Experimental Photography

Richard Burn

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Evaluate: ideas e.g. analysis, results; How well do you feel you have realised your ideas and intentions and what results have you got? Ensure you talk critically (compare, contrast, assess) about your work. You should reference your influences and assess how your work compares.This first finished photograph was a practice of the technique I will be using in my final photographs, which will feature members of my family. My intentions were to create a photomontage of the models face. I was influenced by David Hockney to do this, as he also created photomerges. Although he created his with actual photographs, I produced mine using Photoshop. I used less photographs compared to Hockney, this was due to wanting to practice the style first in an easier way and then build up from this. Looking at this piece of work & Hockney's work, His work visually looks better and more professional, even though I had access to studio lighting & Photoshop which should allow me to produce higher quality images. I will look into this in future photographs.

Qualities:Consider the aesthetic qualities of your work. How does it look? What do you like about it? What are the strongest and weakest elements from an aesthetic point of view?Aesthetically, my photomerge looks very jumbled up and quite messy. This was my first major attempt at one. As you can see from the photographs, some of the lines are very rough, which is something I will remember not to do in the future. The sizing of each different photograph fits well together, so this part of this photograph is strong. Another weak point aesthetically is that the photographs have different hues to them, which I will talk about in the next paragraph. Because the photographs are different colours, they do not work well together in a photomontage. I will keep this in mind when producing my next photomontages.

Consider the technical qualities of your work? How well done is it? What elements are strongest and which could need further work and development? Be sure to use technical terms in your work such as exposure, shutter speed, aperture and talk specifically about any post-production techniques you have used. The technical quality of this photomerge is not very high. For example, I used the eraser tool to remove different parts of the image, which didn't work very well as it shows very rough lines. In future work I will use the clone stamp tool to do this as I believe it will give a more professional look, therefore increasing the quality of my work. Like mentioned in the above paragraph, the colours have different hues to them. This due to the fact that the exposure, shutter speed, aperture was constantly changing. This is something I will have to think about when I am taking the photographs of my family.

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How could you improve your work? Could you develop your work further with additional work? What would you try to achieve with this? Could you undertake further experiments? If so, what would they be?I can improve my work by spending more time on it, which would then increase the quality of the work overall. Spending more time on parts like the lines featured in the image, these would look less rough if I worked on them for a longer period of time. The next photomontage I create will feature a full body photograph of the model, so I will take on board the things mentioned on the slide above and things mentioned in this paragraph. With the next photomontage of her portrait, I am going to try and colour match and correct what went wrong with the aperture, shutter speed & exposure. I will do this by using tools like the contrast & brightness bar. All of this will again be done on Photoshop. An experiment I will do in future work is compare if the eraser or the clone stamp tool works better.

When talking about your work, consider formal elements such as lines, shapes and patterns as well as the colour and contrast and also tone of your image. Think about the composition of your work and where this could be developed. The human face has countless different shapes & lines within it. I believe this is one of the reasons why the portraits are a very interesting type of photography. The photomontage of just one persons face really shows this & contrasts between just a single portrait. I will be developing on from this when I take the portraits of my family because the photomontages will feature more than one person within them. Like mentioned on the previous slide, the colours in the image need to be worked on, but something I find interesting colour wise to do with the human face is that the colours are automatically classed as being natural colours because the colours are naturally there. Even with make up, it is meant to accentuate the colours & lines featured already in the face. In future photomontages you will be able to notice the similarities and differences in peoples faces. I believe that this will be made even more interesting as they will feature photographs from the same family.

Finally you should consider if the images you have produced fulfill the brief you were set. Do they match the theme? Are they experimental? Explain your answers using specific examples.As stated earlier, this piece of work was a practice for what I will be doing in future photographs with members of my family. I do believe this is experimental. The photographs are experimental due to the fact I am experimenting with my chosen theme. Although this does not ft in with the theme of family, it is working towards this goal.

Practice on one person

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Evaluate: ideas e.g. analysis, results; How well do you feel you have realised your ideas and intentions and what results have you got? Ensure you talk critically (compare, contrast, assess) about your work. You should reference your influences and assess how your work compares.My intentions with this photograph were to create a full body photomontage of my model, as a practice of the techniques I will be using in my family portraits. like mentioned on the other slide, I was inspired by David Hockney's photomontages, but with a modern twist as I am using Photoshop whereas he would have to take many photos and line them up manually. I used the same tool as before (eraser tool) because I wanted to experiment with this tool in a full body photograph. I believe it worked slightly better than what it did with the face. Compared to the close up portrait photographs, the colours in these photographs are much more similar. I believe makes the lines less obvious to see, which makes them easier to work with overall. I will again keep this in mind when taking the photographs of my family.

Qualities:Consider the aesthetic qualities of your work. How does it look? What do you like about it? What are the strongest and weakest elements from an aesthetic point of view?Aesthetically, my work looks like three different photographs of my model merged together. With this photomerge, I like the very distinct way that you can tell that they are separate photographs. I also believe the colours look better & work better together compared to the portrait photomerge I did on the slide above. Again though, I do not like the rough edges of the photographs as it is easy to see and lowers the overall aesthetic quality of the work. I will test out the clone stamp tool when producing my next full body photomontage.

