First Final Shoot Images.

I decided in my final piece, that by using the art of multiplicity, I could display a message of how there is never enough hours in the day to complete everything you need to do. I decided that I could use a few different stereotypes to signify this, including:

- Students, having to keep a social life, earn some money, start gaining independence and do well in their exams as well as attempting to get enough sleep etc.
- Women, having to look after the house, children, still earn money and do all of the household chores
- Men, having to go out and earn the money, while still having to attempt to spend time with the family
- I also thought about taking some environmental portraiture of colleagues at my work, which could demonstrate how they are always so busy and as soon as they have finished one job, another one immediately appears.

After some careful analysing of all of these I decided that the representation of women would probably be the easiest to portray. I then tried to think of all the different jobs that woman do around the house, and wrote them in a list, which included:

- Cooking
- Cleaning
- Looking after children
- Job
- Chores, ie taking out the bins, sweeping floor
- Washing up/ drying up
- Ironing
- Socialising

I then tried to think how I could incorparate these in to my multiplicity shots. To take this to the next level from my previous attempts, I decided to include the same person more than once as well as the multiplicity of any limbs. As it seemed most suitable, I thought that I could take these pictures in a set up kitchen, which would be very clean and tidy, linking back to the roles of women.

Ikityc

However, with these images due to the size of my kitchen I was getting in my way quite a lot, and blocked myself. I also didn't like how it wasn't very focused or obvious that it was surreal, so I decided to move back on to the multiple limbs.

More progression

I created this picture which tells the story of a young woman trying to make herself look pretty in all the typical ways. This one is quite roughly edited, but I discoverd half way through that a lot of the arms overlapped in editing, and so it wouldn't work very well. I worked on this picture a bit more than my previous attempts by focusing on the background a bit more, and making sure it was in it's correct environment.

Ideas for final shoots.

I wanted my final piece to be an image which tied all of my previous experiments and research together to create a strong idea. I decided that I would look back over my previous images and decide which had been the most successful.

I knew from the start that I wanted to create a project which was based mainly on the pre production of images, and editing them on Photoshop or GIMP. Therefore, I think it is important that my final image requires a lot of processing from setup, to camera and then to finish. The project that I most enjoyed creating was the panoramic worlds, as I found the end result of these very rewarding. However, I didn't really know how I could further the development of these images. In addition, living on an Island I am extremely limited with the amount of locations I can photograph to create interesting 'planets'. I did attempt some images but the weather has been undependable and everytime I go to shoot it has been raining.

Because of this I decided to move on to the most succesful imagery experiment of mine which I believe is the Multiplicity. I am going to try and further this in some more shoots to develop a strong idea for my final piece.

My Panoramic World

This is my recreation of a panoramic planet from Erik Johansson. It was fairly easy to create, and the hardest bit was probably taking the panorama. However, on my camera I have the function which helps me to 'stitch' images together while looking at them which creates a fluid panorama. Once I had done this I open it on Photoshop, and firstly rotate it by 180 degrees so it is upside down. Then I went into Filter --> Distort --> Polar Coordinates, and selected the option for 'Rectangualar to Polar'. This made the round shape in to a planet, but it was rather squashed. To rectify this I simply went on to Canvas Size and made the height the same size as the width which made it an even circle.

I am quite pleased with this picture as I think it worked quite well altogether. Although I had a bit of a problem with the images fitting together in the panorama on a previous post, you cannot see this in this final image.  If I could do it again, and if I have time I will, I would like to photography some things which are in the grass section,  as this is what Erik Johansson did. Linking back to the question, this image distorts the perception of reality by creating an imaginary world out of what should be a flat image.

Christophe Huet

Another artist that I have found on the internet is Christophe Huet. He is a French artist who specialises in creative retouching, and produces some very high class images. One of my favourite shots by him is this one, which I think is really quite quirky and interesting.

