen like so:

If you slide the mouse across to the right to see a further menu from the tool selected, it will give you the option for either free form lasso, lassoing with straight lines, or magnetic lasso. All of these are demonstrated in order below:

Once you have selected an image using the lasso tool you can then move it to where you would like it to be by using the move tool on the left-hand tool bar. By creating a duplicate background copy before doing so you can double the area you are selecting.

Liquifying Tool

I also experimented using the 'Liquify' tool situated in the 'Filter' menu. This is a fashion editing tool used for magazines, weddings, and general touch ups of photographs.

I then used the 'Bloat', 'Pucker', 'Forward Wasp', 'Reconstruct' and 'Twirl Clockwise' tools to edit the face in the portrait. I adjusted the nose width, the cheek bones, highered the eyebrow, and swelled the eyes to produce another image, as show below.

Clone Tool

I also experimented using the 'Clone' tool. I opened the photograph I wished to use, and selected the clone tool from the menu of tools on the left-hand side of the screen. I then held down the 'Alt' key to select the area I wished to copy form, in this case the woman on the left.

I then chose the brush, the size, and he opacity of the brush to edit with. I chose a soft edged brush so the lines weren't too harsh and made it quite opaque.

I then drew where I wanted the woman to appear and it copied the information from one part of the photo to another, as shown below.

Layering One Image Over Another

I then experimented overlaying an image of a building through the portrait above. I firstly opened the two images I would be working with.

I then dragged the background image over onto the portrait using the move tool.

I then selected the first layer in the layer menu bar, and changed the opacity on the sliding scale at the top of the box, to a lower percentage as to show the portrait through the building.

I experimented with this way of showing the two photos, by changing the opacity to a higher percentage.

I then changed the effect on the layer to see how it changed the opacity. From the box at the top of the layers box, where it usually says 'Normal' in a drop down box, I selected 'Overlay'.

This made the image much more vivid and the colours of the two photos stood out a lot more in comparison to each other. I experimented with changing the opacity of the layer now this effect was in place.