Unit 108: Final Images

Here are my final four images for the digital manipulation unit. Like my other unit, the idea for my manipulations has changed a bit over the last sixteen weeks. I originally had grand visions of incredibly complex pictures, using all sorts of different filters and cropped images. All this however, was before my main assignment began to spiral wildly out of control. I was concentrating so hard on trying to get that sorted, that this became an almost secondary consideration. As a result, I realised I wouldn't have time to take all the photos I needed for my other ideas, so decided to try something simpler. Having seen Faye Heller's work, I thought this would be a far more achievable style to try. Again though, I left it far too late to try take the architectural photographs I'd need, if I was going to emulate the pictures of hers I liked. I decided to use photographs of objects instead. Marie kindly let me come in to college early again last week, and we took pictures of almost every object in the studio. Unfortunately, I've yet again wasted her time (sorry!) After looking at the images at home, I couldn't find any that I thought would make an interesting collage. Having hit this stumbling block, I frantically checked all my personal photos, and came up with a plan! I recently went to an art event in Bristol, and while there, took pictures of all the street art in the area. I've therefore decided to make my collages using these. Although I keep talking about collages, that isn't my theme, the theme is Faye Heller's style, i.e. Black and white pictures, with large blocks of blank space, around single images, or collages.

Before we start, I'd like to make a brief apology (other than to Marie for wasting her time.) I'm not an artist, I've never been particularly artistic, and I probably never will be. So I'm afraid the collages aren't great, but they're the best I can do. You'll just have to suck it up, and try to battle your way through!

Three of the pictures are made up of multiple photographs (they are collages after all), so to keep this post as short as possible, I won't include the original files on here, I'll just give them to Marie in a file. I also decided that because I was using multiple pictures, I needed to settle on a standard size for the final composition. Knowing some of the images I wanted to use were small parts of larger photographs, I thought A4 would be a good size to go with. It's big enough to make an interesting picture, but not so big that any small files would have to be stretched too far, and therefore suffer from pixelation.

Because these images are all my own, I didn't have to worry about infringing any copyright regulations, or intellectual property rights. There might have been a problem, with reproducing other people art works, but as the photograph were all taken on public property, and the art itself is also on public display, legally, that's fine. Because they don't contain any actual people, the usual issues of confidentiality, obscenity, and using images of children weren't a problem.

 Image 1: Banksy

For this first image, I've used two photographs. The main one being the Banksy, and then the smaller one, a random piece of art I came across.

I'm fairly happy with the final result. I think the balance of the overall composition works well. I like the way the white line draws the eye towards the man with the glasses and then the direction of his gaze, further draws you to the main photograph. The only slightly unfortunate thing, is that his eye line seems to be pointing straight at the naked man's groin, but you can't have everything!

To produce the final image, I started by opening a new A4 document in Photoshop. I then opened the two photographs as well. Selecting the Banksy picture. I copied and pasted it in to the template file, and used the move tool, to position it where I wanted. Using the rectangular marquee tool. I then made a large vertical rectangular selection on the left hand-side of the picture, and went to edit-fill, and used black as the fill colour. Again using the marquee tool, I created a thinner vertical rectangle, and filled it with white. 

For the other photograph, I used the marquee tool to select the part of the picture I wanted, then went to image-crop, and pasted the resulting image in to the main file, before using the move tool to position it. I decided I wanted to have the man looking in the opposite direction, so went to edit-transform, and pressed flip-horizontal.

To tie the picture in with my overall theme, I needed to convert it to black and white. As I don't have photoshop CS5, there's no black and white adjustment option, so I created a new hue & saturation adjustment layer, and slid both bars all the way down.

All I then had to do was check the final quality of the image. Using the actual pixels zoom option, I checked that the sharpness and resolution of the picture was still high, and hadn't been affected by my modifications. Looking at the photographs, I realised they needed to be boosted a little, so created a brightness/contrast adjustment layer, and slightly raised both.

Image 2: Marvin & Andre

This image was also created from two photographs.

This is my favourite of all the pictures. I think the stark black and white features of the Andre the giant poster, make an immediate visual impact. I'd have preferred a photographs of the poster with no other pieces stuck on, but in Bristol people can't pass a flat surface without plastering something on to it. I also like the composition produced by having the more muted central section. It makes the other two parts stand out even more.

This was a fairly easy picture to produce. I opened an A4 template, then with black selected as the foreground colour, went to edit-fill. This created a completely black background for me to place the images on.

I opened the Marvin picture, and used the marquee tool, and image-crop, to produce the middle section. Then copied and pasted it in to the template file. To make sure the image was as centrally positioned as possible, I used the view-new guide option to provide a reference point.

Opening the Andre photograph, I again used the marquee, image-crop, copy and paste process, to make one large selection. Then used the marquee tool to split it in half, producing the upper and lower sections.

Creating a new set of guides, I used the move tool to align all three sections at the correct distances from each other.

Finally I reduced the hue & saturation in an adjustment layer, to create the black and white effect.

I then performed the quality checks on this image. The sharpness, was fine. But I need to provide a little more definition to the pictures again. I started by creating a layers adjustment layer, and moving the white marker a little to the left to increase the impact. This did however have an unfortunate effect on the middle image, so I used the layer mask to remove it from the adjustments influence. I did create a separate brightness/contrast layer though, because that section still needed to be altered.

 Image 3: Fly Posting

This was by far the easiest of the pictures to produce. Unlike the collages, this is only one picture with a large frame around it. 

To make this picture I simply opened an A4 template, copied and pasted the whole image in to that, then manipulated the size with the free transform tool.

To add the frame, I selected a 200pixel brush set to 100% hardness, then holding down the shift key (to maintain the direction), dragged it along each edge.

I also added some graining, with the noise filter.

Like all of the pictures, I really wanted to make this image pop! So I created a levels adjustment layer, and using the layers eyedropper selectors, clicked on the photograph, to define the black and white base markers.

When I performed the quality checks, I noticed a strange bobbling along the edges of the frame. This was easily solved by using the marquee, and brush tools to redefine the edges.

Image 4: Devil Girl & Friends

I'll be honest, my already shallow pool of creativity was starting to run dry at this point. I spent about 30mins looking at the photos I had left, and was drawing a blank. I knew I wanted to include the devil girl, but I wasn't sure exactly what to do with it. I eventually came up with the picture above. Although I think it's the weakest of the four pictures compositionally, I do like the positioning of the two pictures on the right. It gives the impression that they're looking in to each others eyes. Whether this is due to some predetermined cosmic romantic inclination, or a simple mutual sense of disgust at having to appear in this collage, I don't know...but I like it!

To create this picture I opened an A4 template, and again filled it with black. This time however, I decided to alter the aspect, by going to image-rotate canvas-90° CW. I cropped, then copied and pasted the three images in to the template file, then positioned them with the move tool. Creating three new layers, I used the brush tool to draw the frames (again holding down the shift key to maintain the direction and width of the lines.) I then created a hue/saturation adjustment layer to convert the image to black & white.

After performing the image quality checks, There was the usual need to boost the overall look with a brightness/contrast level.

Because this was all done on the computer, I needed to take a couple of health precautions. I made sure I took regular breaks, allowing my body to adjust and relax. I also ensured the light was at an acceptable level, so as not to strain my eyes.

Lenses & Filters

Unless your planning to do pinhole photography, or photograms, one thing you're going to need is a lens. Aah...but it's not that simple though is it? What are you planning to photograph? How much of the subject do you want to capture? Do you want that hells angel your photographing to know you're there? All important questions, so lets see if we can't answer a few, although the answer to the last one should be self evident!

Three Main Types of Lens

There are three main types of lenses available. Which category a lens falls in to is determined by the focal length that particular lens offers.

