Improvement or interpretation?

It is sometimes difficult to construct exactly the kind of composition needed for an exercise but I gave this my best shot so to speak using a previous image from Part 3.

P541 :Original image

The following 'improved' or 'interpretated images were a result of using a lasso tool to assist the adjustment of the image. The idea was to make the gnome stand out more from the background bushes.

P611: Adjusted image- whole figure  (P541 )

For this first adjustment, I lassooed the entire figure of the gnome and then increased the contrast,brightness and colour saturation within the identified area. The result draws the figure out more from the shrubbery -the colour adjustment comes over as a more traditional colouring for these kind of garden ornaments but moves away from what the eye actually sees.

 

P612 Adjusted image - face and beard  ( P541 )

In this version, I focused solely on the gnome's face and beard wanting to reveal more of his features. The lasso tool was used on a magnified image to help accuracy. In the identified area,I lightened the shadow, increased the brightness and contrast. The result is less obvious than in P611 but I feel more comfortable with it as the 'improvement'    seems more innocent that the saturated colours of P611 - colours which move away from the real colours of the figure as seen by the naked eye or through the viewfinder. I reckon this last image is a more legitimate adjustment for these reasons.

Addition

Now I know how some of the more 'creative' interpretations of images come from...

I decided to 'plunder' one of my local seascapes to find a landscape for this particular exercise. Dell Quay is one of those places where the sea never seems to be in when I visit but this does allow for more interesting images. One of my favourite places is here is the site of a large sailing boat that over the years has been allowed to deteriorate into a hulk ... a hulk that at low tide conjures up images of Charles Dickens' escaped convict Magwich and the muddy flats of the marshes where he hid from capture...

I took two images, one where the exposure focused on the actual boat and then a second one where I concentrated on the sky leaving the boat and surrounding area underexposed.

P606: F8 @ 1/250 ISO 800  18mm

P607: F8 @ 1/500  ISO 800  18mm 

The next stage was to copy the lighter image onto the darker one. For this, I had a go at using  free trial of Photomatrix Essentials  ( www.hdrsoft.com ). The results were very interesting. Using the option to blend exposures, I came up with the resulting image below :

P608

P609: soft preset

P607 works best at capturing colour and 'atmosphere' while P606 is nearer to reality.
But I was actually drawn more to the default preset ( P608 ) as it gave a more interesting interpretation albeit a strange and unrealistic lighting effect.

P610: Photomatrix default preset

'Servants or the 'The returned'..possible subjects for Assignment 4

Reading and enjoying Lucy Lethbridge's book entitled 'Servants - A Downstairs View of Twentieth-century Britain' ( Bloomsbury,2013) has given me an idea to explore for my fourth assignment.

Both my grandmothers were in service at the beginning of the twentieth century, the period covered by this book. My maternal grandmother came from a lower middle class background.The sudden death of her mother was followed by the unexpected announcement of her father that he had remarried. Like Catherine Cookson novel a stepmother and two step sisters arrived who expected grandmother to keep house for them. This change of circumstances led to her leaving home. With no real education or skills she fell back onto going into service, initially as a 'tweeny' maid, the lowest of the low. I know tall of this from the many stories she later told of her life in service before getting married.

My paternal grandmother appears in the 1911 census as a 'general domestic servant' residing' in the family home of a solicitor in Worthing.



I have few family pictures from this period of their lives but there two that exist. Could I use  these to rework the dustjacket design for Lucy Letherbridge's book?

The book tells the stories of below stairs workers drawing on their experiences of being in service over a period of time when households whether in the country or town, huge estates establishments or more modest homes with less than ten servants began to experience the huge changes overtaking the country and society in general before and after the first world war. These are my two images scanned from two original photographs briefly loaned to me by my 90 year old aunt.

Paternal grandmother in 'Sunday best'

'Big granny 'and husband 

These images present a number of challenges and 'ethical issues' which I want to come back and look at in some detail in a later post
 

An alternative....

An alternative subject would be the redesign of the front cover for MOGWAI's  CD 'Les Revenants' .This the recording of the music or recordings for 'The Revenants', a  television series created by Fabrice Gobert and based on the film' They Came Back' by Robin Campillo.

                                           
   Photos  for the cover ( front and inside )
 by c Haut et Court TV/Patrick Blossier- Batmanu

I thoroughly enjoyed this television series and in thinking about how I might rework the cover, an image came to mind which I took last year and which has echoes of one of the story lines ...a local underpass for foot pedestrians might well be the starting point and worth looking at.  

So two ideas to start with and explore for this assignment....

Pointers for my next assignment - real or fake?

 

I thought it would be helpful to me to have my tutor's comments re my next assignment 'logged' so to speak at a time when I am mulling over quite how to tackle this piece of work..

Peter's comments :

Your next assignment is quite tricky and a good vehicle for exercising your own creativity and judgement.  Choose your book carefully and think about the ethical as well as the aesthetic issues that might be involved in deciding on how much manipulation you engage in. You may decide on a strongly manipulated image or you may decide otherwise, whatever you do, explain it as fully as you have in this assignment and I would suggest that you have a brief go at a couple of ideas before settling on a final one that you take to conclusion.  Include all your attempts and working in your notes/learning-log

This video on creating a composite might interest you for the next assignment

Though the brief makes reference to book covers, I have found that album covers often make good sources of inspiration and I have given you references to sites that explore one of the more innovative of the graphic designers in this field.  Many of the covers were made before the advent of digital technology and must have taken many, many hours of work with the airbrush!

Album cover design:

http://www.hipgnosiscovers.com/

http://www.stormthorgerson.com/window.html

 Jeff Wall constructs his images from multiple shots, often making the originals on large format film but again good source material.

Plan you image(s) well before starting work and don’t be afraid to start over if things are not working.

I would like to see not only the final image but also the component parts and, if possible, the stages along the way, just in case I can suggest alternative ways of working.

 

 

 

 

 

  

Comments on my tutor's feedback for assignment 3

This feedback on my monochrome assignment was really helpful. particularly the reworked examples that my tutor provided....also found the suggestions for my fourth assignment both helpful and thought provoking...will include these in a later post. My responses here are in red italics..

 

Peter's comments as follows:

 

Overall Comments

The format of the submission works very well.  The narrative that accompanies the images of the assignment is full and ranges into the realms of inspiration and motivation.  I would encourage you to continue this and even expand on this as having the background research alongside the assignment images etc. makes the whole thing very clear.  I am pleased to see that you are expanding on this on your blog.

 

Feedback on assignment

I think that your images are all well thought out particularly in terms of the monochrome conversion; the versions I have offered are more suggestions as to alternatives than as examples of ‘better’ versions.  I had a preference for printing dark and contrasty black and whites when I was using film but this is a personal thing.  What I was doing with your images was looking for a way of getting maximum ‘punch’ without losing detail or the feeling I think you were after. 

Most of what I want to say about the individual images is in the form of annotations to your notes document.

The main question that you should answer, even if it is only to yourself, is are these images better in monochrome or colour?  The assignment forces you to think about monochrome conversion in the era of digital imaging, and there are many questions that this raises.  The main one being, what is the status and purpose of monochrome in photography today?  Everyone is likely to have a different answer to that question but I fear that too few people working in monochrome have really asked it!  You seem to have got the idea that to be successful with a monochrome final image, you should be thinking in monochrome from the start and I think that the most successful of your images are the ones that simply talk of form, shape, contrast and so on and indeed there are only two that I think allow for discussion on this point and  they are the first two (589 and 590) and neither of these make a bad monochrome image, just perhaps not needing the mono conversion.( Discuss!!)

While I agree that images P589 and P590 are the least successful of all the images in terms of the final monochrome version, I think with further reflection that P590 would have worked better in colour. That said, the intention in P589 was to capture a sense of 'period' - the golden summer remembered so to speak - and monochrome was a more obvious choice. However, maybe a slightly different treatment would have produced a better effect.. possibly slightly lighter. I have however, opted to try the image in a 'colour' version attempting again to capture the sense of period :

 

P589 - Lightroom 'Aged photo preset'

The seats image (595) suggested an American diner to me and my feeling is that a slightly lighter version referenced American 50s monochrome marginally better than your version but then you weren’t making an image of a diner! 









P595 ..my version 

P595 ..Peter's version

Yes, the lighter version does conjure up the 1950s feel better..

I have suggested a couple of different and tighter crops.  Again not intended as anything more than a different person’s viewpoint, perhaps saying something slightly different from your intention.  What do you think?

P591

 

Peter's cropped version

I actually like both versions of P591...I'm trying to differentiate  between what both say to me and I think for me the cropped version emphasises the contrast between the 'fairground' world and that of the 'businessman' in amore direct 'hardnosed' way. The fuller version does this to some extent and I find it more visually attractive ( probably due to the greater impact of the ribbed roof)..

P590

Peter's cropped version 

My version of 593 has two different curves adjustments added, they are to be looked at one at a time as it were not together.  Having said all this, it occurs to me that you are using Lightroom and I don’t know if you have any version of Photoshop that will let you look at the layers!  Oh well if not I have included separate versions  and you can see the results if not the way I got there! (593_peter_1 and_2)

 

P593....my version

Peter's version 1

 

 

Peter's version 2

 

Looking at the three images above, on reflection I think that I prefer Peter's second version as it brings out the detail a little better than mine  and capturing the detail details was the real purpose of this composition and processing.
A successful assignment I think, that you gave a good amount of thought to and that thought was in the right direction.  I like to see that a student is thinking about what it is that they are trying to say in their image before they start to work out how they are going to take the shot.  Content and intention should dictate the technique and even when an assignment is prompted by a technical method or process it is good to see that you are starting from the point of view that the technique is only a tool to aid expression.

