Final Spring photo

I am very pleased with my final spring image because it fits the theme well, is slightly out of the ordinary, holds narritive, is composed well and is pleasing to look at!

Developed spring images

These are my photos which are developments of my own ideas with inspiration from Saul Leiter and Stephen Gill.

These photos shown above were just quick tests of what the scanner could do. I like the messy effect my hair gives and how my expression on both photos is very bland because it creates mystery!

I introduced props to my scanner pictures to add the spring element. I did various compositions to see which looked best! Fresh flowers and insects such as butterflies remind us all of spring so I picked these props to represent it, I think they do a good job. I like the colours but think other colours such as yellow and orange would do a better job in showing spring so I will develop this image to achieve a result representing these colours.

 The image above is the one I think looks the best!

These photos shown above are layered which gives the images a soft, diluted effect. I like the softness mixed with my bland expression because it creates a gloomy and calm feel. I think these images are strange and interesting, not something everyone has seen before. Spring is supposed to be happy and sunny but even though these photos don't show these two qualities, I think 'Spring' has been captured by the use of flowers and soft colours. 'Spring' can be more present in these images so I will make the next lot represent it a little bit more by exaggerating the colours and use of flowers.

The photos shown above are experiments just to see if black and white or colour would be the best way for the flowers to show up against my face. The balck and white flowers make the photo look old and scary where as the coloured flowers give the photo a kind of magical feel, I think it's 'fairy' like.

This photo is made up of two photos, I layered them and changed the opasity to allow both layers to shine through and blend together, I then changed the colour of the whole image to tint it yellow to give it more of a spring look. I like this photo but think it needs something striking to grab the attention, something that is in clear focus because with the layering effect, the photos are diluted and lose focus.

The photo shown above is a development from all I have researched and attempted so far, I will still carry on my development to see if I need a mean focus in the photo rather than it be a bit crazy mess of flowers and hair. I purposely places the flowers on my face to cover my mouth and on my cheek because it gives a link with the flowers and myself, also I think it looks really cool. I like the framing but think it might put too much focuc onto my face when really I want people to be looking at the spring element but I suppose spring is all about freshness, clean, new life and my face in the photo suggests these things because of my soft skin and lack of expression.

Further inspiration

I came across the photographer Saul Leiter and thought some of his photo gave off the same vibe as my scanned flowers, they're eerie, confusing and slightly creepy. I like the idea of using people to represent things so by using his mysterious technique and my scanning idea I have come up with some photos which represent spring but also have a strange, abstract and spooky atmosphere. The spookiness originally came from the scans I did of flowers, I liked this spooky feel but couldn't find a connection with it and spring so by incorporating people I'm able to represent spring in a weird and wonderful way!

This photo is quite scary looking. It's not a typical portrait, shes not looking at the audience which disconnects her from us, her hands are almost covering her face which is another way for her to be disconnected. The lack of colour gives a cold bleak atmosphere and the fading of her gives a ghostly look.

These images shown above look slightly diluted and distorted which are some of the qualities which come out in my scanned photos. It looks this way because the focus isn't on the person outside, it's on the condensed, dripping window. 

These photos certainly don't represent spring but thats not why Ive been inspired, It's the unearthly, bizarre and almost supernatural elements that captured my eye and how similar the techniques are to the ones I have previously shown. The man in this photo is behind a plant like object, It's hiding his identity which gives the photo a very mysterious look. I like the idea of making a photo ambiguous or about more than one thing so it's not obvious to the viewer what the photo is about, this interests people, it makes them look for longer trying to figure it out because we don't like not knowing, we don't like being confused.

Spring photo development

These are my photos inspired by photographer Stephen Gill.

I started off by just scanning flowers with in mind that later on i would use this technique mixed with photos took on my camera to create a crazy layered image. This was just a quick experiment to see what scanning the flowers would look like so I grabbed the nearest ones to me which just happened to be old rotting flowers, not 'spring like' at all. I think this photo has an eerieness to it, the dying flowers add to this effect. The fading flowers in the background look ghostly. I like this technique of photographing because it allows for an easy way to compose the images and it looks great in the end! I will do more photos using the scanner but will make sure my subject matter is relevant to my topic 'spring'.

I then started layering my images and manipulating them on photoshop to make the colours shine though in certain parts and create an overall 'spring' look.

 

I layered 2 images to achieve the strange 3D look in this photo. Once I had brightened the base photo and changed the colours to suit the topic 'spring', using photoshop, I then overlayed another photo of fresh flowers and changed the opasity so the background image would be able shine through. I'm not too impressed with the look of this photo, I think I could do it again but achieve a much cleaner result. Certain parts in this photo look empty, I would like to correct the imperfections. I think I will follow the same path but will make sure the overall photo looks as good as it can be! I'm pleased with the colours, they look beautiful and pale, not too 'in your face' but still bold enough to not blend into the fading background.

This photo is almost the same as the photo above but with clearly shown flowers copied on top and another image layered into it which made the photo too pale and blended together. Adding the flowers on top gave the photo some focus rather than it be a flat and pale image. I like this photo because it's busy and basically in my opinion nice to look at.

Inspiration

After producing my own abstract images I found this photographer/artist who's work is similar to mine, It's influenced me to go for a more ambiguous approach to showing spring and create busier images with lots of different colours. The photographers name is Stephen Gill.






This image looks very 'spring' like because of the soft colours and floral subject matter. What I think he does is layers his images, giving them a sense of depth and realism. I like this photo because the colours and business create a wonderful, almost hypnotizing state which allows the viewers eyes to be fixated.

Spring - first draft photos

I was one of the unlucky ones who got given the season spring! As it's now autumn I thought I was doomed but surprisingly the photos I managed to take turned out quite well. Since the weather is the most opposite to spring it could be, there isn't a single green leaf in sight, no spring time flowers and no cute baby lambs roaming around, I had to improvise so I focused more on the colours that spring brings rather than the other more obvious elements.

I decided to take a slightly abstract approach to photographing 'Spring', I did this because not only would it be hard to capture litteral photos of spring, because it's autumn but also because they look quite different and interesting this way. To achieve this result I layered 3 photos of flowers using photoshop and changed the opacity to allow each photo to shine through, some more than others. I'll be honest and say there is no artistic reason for the layering effect except for the fact that I thought it looked good. Some could argue that it's not enough for photos to just 'look good' and that it needs some symbolic meaning or something, usually i'd disagree with this but in this case 'looking good' might not be enough. The problem with the layers is the psychedelic effect it gives and how this could confuse people and take their mind more towards the distortion and away from the spring aspect of the image. In order for this photo to meet the brief, it has to scream out 'spring' and although the colours and the subject do this, the layering ditracts from this a little too much, making the viewer think 'why has she done this?'. When I re-shoot I will keep in mind that my priority is 'spring' so will therefore not take a photo which has overshadowing elements. I still want to go down the abstract route but will try and allow the 'spring' side of the photo to shine through more than the abstract side, so it's a matter of either toning up the 'spring' or toning down the 'abstract'. After getting past the 'why is this photo all distorted?' I think it's a lovely spring looking image!

In the feedback session I thought the responses about this photo from the other students were very interesting. Someone said this photo looked like the view from inside a flower looking outwards and someone else said the dark patch in the centre looks like the silhouette of an insect. Hearing these mixed ideas made me realise this photo is very ambiguous. I didn't try to capture something which looked like the view from the inside of a flower nor did I try to capture the silhouette of an insect but by people recognising these things, I know this photo is a successful one. In terms of this photo represeting spring, It's very abstract so I wasn't sure if a stranger would automatically think 'spring' when looking at it but in the feedback session the things people seemed to get from this image were things related to spring which makes me confident enough that this image fits the brief to an extent which makes me happy!

Colour assignment

We were given a coloured swatch and a word each and were asked to photograph things representing this colour and word. As well as this we were supposed to take photos focusing on capturing things that represent words like: texture, pattern, vibrant, colour, contrast, etc. I was given the word 'Moist' and my colour swatch is shown below.

At first I was anxious about my given colour because nothing came to mind about what I could photograph but I later realised this was a good thing because it made me look at things with more depth, it gave me a reason to take in my surroundings and look at things I wouldn't normally even notice. I ended up finding quite a few things that shared this colour but then had to use my immagination to capture something which not only represented this colour but looked interesting and different at the same time.

This is one of my photos showing the colour from my colour swatch, the colour is a little out but it's close enough for me to feel happy about it! Not only did we have to show a colour in the photo but we had to show the qualities from a certain word too, for this one I orignally chose the word 'contrast' because on the camera screen the deep purpley/pink colour behind the pale green looked much brighter and gave a must stronger contrast but now looking at the photo I can see that this word wouldn't come across very well. 'Texture' would be a better word to give to this photo, but still this could be shown even more with the correct lighting to create more shadowing withinin the rough green patches. I like this photo because it's not obvious what it's showing, it makes the viewer think about what it could be which is always a good thing because it wouldn't allow them to lose interest. It's a very ambiguous image.

My word for this photo was quite obviously, 'reflection' and my colour is present by the cloth in the water. I have clearly focused more on representing the word in this photo than the colour which is just a background element which probably wouldn't even be achknowledged. I like this photo because it gives the viewer a new way of looking at an everyday thing.

'Shape' is the word shown in this photo, it's simple and unfortunately not very clear because of the plant element that i've incorrporated. I think the plants give a sense of 'What is this all about?' but thats not necessarily a bad thing...? Photos don't have to make sense. The reason I did have the plants in this image was simply because I thought it looked good, it looked much better with them there than the ball on it's own. The plants give the photo a webbed look as well as compliment the greeness of the ball. The ball is infact a sweet which when wet turns into the green colour which I thought looked to be simlilar enough to my colour swatch. The reddish wall makes the green stand out more which is one thing I really like about this image. Overall I'm happy with how this turned out because even though the reasoning for this photo isn't obvious, it's still a lovely looking photo!

After taking photos showing the colour from my given colour swatch, I went on to representing certain words within images. Surprisingly I found the colour swatch photos much easier to capture than the photos which were just aimed at showing certain words, I think this was because even though my colour was very limited, it was still easier to notice than the words were. 

I had given the photo on the left the word 'colour' and the photo on the right the word 'depth'. These two photos don't show the words very well, I orignally thought the words were shown clearly enough for the photos to obviously be about them but after a feedback session with a tutor and some class mates, I now have a different opinion. This task was set for us to make the chosen words stand out but I took a discreet approach which failed because most people found it difficult to pick out my chosen words from them two images. I will re-take photos showing these words and will allow more focus on them to make it more obvious that thats whats the photos are about. 

The word for this photo is 'movement', I think this is shown well. Even though my chosen word is presented very obviously in this photo, I'm not too keen on how this photo as a whole looks. I think it's a bit of a boring image, theres nothing particularly special about it.