I am going to attempt to recreate this image with some ideas of my own. First off I am going to use a real life Mr Potato Head to give the effect of the sections of the face. I photographed all of the parts of a Mr Potato Head and merging real life features in with it. Here are the pictures that I took of the features, and also the original picture of me.

Photo

I created the nose by taking a close up of my nose and layering it over the artificial nose, but making it slightly opaque so you can still see quite a lot of the original nose underneath. With the eyes I simply took my iris and pupil of my eye and layering it over the original pupil. This was quite easy to do as the fake eye is very simply designed and didn't require any editing.

The first thing I did to my face is blur the features around to create a flat image to place the potato head on top of it. I then layered up the potato head image with all the features on top of it, and created this final image:

Ghost Lighting

I was talking to my teacher on how she thought that my work could progress to the next level and she said  that she had once used a technique in which you go in to a completley pitch black room, and set the shutter speed to 3 seconds, and create some light by flashing a torch onto your subject as it moves around. I thought of that idea fascinated me, so I decided to give it a go in the darkroom at school.


This was one of the first attempts that I took, where I wasn't really too sure what to expect or what to ask my subject to do. In this one she was just moving her entire body, so I thought that maybe for my next image I could ask her to slowly walk from one side of the background to the other to see what that could create.

I really think that this explores the question of surrealism as it looks quite ghostly, which is exploring the fantasy of the unliving. I really like exploring different shutter speeds as they really interest me.

Further Photo Shoots

I am also planning on taking inspiration from this shot of Erik Johanssons:

I thought that this could be quite a simple but interesting image technique to duplicate. I also thought that once I had mastered the technique that this project required, I could be able to do many more different image experiments as it is the base of many manipulations. 

My chosen image

The first thing that I had to do was to capture an image of my model. I took a few pictures of him 'punching' himself, and chose this one as my favourite. This picture was taken with the flash on and quite low lighting to create the effect desired. The first editing technique that I used was to smudge the facial features all together to create a 'blank canvas' for the models face. I did this by using the 'Smudge' tool, and simply blurring everything together. To create a high quality image I ensured that I zoomed in fully so I didn't include any hair or fingers in smudging. Once I had finished this, due to the eyes and lips the skin was slightly oddly coloured so I edited this using the 'Brightness and Contrast' and the 'Hue and Saturation' options to make sure the skin looked real.

Texture shot

My next step was to get an image which I could transfer to behind the skin to create the texture of the skin. I think that in his image Erik Johansson used an air bag, possibly from a car, however as I didn't have one of these handy I decided to use something a bit more simple for my practice shots. I decided with my teacher that I would try to see how to effect worked if I were to punch a pillow and then transfer that across. The picture on the right is the final one which I have chosen. I opened this image as a layer on top of the previous layer, and then turned the opacity down to about 20%. This is only to make the editing easier at this stage and we will fine tune it later. I then had to position the top layer in the desired position over the face if my subject, and then erase any of the image which wasn't needed. This was a very tricky job because, for example, there isn't really a solid line between the hair and skin, so on the edges I used the 'Blur' tool which smoothened out the edges and made it a smoother transition. I then clicked on the top layer, and selected the 'Change colour to Alpha' opition, which basically removes any colour from the layer and leaves only the texture. I then finally fine tune the opacity to make sure there aren't any hard edges and I have my finished project:

I have decided that in order to make my images more successful I will make most of my images self portrait. This is because I feel that in this way I can portray the emotions and actions that I want to show in my picture just as I'd like them, as only I can see in my mind. It also means that I won't need to rely on any other people, or take anyone else away from their studying, which I prefer. It will be very easy to take the images of myself, because I can follow this diagram:

My Canon Powershot has the option to use a self timer, which would allow me the time to get in to the shot and in my position. I also have the ability to turn the screen round, meaning that I would be able to see what the picture looks like from where I am standing. If I want to take a succesion of shots in exactly the same place I could set it to take up to 6 pictures one after another, which could be quite useful.