• Standard
• Wide Angle
• Telephoto

Standard Lens

For 35mm cameras, the term standard lens is most often a reference to a 50mm lens. Traditionally, this is the lens that comes closest to capturing a "normal perspective." Although this all depends on whether you have a full frame, or APS-C sensor (but I won't go in to that now!) A normal perspective is supposedly achieved when the focal length is the equivalent of the diagonal of the image sensor. Because of it's particular characteristics, a 50mm is often used for taking portraits.

Wide Angle Lens

A wide angle lens is a lens with a focal length of anything below 50mm. Wide angle lenses are a favourite of landscape photographers, because they allow you to capture more of the visible area. Another characteristic of the wide angle lens is that they have a tendency to accentuate the depth of field. Objects in the foreground will appear larger, while background objects will be further away. Most of the time this is an advantage, but it can also have a distorting affect on certain subjects. When using a wide angle lens to look up at objects like buildings, there is an increased sense of the lines converging.

Telephoto Lens

Any lens with a focal length above 50mm is considered a telephoto lens. These lenses are popular amongst sports, press, and wildlife photographers, as they allow them to maintain a suitable distance from their chosen subjects, but still get sharp images. Because the lens tends to compress the depth of field, blurring the foreground and background, you can use them to make your subject the absolute focus of the photograph. Available in a range of sizes, from the fairly modest, right up to 800mm+, and even three of these if you've got enough cash:



If you can't afford a telephoto lens just yet, another option is teleconverters. These are small extensions that sit between your lens and your camera, and multiply the focal length of your lens. The most popular converters are the 1.4x and 2x. There are a number of problems associated with teleconverters that make them a less suitable option though. Because you're adding another layer between lens and sensor, you're reducing the level of light that gets in, so need to adjust the shutter and aperture accordingly. Also they aren't designed to be of the same optical quality as proper lenses, so the photographs won't be as good.

Specialist Lenses

As well as the three main types of lenses, there are other specialist lenses designed for specific situations:

• Macro Lens
• Fisheye Lens
• Shift/ Perspective Control Lens

Macro Lens

These lenses are specially designed to have a much shorter minimum focal length, therefore allowing you to photograph objects far more closely than with a normal lens. Because they are expected to capture even the smallest details, the build quality of these lenses is also usually far superior to normal lenses as well.

Fisheye Lens

Unlike all the other lenses in this list, the fisheye isn't designed to capture an accurate representation of your subject. It's designed to make things look like a...fisheye! Apparently they were originally developed for studying cloud formations in meteorology (from wikipedia though, so take with a huge pinch of salt!) There are two types of fisheye lens: Circular, and full frame. The circular lens works by taking a 180° image, but unlike the full frame lens, the image only takes up the centre of the frame. Thus forming a circle, hence the name. A full frame fisheye stretches the image across the whole length of the picture.

Shift/Perspective Control Lens

When photographing objects like buildings, a camera can often have problems when used at certain angles. Photographing a building from below can cause the parallel lines of the picture to converge and distort the image. A shift lens has a built in gimble, allowing the photographer to keep the camera level, but adjust the angle of the lens. This reduces the convergence effect and creates a more normal photograph. the one major downside of shift/perspective control lenses is the expense. Even a cheap lens can be well over a £1000!

Like a lot of photographic tools the shift lens has been designed to solve a problem, but photographers being creative types, they like to play around and see what else they can do with their toys. This has given rise to a form of photography where you use the abilities of a tilt shift lens to create the illusion that normal landscapes are models: http://www.olivobarbieri.it/

As well as a large selection of lenses to choose from, there are also a number of different filters to help you capture the photograph you want.

Clear Filter

As the name suggests, these filters are simply a piece of clear glass of plastic that fits on to the end of the lens. They don't block any wavelengths of light, and are simply there to provide another layer of protection between your lens and the outside world.

UV Filter

Ultraviolet filters block this particular wavelength of light. Originally intended to reduce the haziness created on photographs by this sort of light, they're less useful today, as modern camera sensors are far less sensitive to this problem. Because they don't block any other form of light, photographers tend to use them these days as an additional level of protection for the lens. Some cheaper filters though can cause lens flare, and reduce the overall image quality.

ND Filters

Neutral density filters can be used to deliberately alter the length of the exposure, or width of the aperture a photographer can use. Basically a filter with a dark coating on top. They're designed to reduce the amount of light entering the lens, and thereby allowing you to use a longer exposure or smaller aperture than would normally be required. This allows you to create motion blur on bright days, or alter the depth of field without blowing out the highlights.

They're available in two types: Standard neutral density, and graduated. A normal filter has the dark coating over the entire surface of the filter, reducing the light by the same amount in all parts of the picture. A graduated filter starts dark, then gradually gets clearer. This allows you to alter the brightness of areas like skies, without affecting the exposure of the landscape.

Polarizing Filter

These things are the bane of my life! Having spent a fortune on one, no matter which way I twist it, there doesn't seem to be any change in the picture.

Unlike a lot of the other filters, this doesn't block particular wavelengths of light, it blocks light coming from certain angles, depending on how far you rotate the filter. When rotated they block light coming from a 90° angle to the lens. This allows you to determine the amount of reflection coming from non-metallic surfaces, i.e. glass, and water.

The one major advantage this filter has over all the others is that it can't be reproduced in post processing, so is still relevant for modern photography.

Macro Filters

Like teleconverters, these are designed to be an alternative to buying a dedicated lens. By placing one or more of these on the front of your lens, they allow you to reduce the minimum focal distance of your existing lenses. The more filters you use, the more apparent the effect, but like some of the other filters here, this also has the effect of reducing available light and image quality.

A better way of achieving the same effect, is to use an extension tube. These tubes don't have any sort of glass or optical enhancement in them, they are simply a way of extending the distance between the lens and the sensor, thus increasing the minimum focal distance. though they still affect the light levels like a macro filter, because there's no actual obstruction introduced, they don't alter the image quality. There is one stumbling block though. If you buy a cheap extension tube, they don't have the necessary electrical contact points the camera needs to operate the auto focus.

Colour filter

Another filter that has been more or less made redundant by the introduction of photoshop. They were originally developed to alter the contrast in black and white photographs, by blocking certain colours of light.

IR Filter

Infrared filters block all other forms of light, except infrared. This can be used to create black and white pictures, or pictures with wildly distorted colours. Materials and substances react differently to IR light than to wavelengths of light, so an IR image will look completely different to normally photography.

Digital camera sensors are very sensitive to IR light. The longer wavelength of IR light would affect the focusing of an image, and have other negative effects. In order to reduce this impact, most modern cameras have built in infrared blockers. Some people do remove these, but this makes the camera useless for normal photography.

White Balance

This final part isn't a lens or filter, but it still affects the overall look of your final image. When the human eye looks at a white object, it can automatically adjust itself to the available light. This means that white remains white. A camera sensor isn't as sophisticated though. So, in different lighting conditions the photographer has to tell the camera what setting to use, and can therefore maintain an accurate representation of white subjects.

There are a selection of preset white balance settings you can use depending whether it's sunny, cloudy, your using artificial light, or flash etc. You can also tell the camera a specific setting to use, with a custom white balance option. Another option is to deliberately use the wrong setting to alter the final image. This can achieve things like warming up the colours on cloudy days.

Research: Presentation

Like all the other units so far, unit 107 requires us to provide research posts. These posts are not only supposed to back up our own work (showing that we understand the various methods available), but also to provide an insight in to the whole process. For the other units this was all fairly easy. We just had to research various photographers whose research was relevant to our own area, and write about their working methods and how this compared to our own. For the presentation section however, it's slightly different. I've got to admit I was a little worried about trying to find photographers whose methods of presentation were sufficiently interesting to warrant an entire post. I'm sure you'll have noticed this by now, but I have a tendency to use ten words to describe something, when one would suffice. Even a master of piffle such as my self though, would struggle to drag out most photographers presentation methods to my previous word count. Luckily though, all we actually have to do is write about the various methods of presentation, rather than how specific people use them. So, lets get started shall we?

