Throughout the course if this project I have aimed to capture the essence of glass within photography. During this project I have learnt various techniques in photographing glass and I have explored image manipulation and darkroom processed in order to complete this project.
This project had called for research into various photographers who have photographed using film photography, photographed glass and used image manipulation within their work. When completing this research, I discovered Erik Johansson, a Swedish photographer who creates surrealist imagery with the use of photography and photoshop. Photographs by Johansson include one which looks as though a road has been cut like paper and one which looks as though a house is falling off the edge of the world. These photographs take hours for Johansson to create while using sometimes several hundred photographs to create a single image. When doing this research I found that I like Johansson's work so much that i feel he is now one of my favourite photographers/artists.
To kick off this project I completed some primary research of glass which called for me to go out and take some photographs of glass. These photographs mainly consisted of windows as I was a little unsure of how to creatively capture glass within photography and this is one of the things which I learned during this project. One of the photographs I took during this primary research was a close up shot of the glass pain in a railing. This photograph is simple as there is not much going on within the image however I feel as though this image is somewhat abstract as it is not completely clear what the image is of. I like this about this photograph as it adds a little mystery to the photography. Another photograph which I took during the primary research did not include glass, however it was a photograph of city hall with its reflection in the water of the fountain in city park. This photograph shows glass like properties as the water is reflective like a mirror so although there is no glass involved, the glass like qualities if the photograph are present. I like this photograph as it shows creativity with the lack of literal glass within the shot.
This project called for the use of film, both colour and black and white. With the black and white film, I shot still life images of a small glass elephant ornaments and also other glass items which I found while walking around bradford and the college. With these images, I was able to go into the dark room and hand print some of my images. As I was not able to enter a colour dark room, this meant j was not able to complete the same process with the photographs from my colour shoot meaning that I had to scan the negatives into photoshop and then get prints produced at ProAm in order to create at least 5 final images. For the colour film shoot, i again chose to shoot still life, but this time each photograph i took on colour film, i also took on digital, this meant that i was able to see the similarities and differences between the two shots. in my visual diary i have shown the best of my comparison shots, the image in question shows a large glass diamond ornament placed on grey carpet. The photograph is the same in each shot as i took them both only seconds apart but there are clear differences between the film shot and the digital shot for example you can see that the digital shot is a lot more crisp whereas the film shot is a lot more grainy. when taking these photographs, i tried to keep the camera setting the same on both the film camera and my digital camera however i found that i was able to get a better shot by changing the settings on my digitial camera which i couldnt do on the film camera such as changing the iso which the camera was on as this needs to remain constant when using a film camera but can be changed as you please on a film cameras. From this comparison hoot, i found that personally, i much prefer digital photography to film photography. Another advantage of digital photography is that the image which is produced is instant, this is good as you can see instantly if the image is in focus or not and you can also delete and re take images if you are not happy with them, you do not have this with film cameras.
This project had called for research into various photographers who have photographed using film photography, photographed glass and used image manipulation within their work. When completing this research, I discovered Erik Johansson, a Swedish photographer who creates surrealist imagery with the use of photography and photoshop. Photographs by Johansson include one which looks as though a road has been cut like paper and one which looks as though a house is falling off the edge of the world. These photographs take hours for Johansson to create while using sometimes several hundred photographs to create a single image. When doing this research I found that I like Johansson's work so much that i feel he is now one of my favourite photographers/artists.
To kick off this project I completed some primary research of glass which called for me to go out and take some photographs of glass. These photographs mainly consisted of windows as I was a little unsure of how to creatively capture glass within photography and this is one of the things which I learned during this project. One of the photographs I took during this primary research was a close up shot of the glass pain in a railing. This photograph is simple as there is not much going on within the image however I feel as though this image is somewhat abstract as it is not completely clear what the image is of. I like this about this photograph as it adds a little mystery to the photography. Another photograph which I took during the primary research did not include glass, however it was a photograph of city hall with its reflection in the water of the fountain in city park. This photograph shows glass like properties as the water is reflective like a mirror so although there is no glass involved, the glass like qualities if the photograph are present. I like this photograph as it shows creativity with the lack of literal glass within the shot.
This project called for the use of film, both colour and black and white. With the black and white film, I shot still life images of a small glass elephant ornaments and also other glass items which I found while walking around bradford and the college. With these images, I was able to go into the dark room and hand print some of my images. As I was not able to enter a colour dark room, this meant j was not able to complete the same process with the photographs from my colour shoot meaning that I had to scan the negatives into photoshop and then get prints produced at ProAm in order to create at least 5 final images. For the colour film shoot, i again chose to shoot still life, but this time each photograph i took on colour film, i also took on digital, this meant that i was able to see the similarities and differences between the two shots. in my visual diary i have shown the best of my comparison shots, the image in question shows a large glass diamond ornament placed on grey carpet. The photograph is the same in each shot as i took them both only seconds apart but there are clear differences between the film shot and the digital shot for example you can see that the digital shot is a lot more crisp whereas the film shot is a lot more grainy. when taking these photographs, i tried to keep the camera setting the same on both the film camera and my digital camera however i found that i was able to get a better shot by changing the settings on my digitial camera which i couldnt do on the film camera such as changing the iso which the camera was on as this needs to remain constant when using a film camera but can be changed as you please on a film cameras. From this comparison hoot, i found that personally, i much prefer digital photography to film photography. Another advantage of digital photography is that the image which is produced is instant, this is good as you can see instantly if the image is in focus or not and you can also delete and re take images if you are not happy with them, you do not have this with film cameras.
in adition to this, i also did some research into photographic processing labs. photographic processing labs are facilities which professionally print images and provide a wide range of photographic facilites. these facilities are usually offered at competative prices and as I use these facilities on a regular basis when printing images at pro am it was relevant to look into.
As this project ran over the festive period, the christmas task consisted of a festive shoot which meant shooting a series of images using digital photography which showed a festive sort of theme while remaining under the catagory of glass, for example christmas lights and christmas tree baubles. for this shoot i choses to take a number of photographs of baubles on my christmas tree which were taken using film photography. i chose to take these photographs using film photography as i felt it would add a little variety to this task as i usually only shoot using film unless it has been otherwise specified. By shooting these images in film i was stepping a little outside of my comfort zone as this is not my preferred area of photography, however i liked the experience of mixing this shoot up a little. As well as these photographs shot in film, I also shot a series of photographs on my digital camera, this time i chose to photograph some brightly coloured fairy lights which were surrounded by tinsel. This fit into the festive and glass theme of this shoot as the lights themselves were glass and the combination of fairy lights and tinsel looks extremely festive. As christmas is one of my favourite times of the year, this was a very enjoyable shoot to complete. I enjoy everything christmassy so taking photographs which have the main purpose of showcasing christmas in all its glory was perfect for me.
During this project I also used image manipulation and experimented with the liquify tool on photoshop which i found was a lot of fun. The liquify tool sort of, melts the image so that the colours run into one and other creating a kind of liquid look to the images which have been edited. I used this technique to edit a few images and for the most part, I used it in order to distort the image completely and in a random fashion. With these photographs i did not have much of an idea of what the end product would be, i was just experimenting with the tool to see what it could do and how it would effect different images using varying colours. This said however, one of the images which i edited using this method showed a reflection so for this one, i chose to use the liquify tool on the top portion of the photograph, the part which was not reflected and as the reflection was within water, i used the liquify tool to recreate the look of the ripples in the water on the lower half of the photograph. This meant that the scene was mirrored in the water, and in the end result, the effect of the water ripples was reflected in the rest of the photograph due to the editing.
In addition to this, when exploring image manipulation, i created images which looked as though a person was trapped within a glass bottle. in order to do this, I first took several photographs of a person, i used Natalie as my model, within the studio, i then took a photograph of a glass bottle using the light box. then in photoshop, I used the lasso tool to cut natalie out so there was no background to the image and then dropped the image of Natalie onto the image of the bottle which i took. i repositioned and resized the image of Natalie so she was exactly where i wanted her within my image and then i changed the opacity of this layer so it looks as though she was actually inside the bottle rather than placed infront of the bottle. Once I had created these images of Natalie, I showed a friend of mine the images which I had created and he said to me "How did you do that? could you trap me in a bottle?" so i did, as a last minute edit, I found a full length photograph of my friend Nathan and edited him inside a bottle in the same way i had done before. I included this image into my visual diary as it added some variation however, the photograph of Nathan was not taken by myself but the photograph of the bottle which he was edited into was, and the editing was all my own. i enjoyed manipulating these images in this way as it gave a fun and interesting outcome and this was something i was not aware of how to do before completing this task.
overall I enjoyed this project as i was able to learn about how to effectively take photographs of glass without an unwanted glare or something to that effect. This can be seen as my images of glass greatly improve from my primary research task which was mainly photographs of windows to the photographs of people in bottles. i found the image manipulation portion of this project extremely interesting and fun as i enjoyed creating imagery then turning the imagery into an art piece and playing around with photoshop is a fun passtime for me and the more i know in this area, the better in my opinion. This said, one area which i feel i could imporve in is time management as i ended up stressing about not getting everything completed in time for the deadline. i will try to improve this with the next project which i complete.
