My Final Product

This is the final product of my project. I really like this image because i think it captivates the viewers attention. i feel the use of surrealism in this piece has been executed to my liking. i like the use of colour and the saturation. i feel that the use of leading lines keeps the viewers attention and directs their eyes to the center of the image. 

The basis of this project was to create a piece of work to be published in the artistic magazine 'Oh Comely'. The work had to tie in with a december theme. My thoughts for the theme were along the lines of healthy eating. My initial idea was to have the hand coming out of the suitcase to be holding an apple or another kind of fruit/vegetable, however this eventually turned into the hand doing the 'OK' symbol. The reason i did this was because i just wanted people to know its okay. There's quite a lot of hype after december about eating healthy and loosing that 'christmas dinner belly'. I feel that the fuss made about it is very pressuring and quite a lot of people end up feeling worthless. 

It took me long time to create this image and the problems i faced were on more than a regular basis, the thought process behind this work was quite intense. I really pushed myself and my creativity and had to learn a lot about the tools i was using to create the image, sometimes it was quite stressful but i can honestly say that i am very happy with it.

Solarization

Solarization is a term first used to describe over exposure. The visual effect of solarization is that it inverts the tonal range of the image to make a mono photograph that looks between a positive and a negative image. In the darkroom this is done by exposing a partially exposed image to white light before completing development. It can also be done digitally, heres how:

Technique 1:

First of all I made a copy of my background layer.

Then I went to Image>Adjustments>Black&White

Then I inverted the image.

Then I changed the blend mode to Difference.

This was my final result: 

Technique 2:

First of all I made a copy of my background layer

Then I went to Image>adjustments>black&white

Then I went to Filter>Stylize>Solarize

Then I inverted my image.

This was my final result.

Technique 3: 

First I made a copy of the background layer.

Then I went to Image>adjustments>Black&white

Then I used the Curves to make this upside down V

Then I inverted my image

This was my final result

Duotone

Duotone is the halftone reproduction of an image using one contrasting colour halftone over the top of another contrasting colour halftone. This is most commonly used to bring out mid-tones and highlights in an image. The most common colours are blues, yellows, browns and reds. 

Here are some examples: 

Here is how I made my duotone: 

First of all I went to Image>Adjustments>Black&White

Then i used the sliders to create my black and white image.

Then i went to Image>Mode>Greyscale

After choosing that I clicked flatten.

Then chose discard.

Then i went to image>mode>duotone

I chose duotone from the drop down menu

I then chose the colours i wanted to use 

This was my final image

Artist research - Justin Quinnell

Justin Quinnell

Justin Quinnell is a photographer which specializes in pinhole photography. Quinnell's pinhole photography is very abstract. The context of which he has taken some of his pictures in are 20 years ago and of living art. 

As you can see from the photograph above the image is of a persons hand but the perspective is from the ground.  The image was clearly taken on a bright day, with the camera facing away from the sun. Quinnell used the vignetting effect of his camera to give the feel that the hand was the dominant feature of the picture.

Some of Quinnell's pin-hole pictures also show a different perspective to the way things are viewed in life. For example, this picture here, shows the Point Of View (POV) of a persons mouth. The way the lighting is constructed makes the babies head seem small and "chewable". The picture has a very similar vignetting effect to the first one but this time, it gives the effect that the mouth is engulfing the babies head. The whole image has a slight, blue-ish tint and a grainy effect.

The image above shows the curvature of the paper in the camera and it looks almost like its been taken using a fisheye lens. The image was taken using a long exposure time. The long exposure time blurs moving objects which are captured by the camera. However this specific image is a solargraph. Solarography is a technique in which a pinhole camera is fixed and cannot move. It is then used to expose photographic paper for an extended period of time (sometimes half a year). It is most used to show the path the sun travels across the sky. 

I find Quinnell's work rather captivating. This is due to the range of work he produces. So far his work has inspired me to use forced perspective in my work, just like he uses in a lot of his images. He has also inspired me to do some of my own Solar graphs. I think Quinells work is very popular because of the small pinhole camera he uses in his mouth! It gives his images a new perspective that many viewers havn't seen before and this is very captiving. I also think his solar graphs are so entrancing because i dont think many people are aware that photography can be stretched to such lengths and capture such beauty. The only flaw I can find in Quinnells work is the size of the pinholes he uses. Because the cameras are so small the photographic paper that he uses must be very small aswell. The problem with this is that enlarging the images causes a lot of noise  on the photograph therefore there are limitations as to how large it could be enlarged or printed. 

Artist research - Man Ray

Man Ray

Man Ray, born August 27th 1890, was an american modernist that spent most of his time in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties with both are informal. He produced work in a range of media but considered himself a painter at heart. He was best known in the art world for his 'avant-garde' photography and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also known for his photograms which he called 'rayographs' in reference to himself. During his time as an artist Ray allowed few details of his early or family life. He even refused to acknowledge that he has any other name other than Man Ray. The surviving pieces of Ray's early art show that from the beginning of his artistic career he was a great fan of the avant-garde, modernistic art. In 1963 he published his biography 'Self Portrait' which was then republished in 1999. He died in Paris on November 18th 1976 from a lung infection. 

Here are some examples of his work: 

I like Man Ray's work because he pushed the boundaries of art and the boundaries of what was acceptable and I admire him for that! He produced quite the range of photographs in his time and did his fair share of photo manipulation and he wasnt scared to try something new. I think Rays images work so well because at the time they were very controversial.  He also (obviously) created all of his work in the dark room, which in my opinion is very skilfull! The only thing I think could work better with man rays work would be the clarity , but obviously due to the times he was working in and the means he was working with this is to be expected. I would love to recreate some of man rays work digitally to see what they would look like. 

Artist research _ Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor received her BA degree in philosophy from Yale University in 1983 and her MFA degree in photography from the University of Florida in 1887. After more than 10 years as a still-life photographer she started to use computers to create her images in 1996. Taylor's images have been presented in one-person exhibitions all over the U.S and many other countries in both public and private locations. In 1996 she received State of Florida's individual artist's fellowship. In 2004 she won the Santa Fe Center of Photography's project competition. Here are some examples of her work: 

Maggie Taylor uses a lot of texture in her work and thats what i like most about her work. The contrast between the pallet of colours that maggie uses in her images are very soft and pleasing to the eye. She takes very innocent images and turns them into something quite dark and almost sinister. Almost like lorretta luxs photography, there just isnt something quite right about it. Whilst Maggies work intrigues me and there is a lot of focus, effort and creativity put into her images, this necessitates a prolonged production process. This results in a very detailed end product with depth, perspective and attention to light to produce a soft almost glowing effect. Maggies work has inspired me to use montage in my final work. 

Artist research - Erik Johansson

Erik Johansson

 Erik Johansson is a swedish photographer born in 1985. Erik was an enthusiastic drawer as a child, due to his grandmother who was a painter, and became interested in computers very early on. At the age of 15 he was bought his very first digital camera and became involved with photography. Having an interest in computers it made it all very easy and natural for Erik to start playing around with the images and creating things that you couldn't catch on camera. In 2005 he moved to Gothenburg to study computer engineering at Chalmers University Of Technology, in which he revisited his love for retouching images. After publishing some of his work online he started to get commissioned work from local agencies. After finishing his studies with a Masters in Interaction Design he moved to Norrköping in the eastern part of sweden and became a full time freelance artist. In 2012 it was time for something new and he moved to Berlin, Germany, a very artistic and inspirational city. Today he still works on both personal and commissioned projects but the personal projects will always be most important to him. Here are some examples of Erik's work: