Digital image capture & editing - Still life & Homemade Texture

I wanted to play with textures more but this time create my own texture rather than using textures off the internet.

 

First I got one of my Mum's piano music books and ripped a page out......not really, she'd kill me. I photocopied a page from the book.

 

 

 

 

Then I ripped it round the edges and screwed it up and dipped it in tea. When it dried, I used some brown ink to give it more of a 'worn' look and splattered some in spots on too.

 

 

 

 

Then I scanned the texture onto the computer and saved it.

 

 

 

 

 

I used this image below that I took of a rose, and using photoshop, merged the texture with it.

 

 

 

 

 

This is the finished result. I changed it to a sepia colour as I thought it suited the style more.

 

Digital image capture & editing - Textures

 

 

I took some photos of some still lifes (or lives) I set up in my dining room to have a mess around with textures again...

 

 

 

 

 

This is fun!

 

Digital image capture & editing - Memories

 

After the introduction to the montage project, I started to think about collecting some photos and textures that I can scan in and use for my memories montage.

 

When I think of the word 'memories', I think of my childhood and memories with family.

 

This (below) is one of my favourite childhood pictures of me and my big sister because it shows how close we were as kids and shows how I remember us being.

 

I used photoshop and layers to add a texture and changed the image to black and white to give it quite an old hazy feel, because I don't clearly remember being this age. (i'm not quite old enough to have had black and white photos!)

 

 

 

 

This is the original image.... I just used my phone to take a picture of the photo.

 

 

 

 

 

Photoshop - touching up

Today, I had a go at getting rid of some of the imperfections on this old photograph below on photoshop. 

First, I straightened up the actual image by using the ruler. I dragged a line across the top of the edge of the photo and then clicked image and image rotation and then selected arbitrary. The angle was already set to 3.12 which made the image straight.

To get rid of the little white ripped bit at the top right of the image, I used the lasso tool to roughly draw around it, move the selection just slightly above, clicked the move tool and duplicated it down by holding down the 'alt' key and dragging over where the rip was. 

With the other rip on the top left hand side, i used the lasso tool again to make a selection around it, then clicked edit, then fill and then selected content-aware on the drop down menu. 

To get rid of the coffee stains on the right hand side of the photo, I used the spot healing brush tool.

To get rid of the numbers and the white lines at the bottom of the photo, i used the clone stand tool. To get a sample from the surrounding grass, you press 'alt' and click and then stamp it over where you want to by just clicking. You have to keep sampling to make it as accurate as possible. When doing the white lines at the bottom, zooming right in was required as the lines go over the boy's shoes so you have to get nice and close.

This was the finished image. It's not the best as I did it quite quickly but it demonstrates what I did!

Photoshop - Fruit Man!

 

 

In todays session with Dave Gee, we had a go at using different images to create a montage in Photoshop.  

 

 

 

The tools I used for this exercise were; the elliptical marquee tool, the move tool and the magnetic lasso tool. I also needed to resize and rotate some of the images and duplicate some for the eyes, ears and hair.

 

FUN! :) 

Studio photography - Commercial

In today's session with John, we talked about commercial photography. This is photography of which the photographer is paid for. This could include photography for; advertising, fashion, food, paparazzi or portrait and wedding photography.  

Today, we photographed 'shiny things'. We were demonstrating how someone might advertise jewellery. We had a studio made up of 2 lights; one with a honeycomb modifier behind the subject and one to the side. We were using quite dull, uninteresting backgrounds for the jewellery to go on to accentuate how nice and shiny they are and to create a contrast between the subject and background. I went out and collected an old brick with moss on it. There were a few woodlice on it so i brushed them off first.

I used a macro lens and got really close to my subject.

Interior Location Brief Evaluation

For this project I chose to photograph things in my home. Objects that I see everyday. These are the little quirks that I like about my home and give it character. Little things that I would probably remember about 'Mum and Dad's house' when I'm old and grey!

When I told people what I was planning on doing for this project, they thought it was a lazy choice but I found it quite difficult! My house is quite dark and cosy so it was a challenge to get the exposure I wanted. Also, I think that 'home' is a nice subject and you HAVE to photograph it at some point for memories!

I concentrated quite a lot on composition and the use of space to create a beautiful picture. Also, I considered depth of field quite a lot too. I de-saturated some of the images a swell because I thought it gave quite a peaceful and delicate feel rather than loud and lively as I feel my home is quite a peaceful place. I used a tripod for most of these images.

This is a little ledge at the top of a wall in my kitchen with some quite old fashioned kitchen items on it. I thought it would be interesting to photograph. I think the texture in the ceiling works well with what I was trying to achieve with the space.

In terms of composition in this image, I havn't quite stuck to the 'rule of thirds'. The objects on the shelf at the bottom take up a little bit less space than a third. I did this purposely as I think it makes the image a lot more interesting even though it is simplistic.

I tried to achieve a similar composition with this one to the one above. In my house we have lots of random objects and orniments dotted about. This is some artificial gold grapes on a gold plate (random), on a chest of drawers under our stair case. I am really happy with the way the wood has come out and the colours. I changed the white balance to cloudy as this adds warmth. 

This is a random candle holder on the floor. I didn't move anything or stage anything during this shoot. I just moved my position and angle to get the framing i wanted and to get the composition I wanted. The majority of this image is just space on the left hand side. If i'd have take the photo so that the object was in the middle, it would have been a lot less interesting and effective. 

These are on top of a wardrobe upstairs just below a velux. You can see the natural light from the window coming through. Again, i have framed it so that the object is to one side and the other side is space. 

Originally, i took this photo with the lights on in my porch and I was quite happy with it but when i turned the lights off, i noticed the shadows of the glass door on the walls because my dad was watching TV in the other room and the light from it was flickering through onto the walls. So i stayed there with my tripod, adjusted to a slow shutter speed and took the photo again. I thought this image with the shadows was a lot better. This one reminds me of a Jessica Backhaus photograph.

I couldn't not choose this one to be included in my final 10 images. This is just one of the typical characteristics of my house. My mum likes to put quirky little figures in random places. I selected a wide aperture for this image to get that shallow depth of field. I like that the focus is just on the little guy at the front and his smile.

 

Using a wide aperture again to get that shallow depth of field, focusing on the candle at the front and then gradually going out of focus towards the fire in the background. I like the warmth of this image however, if i was to do it again, i would have tried to get the logs at the side of the fire in the frame and maybe try to get it a little bit brighter.

A walking stick on the stair case. This was quite a dark area so I had to bump up the ISO to 1600. Because of this, I began to get a little bit of noise on the background so I tweeked the noise reduction in Adobe RAW a little bit.

 

A traditional doorbell. One of the things that adds to the character of my house. This one also needed noise reduction.

 

 

Jessica Backhaus also takes photographs around her house and others' houses and one of them is of a kitchen work top with jars etc. This is an image from my kitchen worktop. I just like the contrast of the red against the black and neutral tiles. I intended for this to be quite symmetrical and the rule of thirds comes into this image as well.

 

 

 

After completing my work and seeing everyone else's in the class, I wonder if maybe I could have chosen a more interesting subject matter. However, I found that it was quite a challenge to create a good image out of something quite mundane.