Task 7

EXPERIMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY
JORDANNE THORPE
Task 7 – Evaluation

EVALUATION
After writing my proposal I had a very specific idea in my mind as to what my photographs were going to look
like and what steps I would have to take to achieve my desired look. Since the production process is only two weeks long, I
scheduled with a specific model to take some outdoor images in various areas such as in a woodland area and by a river as
I thought that this would give me a good starting point to be as experimental as possible. When constructing my
photographs I had my model dressed in floaty. light coloured clothing in hope of capturing some movement of the material
within my photographs caused by the wind, also the outfit has a slight resemblance to night wear and has a slightly Victorian
feel with the addition of the white lace gloves I had her wear. When constructing the outfit I thought that all of the aspects of
the outfit should portray a dream like state which I think within the photographs the clothes do, very well, as well as the other
aspects of her appearance such as her hair and makeup which I altered to suit my vision.
The location of my photographs was very important to me as I wanted to make sure that I could create a
landscape with no urban structures in order to make the images seem very surreal, just like places in dreams that your
subconscious creates, I wanted the scene to look unrealistic, like an alternate universe, by using multiple exposure adding
scenes by the river to the same image. I chose to take my photographs in the village that I live in as the surroundings are
rolling hills as far as the eye can see, also there is a river with a small weir which I thought would be an excellent place to
capture the movement of the water as one of my experiments. The first image that I produced was created by taking multiple
photographs, the first of which was taken in a woodland area, I had my model walk up to an elevated part of the ground and I
took the image from a low angle looking up towards her, I posed her in a position where the was crouched looking over the
edge of the bank. I thought that I would be able to create an image of her looking over, and using another image of the river,
she could be looking into the water, I would later go on to experiment with reflections to create this. However when taking the
image, due to the natural lighting of the day, which was very overcast and therefore dark, I could not get the desired effect
without using the flash. Despite this when I uploaded al of my images into the computer and was choosing the photographs
that were of a good quality I noticed that I had taken an image with a very good silhouetted effect that I could use to create
an eerie, almost nightmare-like image to fit in with my theme of discovering the human subconscious through dreams.
There is a second photograph that I took which is part of me first final image that I have created, it is one that I
captured with my model laid down on a rotted part of a tree that had fallen onto the ground in the wooded area where I was
having the photo-shoot. I purposefully had her lay in a comfortable position on top of the bark, close her eyes and relax her
head as I wanted to have the illusion of her sleeping as I thought that this would fit in very well with the theme that I set for
myself, and I knew that I would be able to experiment with different filters and compositions when added to different images.
The lighting of this particular area was very good as the clearing which we were taking this photograph in did not have much
coverage and let in a lot of natural lighting, which would make it much more easy to edit within Photoshop too.

EVALUATION CONTINUED
Once I had taken my photographs I was able to start going through my images and using a process of
elimination I chose a smaller selection of images that would be acceptable to use to create my final images. I started off by
using the image of my model looking over the bank as the starting point for my first image, I opened the photograph in
Photoshop and started to use post production techniques such as altering the brightness, exposure and colour balance to
make the photograph have a slightly rosy tint to it as this is always what I imagine dreams to be like, I wanted the lighting of
my image to be noticeably different to reality to give a surreal feel to the photograph. After I had done this I opened the image
of my model laying on the bark in Photoshop and did the same to it, making the lighting a better quality so it would be easier
to work with, however with this image I noticed that there was quite a lot of noise, due to the natural lighting, so I ensured that
I did not alter the exposure or saturation too much so that the noise was not too visible. I made the vibrancy of this image
quite high so that the colours of the subjects clothing was very prominent as I thought that the colours would match the rosy
tint I had added to the other image. I intended just to experiment with adding the image of the subject laying town to the image
of her looking over the bank, however when I made a layer of her out of the original photograph and added it to the
silhouetted one I realised that these images worked very well together as the way in which I positioned them together made it
seem that the subject is sleeping and being woken up or looked upon by her subconscious figure within the dream state. I
was very happy with this effect and when on to add more depth to the image.
I had decided prior to taking my images that all of my final images would include a filter of stars over all of the
photographs as I believed that this would add to having a dreamy, hazy, surreal feel and look to my images. I went on to
source an image of stars, I could have taken a photograph of stars myself if the production stage of this project was more
than three weeks as there was some specific equipment that I would have needed like a release shutter remote and a
guaranteed clear night, this would have been possible in summer, however in the winter this is very difficult to find. The image
that I sourced was of a high resolution which meant that it would not become pixilated and I could resize it to fit the images
which I was creating. Once I had sourced this image I then opened it into the image that I was working on and fitted it to the
canvas, this was the top layer so everything beneath it was not visible, I wanted the stars to act as a filter that is looked
through to see the images beneath it, making the images seem much more dream like and surreal, so I simply altered the
opacity of the layer to 40%, which worked extremely well as the stars became very subtle and added more depth to the image
which I was very happy with.
After taking a step back from the image it still seemed that there was something missing and that the
photograph was unfinished and underdeveloped, this is when I decided to experiment with a head shot that I had taken of my
model where her eyes looked particularly striking. I thought that I could change the colour of the iris’ of the eyes to a colour
that is unnatural, adding to the unrealistic and surreal look to the images that I wanted. I was able to achieve this effect well by
selecting the iris’ as separate layers and changing the saturation, colour balance and adding a hue to them, which created an
array of different colours within the eyes, making them seem eerie and un human.

EVALUATION CONTINUED
Once I was happy with the look of the subject’s eyes, I then inserted them into the image I was building, and in
order to make them blend in more, I altered the opacity to 40%, making them sink more into the background, I was then able
to place them in a space of the image where there was the silhouette of tree branches, and with the eyes over the top made
the image as a whole see more scary and eerie, giving the feel of a nightmare scene which seemed to finish off my image
nicely.
I then felt comfortable with moving onto creating a second image to be a part of my three series of images that I
could submit. I looked at all of the images that I created and decided to use a photograph that I had taken of a landscape that
consisted of rolling hills, white clouds, blue sky and very bright sunlight effecting the photographs exposure towards the left
hand side of the image. I took this photograph to Photoshop and started to edit the image’s brightness levels, exposure,
saturation, colour balance and hue, I added red tones and lowered the saturation with a slightly raised vibrancy to make the
photograph seem warmer and more visible as due to the sunlight within the original it was difficult to make out the actual
landscape, altering the levels helped with this and made the image easier to work with. After I had done this the sky section to
the photograph was very pink, I was going to change this however then realised that the sourced image of stars that I was
going to use would look very good on top of this sky, so I then inserted the stars image into Photoshop and layered it on top of
what I had done so far, and altered the opacity to 40% so the landscape was visible underneath it. I wanted to see what the
stars would look like if they were just covering the sky to the original image, so I selected the hills and created them as a
separate layer as I could then have this layer on top of the stars at full opacity, then the stars seem as if they are only in the
sky. This action was very effective and created an image which was very aesthetically pleasing, with bright hills and a
beautiful surreal sky which had properties of both day (clouds) and night (stars)

When looking at the final image as a whole, over all I am happy with the results of my planning, production and
post production methods. I think that I have researched relevant photographers in order to help me com up with an effective
idea, and at the same time have not been too engrossed by these photographers to let them have too effect the image from
having my own personal style. For example I enjoyed researching into the photographer Jerry Uelsmann, who’s photographs I
found to be very dreamy and I specifically liked how he used multiple exposure and mixed a number of different scenes and
objects together than would not usually be together, making the photograph seem very surreal and interesting, I took this on
board when creating my own photographs and my final image, you can see how Ulesman’s images have influenced me with
the two images that I have added into my original image with different opacities giving the illusion of multiple exposure.
However my images are very different to Ulesman’s since he works mainly in black and white and I wanted my images to be
very vivid in colour, almost psychedelic in a way, I wanted the images to seem as if the on looked was peeking into someone’s
dreams and subconscious.

Task 7

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Task 7