This week's photography homework was to take a photo to illustrate a poem. I chose this one by Yeats, and did a couple of designs.
The background is a collage/montage of three photographs illustrating embroidery and tapestry, and also some words. At one stage it looked like this...
I used 'overlay' in the Photoshop layers palette to blend them together, and 'dissolve' on the leg. In fact I did a lot in Photoshop... can't quite remember everything!
Homework this week was to copy a photographic image, any published and printed image, with an emphasis on re-creating the original lighting. I chose to copy David Loftus, the photographer who works on all the Jamie Oliver books. I love lifestyle photography, so it seemed a good place to start...
I can't upload the original image, but you'll find it here under 'genres' and 'tastes'. It took me forever. I spent a lot of time worrying about setting it up. I wanted to copy it as closely as possible, and was very indecisive about angles, props and lenses. I thought it would be simple... don't you think it looks simple?
Trying to get the lens to capture this frame was hard work, but the tripod, (with which I'm a novice) nearly killed me! This set-up ended up on the floor in front of a large window. Then I had to consider lighting, which was the main point of the exercise, I needed to get the shadows and highlights in the correct places - almost impossible. I managed to get the shadows almost in the right place, although they weren't deep enough, but I couldn't get the highlight on the cheese topped bread.
The depth of field was difficult to get with the angle of the photo, as for the colour of the soup... yeuk! His was a sprightly bright green, he had more pea soup in his bowl than I did, and bread floating just in the middle. Mine looked like sludge pouring into the Danube, with an off-centre floating bread. Actually my soup looked much more verdant before I took it to Photoshop to give the whole thing a 'blue hue' which seemed to exist in the original. This was a mistake. The chives were the easiest and I do like the reflections on the side of the bowl.
I ended up using a long 300mm lens, which weighs a lot, on a tripod. I was convinced the tripod was going to fall over and smash my new expensive lens, so cushions everywhere and weights hanging on centre of tripod. Also used my new remote control for the shutter which should have been easy, but wasn't. No one has ever explained to me how to use all this equipment, so it's very much trial and error and lots of tantrums! Keeping the cats away from the soup was hard work too. I thought my bread was going to sink...
Despite the frustration, it was a good assignment. I think I learnt something and it squashed my idea that I might be able to do some decent lifestyle photography in the near future! So much to learn...
So, I take my hat off to Mr Loftus, I think the simplest photography is possibly the hardest to copy accurately, and my plagiaristic tendencies endeth here! My tutor told me that food photography was difficult to do well. Although David Loftus tends to shoot his food pics naturally, probably no food dye for example, he may well have had his bread propped up on something, which I didn't even think of.
By the time I'd finished I was very hungry. The home made pea soup was delicious in reality (and much greener), as was the goat cheese toasted bread. Of course for my photo the soup was cold and I didn't eat that particular piece of bread... just in case you were wondering about me!
Now, if I'd just moved that bowl a tad to the right....
Our first level 2 photography homework - plastic cups - again! We did this at the beginning of level 1, so I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to think of anything new. Furthermore, the definitive 'plastic cups' homework was then achieved by my friend Glenn Foster, who had his picture displayed in the City and Guilds exhibition at Morley College in summer (see 03/09/10).
I had a go anyway. The plastic cups above were filled with pieces of coloured glass that I once acquired in a glass blowing factory in Stockholm. You may remember me telling the tale of how my then 13 year old son took the huge and heavy pile through customs in a rucksack... they didn't know what to make of it! They didn't know if it should be treated as potential terrorist material or not, this was 2005. They let us through eventually... My son wouldn't do that for me now, he would consider it exploitation and would certainly require payment! I digress... the picture was then altered in Photoshop.
The picture above was taken in my cellar where it's quite dark. I used lots of black cloth for the background, and softly lit the image from the right side using a reading lamp. I also used the flash on my camera.
Fast shutter speed produced this image
A little more colour here. Next week's homework... 'the light'... hmm...
I liked this humorous picture, but once again, it was spoiled due to lack of white balance, so ideal for altering in Photoshop.
Before...
I decided to do an Andy Warhol style picture, which is more complicated, but great fun to work on.
After...
The hardest part about this creation was trying to achieve similar tones in all four pictures. In my mind I had an idea of war time vintage colours, which I think was best achieved in the last photo.
That's the end of this little selection. Now I'm off to start photos for Level 2...
This was a fairly simple transformation.
Before...
I just used a 'posterize' setting on Photoshop, and created the frame around it.
After...
I liked the composition of this photo. So I decided to change it a little. I know the finished version of this has appeared in the blog at an earlier date, but I wanted to explain how I did it.
Before...
After...
The first photo was fine, but I just wanted to change it to black and white, then reintroduce some selected colour. To begin with I turned the image into black and white on Photoshop, then used three separate 'layers' to add each of the colours. I zoomed in until the image was very large, then added the colour. I didn't worry too much about accuracy, as I went back in with an eraser after each colour application. I took much more care with the eraser! I made sure that the colour retained transparency, in order to pick up the highlights, and I also used the 'opacity' slider to reduce the intensity. I repeated the process for each of the three layers. The great thing about layers is that the colours don't merge and make a mess. The bad thing about this sort of work is that it can make you a little obsessive...
This is the final manipulated picture. I couldn't upload the original picture for some reason. The original was, once again, very orange due to shooting in a room with lots of overhead lights at night and not using white balance controls.
I liked the photo though, with their serious expressions, and decided I could do something with it in Photoshop. I thought it could have been taken at any time in the last 80 years. There wasn't much to give away the fact that it was a modern picture - the girls weren't wearing pierced earrings for example. The background was very simple, again, nothing to indicate the time setting. So I decided to make it a 'vintage' style photo. I turned the colouring to sepia, added a 'film grain' to make it look older and more grainy. Then I added a black decorative frame.
This picture was possibly the most complicated for me...
Before...
This was taken at night at home without any 'white balance' alterations, so the whole thing came out with an orange tinge. I liked the picture though, beautiful profile and lovely negative space, so I decided I would alter it in some way.
This is a piece of vintage Sanderson upholstery fabric I inherited. I decided to use this as a background for the profile.
After...
I blurred the background, so that the profile would stand out. The skin tone has been altered quite a lot. I cut out the profile and placed it on the background. The cutting out was more difficult than I expected in order to get a clean cut without shadows or other markings. I used several 'layers' in Photoshop to get the final result. I had to draw her eyelashes on a separate layer and merge it with the photo, they were too difficult to cut out...!