 

Learning Logs/Critical essays

Where I have asked questions in this report or in my notes and annotations to your notes document, I do not want a direct answer but you should discuss them in your log.

Your blog is shaping up well.  You might like to think about ways in which you can make navigation even easier.  The tags you apply to posts make it possible to have some sort of index somewhere on the right hand side so that readers can look at, say, your reflections on exhibitions or books read.  I am by no means a Blogger expert but if you search I am sure you will find out how to do this. Funny, I was also thinking that the navigation left something to be desire and differed from by first learning blog. Have had a go at making it a little easier to navigate..

 

Suggested reading/viewing

Jeff Wall:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wall-study-for-a-sudden-gust-of-wind-after-hokusai-t07235

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/jeffwall/

Three books that might be of interest during this section:

Linfield, Susie (2010). The Cruel Radience: Photography and Political Violence, Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Richin, Fred (2009) After Photography, New York: W.W. Norton & Co

Lipkin, Jonathan (2005) Photography Reborn: Image Making in the Digital Era, New York: Abrams

Ingledew, J., (2013) Photography, Second ed., London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

This video on creating a composite might interest you for the next assignment

 

Enhancement

Well, I'm not sure how successful I was here in enhancing this head and shoulders portrait but in trying out adjustments to firstly the face and then the eyes, I feel the changes to the eyes would, if successful be less legitimate. Why this is seems to be my feeling uncomfortable with changing the colour of the eyes which are unchangeable ( unless coloured contact lenses come into play) whereas as skin colour and tone does change naturally from time to time. Maybe any change id not legitimate if the reality of the image changes unless the alteration is known and agreed or maybe requested by the subject if a portrait. That said, the more I write this, the more I feel myself sinking into a quagmire of ethical debate

Original image



P603: f5.6 @1/4 37mm  ISO1600 AWB

Enhancement of the face through increasing brightness and contrast

 

 

P604

 

 

And then just looking at the eyes...increasing the saturation and brightness and changing the hue a little.

 

 

P605

 

I prefer the middle image though the third one comes a close second....



Meaning of family photographs

Just finished  'Family Snaps The Meanings of Domestic Photography' edited by Jo Spence & Patricia Holland ( Virago 1991)..an excellent background read for my personal project for Assignment 5. It introduced me to the concept of the use of phototherapy and the work of Judy Weiser at the Photo Therapy Centre in the United States.
See www.phototherapy-centre.com/home.htm

In the chapter called 'Soap, Family Album Work..and Hope', Jo Spence talks of how with the help of skilful listeners, photographs can be used as starting points to trigger off and reconstruct memories in a powerful way.

The approach that I am exploring for my final assignment is all about taking photographs in the here and now to evoke memories of a family past i.e. my Dad, who died thirty years ago and his history. This is more about constructing rather than reconstructing I think.

Following on from this, I was very interested then to listen to tutor Sharon Boothroyd's comments on and see Stephanie d'Hubert's work 'What Remains'  for the TAOP narrative project in the OCA Student E-bulletin recently(  http://goo.gl/PmLZ4B ). Stephanie took photos from her family archive and brought them together as dedication to her Mother who died in 1993 - all about absence and presence ... Similar but not quite the same approach that I want to take but inspiring for all that..

Alteration

One thing I have noticed when on holiday with friends is the difference between those who are amateur 'photographers' and those who like to take holiday snapshots is what people actually see when looking at the same scenes and what they choose to photograph. I saw this scene from a canal boat and decided to capture the wheel dangling perilously over the water it for perhaps no good reason that it looked interesting. A friend who is more skilled a photographer than I also saw the same bikes but we were the only ones to notice it...perhaps being on the lookout for images and interesting shots results in almost constant sweeping any area for 'pictures'...




P599: f4 @ 1/60  ISO 200  16mm AWB

Taking out the cycle wheel dangling over the canal was a challenge made easier or not by having the background of bricks as a guide.

P600: Altered version

I think that this alteration works well in that someone looking at the second altered image would not be aware of the missing wheel.

Correcting images..

Dust specks are really annoying when you have captured a really interesting image as I know to my cost.This exercise raised the question of whether we should remove the dust shadow thereby in a real sense altering the content of the image. And again the question whether the speck is actually dust on the image sensor or actually part of the scene?

Looking at the image of Southsea lighthouse below at normal size, I could see a speck or two but scrolling through the image at 100% magnification revealed many more. These were removed using the Clone Brush in Lightroom ( see P598). From what I could see, the specks were dust rather than birds flying across the scene and I feel in this instance it was OK to remove the marks.





P597: Original with specks

 

P598 :  Corrected version

And then to look at lens flare correction....sometimes flare polygons can enhance an image but mostly I find they work against what I'm trying to achieve. In the case of the following image ( P601), a curious statue down in Gunwharf Quays, I think the flare draws the eye away....It was a mistake and in this instance its removal improved the image ( P602).



P601 : f13 @ 1/200 22mm  AWB



P602: Altered version