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.