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.

Inspired shoots

This is my attempt at recreating the shell image in Merel Brugmans gallery. I don't think it was very successful, and I am not too sure why it didn't work out so great. One of the reasons may of been because I only have a low class image editor on my MacBook, so I couldn't explore the depths as well as Photoshop would have been able to. I think this is an important step forward with learning to merge images though, and it shows I need to focus on my photo editing skills to create a stronger final image.

Merel Brugman

Merel Brugman comes from the Netherlands and specialises in still life a portraiture photography, often manipulating his images to create a surrealist effect. My favourite gallery by him is one called 'Body Langauge' which is my personal favourite. These are some of my favourite images by him:

I have decided that I will do some shoots which I will take inspiration from to help to move my project forwards. Merel Brugman also has a gallery entitled 'No Name' which is really surrealist.

Influence from Erik Johansson

One of my main influences was Erik Johansson, so I thought it best to try out one or two of his ideas. The first idea I decided to recreate was this image of a 'planet' like panorama.

To go about recreating images I took pictures in my garden first to aim to create a complete 360 degree panorama. I then uploaded my images to www.dermander.com to ensure that my complete panoramic worked successfully. This created an interactive image which was this:

As you can see, the whole panoramic doesn't quite work, as there is a little bit of confusion when facing the back of the garden. However, I have decided to carry on with experimenting with these shots to make sure that my idea of creating a planet of my garden will work before I waste more time in redoing a photoshoot.

My Mulitplicity Shots

I did some of my own shooting to attempt to recreate some of the multiplicity shots that I previously showed. I first off tried some with two people, to get an interesting different effect and then tried some with just one person included. With two people, the composition of the image tended to get a bit more crowded which kind of took away from the point of the images. However, I did do a few takes with two people in them to gain some experience in that field:

My favourite out of all of these images is the one inside the classroom because I think it works really well together, even though some of the positions would be technically impossible. After then speaking to my teacher, I decided to try some Multiplicity photo shoots with just one person. I looked at some images of similar ideas on the Internet, and decided to make my first photo shoot a self portrait of me. I think that the picture can tell the story of how woman's lives are very busy, and they often need multiple limbs with any chance to get things done. Also, because all of the things I am holding are appearance based, it could be said that it also shows the pressure put on to young woman to look good at all times. 

I am really impressed with my editing on this image, as I think that it does like quite lifelike. I am also impressed because although it looks complicated, the process is actually quite simple. You just take the images in the same place each time, and then open them all as layers in to your photo editor. You chose which one you want to be your background and move that to the bottom of the layers. Then for the other layers you simply erase any of the image that you don't want, which means that the bits that you do want will sit on top of the background create the illusion of many arms.

After this shoot I decided that I would do another similar one but working on many different things I have learnt from this shoot, both positive and negative:

Positive:

- Editing worked well
- Composition was in centre of the frame which drew attention straight to the subject
- Looks surreal because the audience wouldn't be able to figure out how it works

Negatives:

- The background is too distracting

So working on these points I decided to try another shoot, this time with me permanently behind the camera so I would have more control over the image that would be created: