I created montage of photographs using a digital camera. I took the photographs and loaded them into Photoshop. I changed the colour of the photos to black and white (Image>Adjustments>Black&White – Alt+Shift+Ctrl+B) This was to give more impact to the pictures.
What worked well?
I have managed to show my fear of being trapped and imprisoned against my will. The change of photographs from colour to B&W has worked well, it provides more uniformity in the images and removes some of the changes in coloured walled backgrounds and lighting levels. All the photographs look to be part of the same series and theme.
How can I improve the pictures?
I can improve this pentaptick by making the pictures bigger, this would make the pictures easier to see and more impactful on the screen.
How does this fit in with my theme of destroy and fears?
These images are suitable for the theme of destroy and fears, because I have tried to show my fear of being silenced, overlooked, ignored and hidden. The fear of heights with the low perspective behind bars. Is this to protect me from falling down the stairwell, or bars to keep me locked away?
The photographs also are aligned with the theme of destroy because it shows how a person can be destroyed by their mental as well as physical emotions and change their personality.
I have also experimented with the same 5 photographs to change the sequence and background to see if this is more powerful.
I took these series of pictures using a digital camera, this is so I could change and adjust the shutter speed depending on the surrounding light. It also gave me a chance to see the pictures immediately after I took them.
I opened the photographs in Photoshop, this is so I could put all of the pictures together on one document and so I could change the colour saturation and make the black stronger and hih contrast where it was needed.
How does this fit in with your theme?
This fits in with my theme of fears, it shows my fear of fire and what it can do. I tried to show the fire in different forms making the pictures more interesting and so show the power and what it can do.
What worked well?
I believe this picture has worked well because I have managed to capture various aspects of fire and it’s power and movement. The explosion of fireworks, flames of burning matchs, the fire movement leaving streaks of dancing sparks from where the fire moves through the sky.
How can I improve the pictures?
I can improve the firework pictures by using a more sensetive ISO light setting slightly plus a shorter exposure, this will ‘freeze’ the flames, and reduce the over bright points of light and allow more of the colours to come through in the pictures. I can also improve the pictures by focusing in more on some of the fireworks, this would make for an interesting photograph to focus in more on the action and detail of the firework explosion.
What does this picture make you feel?
This picture makes me feel relaxed and peaceful, this is because all of the soft lighting used in the pictures and the flowing lights leading you through each picture.
What does this picture make you think of?
This picture makes me think of the war and battles with the explosions of and the bright red in the firework, the harsh movements in the flames and explosions. It is also calming the unsusal dynamic shapes and glows created.
How did I create this picture?
I created this picture using two of the photographs above (bright sparks and flames on a match. I used Photoshop, I combined the two pictures using layers and changed the opacity to merge and create a new third composition. I saved the new image to a new file.
The photographs I created I wanted to try and introduce similar elements of mystery and mood as photographs created by Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke as part of their series of images called ‘Lightmark’. Goepel and Warnecke use light painting techniques to create their mysterious photographs set in landscapes with the use of lights and props.
I created my photgraph by capturing the light of fireworks when they exploded and combined with the natural flickering flames and sparks from a fire.
Goepel and Warnecke create a sense of fear in the example below, photographed in a dark wood. They conjour a fantasy, unearthly and mystical feel created by a variety of illuminated elements, the spots of light, the lines of light that are spouting from the light source in the grass, the glow on the grass around the base of the trees.
I used Photoshop on some of the pictures this was too make some of the pictures brighter so that there was a more even brightness across all the pictures in the montage. I changed some of the pictures using the hues, saturation and brightness levels tools in Photoshop. This meant I could make the photos brighter or darker depending on what I wanted.
What does it make you think of?
This makes me think of broken friendships and people growing apart. This is because when you see people in the quadriptych montage they are always dark and not quiet in focus making you think something bad has happened between the group. In one of the pictures the members of the group are walking away, and one of the member of the group is clasping her head possibly in anger or frustration. This also makes you think of the past and memories of friends not seen for a long time, this is because the people are out of focus and blurred like an old faded memory.
How does it make you feel?
This picture makes me feel nervous as if I’m am in trouble this is owed to the way the people look towards the camera, straight at you, it feels accusatory. It introduces lots of tension between the pictures that all together convey a strong uneasy feeling.
What worked well?
The overall composition worked well. I like the picture of the reflected person standing in-front of the window wearing a stripped top worked well. The elements are combined so that you can see there is someone there, but not clearly enough to identify who. It makes you question who it is, whether it is the person remembering some of their past or whether it is someone who had a fallen out with the group of people in the other picture elements. The layout of the composition has worked well the large black boarder background pulls the four pictures together as one.
What didn’t work well?
I don’t think that all of the pictures convoy the same mood that I am trying to create. I think that some of pictures are too out focus. It might have been better to try using something over the lens to make the picture appear out of focus (Cling film), or taken a sharp focused picture and used Photoshop blur filter to soften the focus where I could experiment easily.
The reflected person in the window with the striped top, the colours are too bright possibly making it distracting against the rest of the pictures in the composition.
Does this fit in with your theme?
This fits in with my theme of the self and fears, it shows my fear of breaking with my friends and being excluded or left behind. I tried to show this by making the pictures of the group of people look straight at the camera and blurred as if something was wrong between the viewer and the group.
Photographers relating to my work and inspired me when taking the pictures
Danie Arbus photographer. Her subject are the unusual people, people on the fringe of society, the social outcasts. The fears I have is becoming one of the social outcast.
I created these pictures using a digital SLR camera. The photographs were taken from a variety of camera angels, very low looking up and from on high looking down. These perspectives exaggerate the view and size of the subject, height and my fear of heights.
What does this make you think of?
These pictures remind me of my fear of heights. Being in high places looking down over the edge and being on the ground, looking up at high places. Also my fear of falling from a height and seriously hurting myself.
What worked well?
The photograph looking up at the standing person near the window and the photograph of the person outside on the cobbles. These pictures the subject is well framed and clearly the main element of the photographs. The natural light is used to illuminate the subjects well, there are no strong very dark shadows.
The photograph of the person lying down has been successfully framed that you cannot tell if or how badly the person is hurt from supposedly falling from a height.
What could be improved?
The photograph looking down on the standing person is slightly too dark. I would change the camera settings to make it lighter, or consider using a flash if the light was strong enough to reach the person. Try using a wider angle lens to give an even greater exaggerated sense of height.
I would consider adjusting the light levels in Photoshop to investigate if I could produce the 4 photographs with similar brightness to even out the composition and remove the need to look closer at the darker images.
For the shots from a height I could have tried to introduce a sense of movement, to mirror the act of falling or the feelings that you are about to fall.
Do these pictures remind you of anyone elses work?
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