Consider the technical qualities of your work? How well done is it? What elements are strongest and which could need further work and development? Be sure to use technical terms in your work such as exposure, shutter speed, aperture and talk specifically about any post-production techniques you have used.Like mentioned above & on the previous slide, the photographs are again rough around the edges which is something I do not want to appear in the photographs to come. The edges are rough because I used the eraser tool, when I should of been using the clone stamp tool. I will use that tool in the future. I believe, compared to my first photomerge, all the photographs have the same colours, brightness & contrast to them. This is down to the fact that the exposure, shutter speed & aperture were all at very similar numbers when I took the photographs. This is something I will keep in mind when taking my other photographs.

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How could you improve your work? Could you develop your work further with additional work? What would you try to achieve with this? Could you undertake further experiments? If so, what would they be?I could improve my work by spending more time on it overall. I feel like if I had spent more time on it I could improve the quality significantly. One specific thing I would like to work on is the background of the image. I believe if I removed the white ground of each image apart from one (so there would be a definitive background) the look of the photomontage would look significantly better because you could not be able to make a complete distinction between them. Other improvements I would change technically and ascetically on the previous slide, which features points like testing out the clone stamp tool & making the edges smoother. These images are the experimental images before I use the photographs of my family, so I am technically experimenting what tools work best.

When talking about your work, consider formal elements such as lines, shapes and patterns as well as the colour and contrast and also tone of your image. Think about the composition of your work and where this could be developed. The lines in this piece of work are rough. I do not want this to feature in future pieces of my work. The human body has countless different shapes which I believe is a unique aspect of shooting with a model & also the fact I am bringing the different shapes the human body can make into one photomontage is interesting to look at. Unlike in my first photomontage, you can see the full body of the model now & this shows even more different lines and shapes than just the human face. This adds to the countless different photomontages I could create which is very interesting to me & I would like to look into this further in my family photographs.

Finally you should consider if the images you have produced fulfill the brief you were set. Do they match the theme? Are they experimental? Explain your answers using specific examples. With this image I set out to experiment how I can produce my final images using my family portraits, so I believe this work is experimental. For example, although I have seen photomontage work before, I have not seen something quite like this whilst researching photomontage. I would also like to mention that I am experimenting with skills and practicing my skills so I will know what I am doing when I actually produce the photographs with my family photographs. My theme is family so this is leading up to working with the photographs within that theme.

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Evaluate: ideas e.g. analysis, results; How well do you feel you have realised your ideas and intentions and what results have you got? Ensure you talk critically (compare, contrast, assess) about your work. You should reference your influences and assess how your work compares.This is the second practice photomerge I used did with the models face. This time I wanted try and join on the lines smoother. I believe, compared to the first photomerge, this looks a higher quality for reasons I will mention in the two below paragraphs. What I wanted to do with this photomerge is to strengthen my skills with the experiment overall & I believe I have accomplished this. Inspired by David Hockney's photomerges, I believe I have created work that has taken advantage of the modern way he could produce photomerges now e.g. via Photoshop. I believe you can tell I spent more time on this photomontage than the first one I produced.

Qualities:Consider the aesthetic qualities of your work. How does it look? What do you like about it? What are the strongest and weakest elements from an aesthetic point of view?Four different photographs merged together, that look similar but are different enough to make the photomerge look interesting. The slight differences between each photograph catches the viewers eye. I like the fact the lines look a lot smoother in the photomerge compared to the first portrait photomerge I made, which I believe makes this one more aesthetically pleasing. One of the weaknesses in this photograph is the fact that two of the photographs have some minor shake to them if you look closely at them (more on this in the below slide).

Consider the technical qualities of your work? How well done is it? What elements are strongest and which could need further work and development? Be sure to use technical terms in your work such as exposure, shutter speed, aperture and talk specifically about any post-production techniques you have used. As stated above, two of the photographs I used for this photographs I used for this photomerge are blurry. I should of used either I tripod or faster shutter speed. I used the eraser tool to remove some parts of this image. Although I believe I used the eraser tool better than I did on the other two photomerges, I believe I should use the clone stamp tool in future photomerges for a higher quality photomerge. I changed the contrast & brightness of some of the photographs so they would look better together, I believe this worked to a certain extent.

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How could you improve your work? Could you develop your work further with additional work? What would you try to achieve with this? Could you undertake further experiments? If so, what would they be?I will improve my work in the future by doing the things I mentioned on the slide above. This is my development work so I am learning about what works and what does not work e.g. the eraser tool does not give me the effect I would like my work to have. In my next photomerge I am going to use the clone stamp tool which I believe will work better than the eraser tool. I am also going to be experimenting with the photographs I have taken of my family which will be interesting to see the outcome of. I will also experiment within my family photomontages by using a mix of eraser and clone stamp.

When talking about your work, consider formal elements such as lines, shapes and patterns as well as the colour and contrast and also tone of your image. Think about the composition of your work and where this could be developed.The lines in my work are meant to be ever so slightly off so you can notice the minor differences within the photomerge, this adds to the overall composition in my work. The shapes in the human face are quite interesting & are highlighted within this portrait photomerge. You notice how the face can change shape ever so slightly to create a totally different mood, which is a very interesting feature you don't find with anything else. Like mentioned in the previous paragraph with the same title, it will be interesting to see how the lines of my families faces will work together & what differences/similarities there will be.

Finally you should consider if the images you have produced fulfill the brief you were set. Do they match the theme? Are they experimental? Explain your answers using specific examples.This is my experimental work and I believe it has allowed me to figure out exactly how I am going to work on the photographs of my family, therefore this work has been experimental. This work allows me to work within my theme of family. I’ve experimented with brightness, contrast, eraser tool, clone stamp tool & the composition of photographs overall.