Reflection : Reality and intervention

Looking back at the work that I did for Assignment 4 I can see some progress in the follwing developmental areas  

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

Part 4 covered some interesting technical work using processing softwar; techniques that I have not had much time to experiment with; particularly in Photoshop Elements. Some of these were special effect editing which came in very handy later when considering what to do for the actual assignment.
I feel more confident in a sense in having a go and experimenting. Design and compositional skills are developing ...consider the resulting CD cover. I have had to research some techniques and have also researched the subject material  and historical perspective ( paperback dustjacket ).


Quality of Outcome
Like the parsons egg..good in parts ...the final outcome for the dustjacket was very poor quality as my learning log records ..I think that I have an idea why this was but would welcome any comments / advice as to what I could have done better.

The CD cover is better..it captures exactly what I had envisaged and for me brings out the atmospheric feel of the storyline and accompanying music. It is a result of applied knowledge and I think my train of thought and developmental process here is well captured in my learning log.


Demonstration of Creativity

I think my concept for the paperback dust jacket was an imaginative take on the subject of the book...
Even the CD  cover idea had an element of creativity. It was experimental for me and it captured my imagination right from the start..It probably takes an outside view though to judge whether the work here really does meet the assessment criteria.   


Context
This assignment has required a lot more research  than previous ones; not only research into how to carry out some of the processing techniques I needed to use but also research around the subject material and in addition historical perspective for the paperback dustjacket. The question of what was justifiably ethical led me to find out what the copyright timescale was for photographs - the answer was surprising. In fact the whole debate of around what is real and what is fake ; how to interpret image ; the intention of the author and what can be changed ethically or not led me to approach the assignment more thoughtfully and encouraged more critical thinking around what I was planning and doing here.
I'm hopeful that my learning log is becoming less a mechanical entry system,  a basic diary so to speak but more thoughtful and considered...reflective thinking becoming a little more apparent..more work here needs to be done or rather more practice!!

Real or fake? - 'The Returned' CD cover (4)

'The Returned' CD cover  

This CD cover is my submission for Assignment 4. I arrived here following two separate strands of thought- the idea for this CD cover and a concept for a paperback dust jacket for 'Servants' written by Lucy Lethbridge which I had just read and which had struck a very personal note for me.Both were interesting to pursue, so much so, that I took both forward to completion before deciding which one to send in as the assignment. Each idea was technically challenging in its own way and threw up a number of ethical issues en route.

I used a number of images for the CD cover.I took them a year apart but in the same place- a local pedestrian subway. The subway and figures are real but I manipulated the composition to achieve the composition, colour and 'atmosphere' and using Photoshop Elements and Lightroom software. The starting point was an empty subway which I 'peopled' with images taken from the other photos. 

So real images used to fake a scene representing a fictional situation in a fictional supernatural television series. The urban setting is recognisable and gives the scene credibility but software processing has been used to change the image into a more menacing situation. 

 I think that I am more comfortable with these changes in that the Cd cover is intended as an illustration - an interpretation of a 'fictional'  situation. It is not intended to convey or pass as a real situation. If we can go by just the intention here then perhaps this can be justified in ethical terms. But if we add in what interpretation people take away from the image not knowing this is a 'madeup' scene, perhaps thinking this is one of the city subways you would not choose to go down given its menacing 'feel', then this becomes less clear cut.


 And turning to my 'runner-up dust jacket..

Firstly, the image of the girl looking out at us, my grandmother, that I used was taken by another, unknown, photographer who cannot be credited. Given the age of this photo, can we assume it is out of copyright? Yes, I think so as copyright for photographs lasts for 70 years pma or 70 years after the work was first made available if the author is unknown.

While the image of the girl looks and is 'real', the overall photographic image is very obviously not real given the timescale discrepancy between the 'Edwardian dress ' and the items on table. So I can justify what I have used in the 'image' ? Yes, but I know that I have altered the Edwardian dress to provide a fuller skirt - is this justifiable in ethical terms as it is not obvious? Does it change anything other than help the compositional perspective? Does it alter the meaning intended i.e. how far cleaning and society has come since the girl standing sedately for her photograph spent her days as cleaning as a general servant. I think not.On balance I think I can justify this composition and changes made in ethical terms.

'Servants' dustjacket (3)

Firstly, this is going to be a paperback dustjacket. So I am looking at a smaller book and may well want to follow conventional marketing practice and come up with a totally different design.
Technically, I'm going to use two very differnt images- a digital image taken here in my home for this assignment (i.e. the gloves and cleaning bottle) and a scanned image of a very small creased black and white photo taken over a hundred years ago in poor condition mounted on cardboard. While the end result will hopefully be visually interesting, it may well have poor reproduction qualities...So..

First attempt:

 

P619

Looking to make the table appear more 'natural',I introduced a degree of perspective in P620. I used the clone tool to extend my grandmother's dress to seem as if it sat between the legs of the table.

P620

Then a different approach..this time in P621 making a more 'in your face' juxta position of images to contrast the images. Not sure this works that well ...too much out of sync...

P621

What difference does a change of background make in improving the visibility of image or purely from a marketing approach making the design more eyecatching on a bookshelf? I think this blue brings out the detail more than the sepia style version.

P622

In the end, I opted for a change of colour in the background but keeping the texture of the old photograph to retain the sense of its age. Adding in the title and author details produced two versions for the end result. I prefer the second one P624 as being more eyecatching with the all color background and larger image than the framed picture - a little reminiscent of the original jacket design.

P624

P632

However, the quality of the final result was poor. This was due I suspect to using a scanned version of the original picture of my grandmother which was poor quality. The scan was done a few years ago on a very basic machine with no regard to what use might be made of it in the future e.g. reproducing it digitally. There may be techniques that I could have used during this assignment to improve the quality here but I am not  sure what these might be ..a learning point to be pursued.

The Returned: a starting point for CD cover (1)

I'm not usually a fan of 'zombie' films but I really enjoyed the television drama series 'The Returned' shown at the end of 2012. The subtitled series was created by Fabrice Gobert for Canal+ and won an international Emmy for the best drama series....

'The Returned' is a supernatural crime thriller set in an Alpine village. It focuses on a group of men. women and children who  do not know that they have been dead for several years. I found the whole production very atmospheric almost eery deriving this feel not just from the storyline but also the quality of the natural light used in the filming and the evocative soundtrack.

So why choose to rework the CD cover for this soundtrack? One of the story lines featured a serial killer who returned periodically to the scene of his crime, gloomy pedestrian underpass. The underpass scenes reminded me of an image I took of a local underpass last year for my TAOP assignment on contrast.

P145: Dark

I always felt a sense of menace emanating from the dark silhouetted figure in this picture and think this could be a good starting point for the CD cover.  The original cover below features a crowd of shadowy figures emerging out of the grey surroundings - there is a sense of threat - you cannot see their features just sense their overwhelming numbers. 

P614: Original CD cover

What I want to do here is create an image which conveys the sense of menace visually ..the viewer being less an observer but drawn into the underpass location taking on the role of the pedestrian walking through a typical unwelcoming and 'lonely' location.

How to create my image?  

Without a cast of thousands, I went back to the local underpass with an idea to take a number of pictures that could work with my original image. I had one willing model to place in different places within the underpass. My intention was to find 'background' for the final design, one that either has an existing sense of menace derived maybe from graffitti or colour and lighting or the exact opposite i.e. an open, normal everyday feel to the sense of place. But I also wanted to create potential silhouettes for use within the final design..

P625: f10 @ 1/3  ISO 100 -1step  43mm  AWB

P625 above is one of the images taken ..it provides a clear sihouette and a sense of gloom and disrepair that might work...The white wall at the end is overexposed but gives a quality of light that will add a ' supernatural' element but I'm not sure whether the colours will work with what I have in mind. The image below taken last year might offer a better background colour.

P626

Why Marigolds - changing the image ( dustjacket design 2 )

So, where to start....

I want to convey how the life of a servant changed as the twentieth century progressed but have limited access to actual images taken ....no bank of National Trust images to drawn on!! 

So, how about inserting an object(s) into the original image which reflect / indicate how outside factors changed the world that servants inhabited and the work that they did. My paternal grandmother was described as a general servant in the 1911 census so would have done a great deal of housework such as cleaning.  
Looking at the original black and white photo and wanting to convey an over emphasised sense of period to enable a contrast image to be inserted drawn from a later period.

P617

In the image above (P617), I have changed the colour from black and white to a more 'antique' look and removed the creases in the cardboard mount; I also increased the contrast and clarity.This provides the 'feel' of history I'm looking for.

Next step is finding suitable 'contrast' images....

P618

Why Marigold gloves? These are a popular choice these days for protecting hands from the wear and tear of 'wet' housework and we know from reading Lethbridge's book that sore, chapped hands were a common problem for servants working in sculleries etc. They are also recognisably bright yellow.The timescale fits as I discovered that they were invented in the 1950s by the J.Allen Rubber Company based in Gloucestershire !! 
However, I discovered that the gloves alone did not work sufficiently well ..they could be thought to be just gloves even yellow gloves. So I added in a very obvious and distinctively coloured cleaning spray to highlight the cleaning technology aspect further...

So far so good....now I need to combine the images to see whether these ideas work at all.

Workflow for Assignment 4

Here's my workflow plan for this assignment :

• Research

        1 Initial research into primary source material i.e. dustjackets and CD sleeves. I 
           am continuing with my first two ideas of reworking of the following:

•  Jacket design for ....

                  What ideas suggest themselves my reading of the book?

• CD cover design for ......

                  I think that it helps to have watched the actual television series -in 
                  remembering the programme I'm looking for any ideas that suggest a 
                  different concept for the cover design. 

          2 Research into possible locations for photographs / props for shots / post shoot     
             processing techniques

• Preparation 

      Will use a range of equipment :  DSLR / tripod
      Programme in time for location shoots if required 
      Processing  - allow more time than usual for processing images  - allow more time   
      than usual as wider range of software processing techniques may be needed- some 
      unfamiliar.

• Processing 
• Editing 
• Retouching
• Creation of dustjacket / CD cover 
• Archive images to harddrive and portable location  
• Print / upload finished item to memory stick

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....

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....



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