Printing

This is the obvious place to start, but even this can be a complicated process to explain. When we talk about printing, we tend to just assume it's just the process of producing a photograph on paper, there are all sorts of methods and materials to do this though:

1. Silver Gelatin
2. Chromogenic Dye
3. Colour Inks

Silver Gelatin Prints

This is the standard method of producing Black And White Images. This process has gone through a number of different evolutions since it's discovery, from early attempts like the Daguerreotype, to Fox Talbot's calotype, and then the development of film rolls by George Eastman. But whatever method was used to produce the final image, the chemical reaction is essentially the same.

You start by producing a light sensitive medium. Whether it's, film, paper, glass plates, or copper plates, you coat your chosen material in a silver based emulsion. The modern method uses silver salts contained in a gelatin, which is applied to the material then allowed to dry. When exposed to light, some of the silver particles separate and this forms what is known as a latent image. The latent image is virtually invisible to the naked eye, so the picture needs to be placed in a developing fluid, this causes the silver to separate further and turn black, which creates the black parts of the image. In order to stop the remaining silver salts from developing when exposed to light again, you then use a fixing chemical, which removes any unused salts, and stabilises the image.

Chromogenic Dye, or C Type Printing

The Chromogenic process is used to produce colour photographs. Chromogenic films and papers are made up of a number of different layers, a silver based layer, like the traditional method of developing, and what are known as dye couplers. When developing the picture the silver based layer produces the latent image, but rather than being developed to turn black, the layer is used as a guide for the dye couplers to add colour to. There are usually many different layers of dye couplers (all either red, green, and blue), each of which creates a certain colour depending on which wavelength of light it is designed to detect. When the different colours are developed and layered on top of each other, they interact and produce a full colour photograph.

Film is designed to be used, and developed in a specific way (usually known as C-41 processing for standard colour film), but if you break the rules, you can actually create really interesting effects. By loading film in to a camera the wrong way round, the red layer will be exposed first, and so all your images will have a red/yellow hue to them when processed. This is known as Redscale photography. Another method is deliberately developing a film using the wrong chemicals, to create a cross-processed look.

Colour Inks

This is what we tend think of when producing photographs today. Running them off on our printers at home, or at work. Although you can buy professional printers that use multiple ink cartridges, most of them will use two, black and colour. Most colour ink printing uses the CMYK method. This system is based on the four colours you need to produce any other shade:

• Cyan
• Magenta
• Yellow
• Key: Black.

By combining any of the first three colours either in blocks, or using half-toning, you can produce any secondary colour you need. Though you could also produce black by combining the three colours, it doesn't produce a sufficiently accurate representation, so a separate cartridge is used.

Although this system is good enough for most photographic printing, when people want to produce fine art prints, they usually go for a giclee print. Essentially still an inkjet print, the giclee process uses two additional colours to help accurately capture the tonal range of a photograph. CcMmYK as it's known, adds two lighter cyan and magenta inks. Apparently this helps with half-toning, as the lighter inks make the spots less visible.


What To Do With Printed Photographs

Once you've selected the printing method you want to use, you need to decide what to do with the prints. Again you have a number of options:

• Presentation Wallets
• Window Mounting
• Card Mounting
• Foam board
• Framing

Presentation Wallets

This is a simple method of showing your photographs. They're usually plastic wallets available in a number of different sizes, which allow you to insert the photograph, therefore protecting it from damage. The better quality wallets come with a stiff insert at the back of each section to help keep the picture rigid.

Window Mounting

Window mounts are usually made from card and have a section cut out of the middle to display the photograph. More usually associated as an insert for a proper frame, they can also be used to sandwich the picture between the window mount and a piece of card. You can have them professionally made for you, or if you buy the right equipment you can create them yourself. Window mount cutting tools can be purchased at a relatively low price, and will often allow you to bevel the edges of the mount to provide a more professional appearance.

Card Mounting

Card mounting...is mounting on to Card! All you have to do is decide which method you're going to use to mount the picture.

If you want to permanently affix the print , you can use some sort of adhesive. Although you could use a standard glue like PVA, this could damage the paper, and cause unsightly creases and folds. You're better off using a spray adhesive specifically designed for the purpose. This will ensure a smooth application of the glue and minimise the risk of damage. The only danger is inhalation of the glue, so you need to do it in a well ventilated area. You could also use double sided tape to fix the print, but again you're best bet is to use a proper mounting tape, as unlike normal tape, the chemicals present won't leech out over time, potentially damaging the paper.

If you don't want the mounting to be permanent, you can purchase small transparent mounting corners, which can be applied and removed at anytime.

Foam board

Foam board is made up of three layers, A polystyrene centre with paper, or card on either side. Incredibly rigid, it's a great material for mounting prints to.

All the same methods as mounting on card can be used with foam board, but with the added bonus of greater structural integrity.

Framing

Framing is the best option in my view. Not only does it offer the maximum protection for your pictures, but by choosing the right frame to match your picture, you greatly enhance the impact it has.

Projecting

There are two methods of projection: Printing on to a transparency/Slide, or using digital files.

Printing on to a transparency, or slide is the more traditional method, but is a very limited option. All it allows you to do is show your photograph on a larger scale.

Projecting your images using digital files offers you a greater number of options. Like the more traditional method, you can choose to load and show your images one at a time, but if you combine the digital files with a slide show, you can add all sorts of effects, to help improve the viewing experience.

Slide show

Again you could create a slide show using the traditional method of creating slides, and using a slide projector, but a better option, is to create a digital slide show. You can either create a slide show using a desktop based programme: windows movie maker, apple iphoto, microsoft photo story, picasa, or photoshop. Or, you can use a web based programme Like: smilebox, or slide.

The benefits of producing a digital slide show, are that the software allows you to integrate, transition effects, music, create collages. All sorts of things are possible.

You can also view a digital slide show on multiple formats: projector, computer, embed it in to a website.

I'll post this now, but add more soon.

Presenting Photo Images: Initial Ideas

The presentation of photographs is often merely an after thought, you concentrate so much on capturing the perfect image, that you never even contemplate what you're going to do with it afterwards...at least I don't! The thousands of photographs currently languishing on my hard disk can attest to that, so what to do with these photographs? Not having had an original thought for a long, long time, these sort of things are always a bit difficult for me, but knowing this part was coming I've given it some thought over the last few weeks. None of these ideas are particularly creative, but they're tried and tested methods, so hopefully they'll work:

1. Diptych's, and triptych's, and hexaptych's, oh my!
2. Photo book.
3. The long shot???

 Diptych's, Triptych's, and Hexaptych's

This was the first idea I had, and has changed a little since it's inception. The first idea was to do three A3 prints, each with two of the six photographs on:

Diptych

I like this idea, but I need to look in to the cost of the whole thing! I know Marie said the quality of the print isn't that important at this point, but I'd still like to look at how much it would be to have them professionally printed. For my own benefit, if nothing else. Should this prove ruinously expensive however, I've refined it a little, to bring the cost down. By changing to a triptych, it will hopefully be a bit cheaper:

Triptych

The logical extension of this, is to produce a hexaptych. I'd then be able to have all six images on one A3 print, and therefore minimise the cost:

Hexaptych

Obviously I don't want the cost of the photographs to be the defining characteristic of my presentation, if I decide I need to spend the money to benefit the final result, I will. whether it's two, three, or six photographs, this is definitely one of my favourite options, so I'll do another more detailed post about it soon.

Photo Book

Although I like this idea, I just don't think I'll have enough photographs to warrant a book. I need to check whether we can hand in all 16 of the three unit's required photographs in one, or if they need to be kept separate for marking. If we can hand in all sixteen pictures as a whole, then this might become a viable option.

The Long Shot

This is going to be a stretch! Basically it involves getting six of my classmates so paralytically drunk, they won't notice when I have facsimiles of my six pictures tattooed on them. Do you think it's an option? The other issue with this idea is storage, even if I picked the six smallest people in class, they're going to take up a lot of cupboard space!

Again, I realise this isn't a particularly detailed post, but I just wanted to show I'm actually doing some work! Looking at it logically, I think the two most realistic options are the large prints, and the photo book, so I'll do a couple of more detailed posts soon.

Presenting Photo images: Slideshow

I was looking around the internet for presentation inspiration, and came across this slideshow. I appreciate a lot of the ideas are a tad elaborate for what we're doing (I don't think Marie's willing to turn the room in to a gallery space:), but thought it might get peoples imaginations going:

Presenting Your Photographic Work

View more presentations from Z Hoeben.

Just click the direction arrows to move the slides.

Hope it's useful, see you all wednesday:)

Disclaimer: This slideshow can lead you to hundreds of other slideshows, I obviously can't look at all of them, so if they lead you to anything of a naughty nature, it's not my fault! Recoil in disgust, or enjoy...it's up to you;)

Unit 107: Presenting Photo Images

We've now started the third and final part of the certificate process: Unit 107. These introductions never need to be too detailed, so I'll basically give you a version of what it says on the unit sheet.

Like the previous units, 107 is split in to two parts: 1a present images and 1b written account.

1a Present Images

For this section we need to take six thematically linked images, either new ones or pictures from a previous section, and devise a way of presenting them. Whatever method of presentation we decide to use, it will be assessed in three ways:

1. Use of techniques, materials and media.
2. Accuracy and detail of finish.
3. Overall visual impact

For the first part, we need to make sure whatever techniques we use to present the images, they remain consistent throughout all the images, and that they add to the overall  effectiveness of the images. The second part entails maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and finish, and again make sure there isn't anything to detract from the final result. The final part means that we have to select a method of presentation that adds to overall visual impact, whilst helping to communicate the theme.

1b Produce a written account

For this second section, we need to not only describe the method we finally chose to present our images (explaining why we settled on that method and how we went about achieving it), but we also need to describe at least one other method we could have used to present the images.

Digital Manipulation: Idea Development

The end of the course is getting sphincter tighteningly close now, so obviously the sensible thing to do is to pick something easy to do within the available time frame. Being sensible however, is not something I can ever be accused of. I have therefore decided to abandon all the manipulation ideas I've previously discussed, and go for something completely different. Whilst doing research for the manipulation part of the course I was looking through the list of artists Marie gave us, and one's work in particular caught my eye...Faye Heller!

Heller specialises in producing photo montages:

Swiss, By Faye Heller

She often uses architectural straight lines, such as the modernist/brutalist architecture of the building above, or a staircase (below), as a counterpoint to the organic lines of the female form.

Start Of Fiction, By Faye Heller

To produce her montages Heller often takes photographs from her own archive, she then separates the photographs in to segments, which she lays out in various ways before settling on the final configuration. Once she's created a montage she likes, she then photographs the resulting picture to create the final image. It's a tad easier for me to produce my images. All I'll have to do is use the marquee selection tool in photoshop to highlight the sections of the photographs I want to use, then separate them using either the cut, or copy command, before placing them in to the new picture with the paste command. I'll then be able to fine tune the position and size of the selection with the move tool and the transform options.

I'm not sure yet whether my images will be colour photographs or black and white, but if I do decide to go with the B&W option it will just be a case of desaturating the images.

I know this isn't very detailed, but I only decided to do this a few hours ago, so I'll update this post as more information becomes available.