Experimentation.

Below I thought that scanning on the fairy images and uploading them to photoshop, using the magnetic lesso tool to cut out the figures, copying them to a word document and resizing them (shrinking) to fit onto the dream photographs would be a good way of putting them onto the print. I printed each figure out on acetate on the A4 acetate in the position of how they would be on the specific photograph, when exposing my dream photographs under the enlarger at the appropriate time and lighting I had found from out from before, laying the acetate on to of the paper whilst I did this so that the fairy would be printed on top.

Test strip above, light 16, 6 or 7 seconds worked best.

6 seconds, best exposure time, full contrast, I tried out these 2 fairies balancing on the branches, the composition looked good and I was happy with it to be included in my final piece seen as I knew I would have quite a few of these photographs in there.

7 seconds was slightly too dark, made the print not look contrasted enough and too grey.

I wanted try double exposures as something different, looking through the negatives I would be using, I thought that perhaps the texturised look of the tree would work well on my friends face. Not sure of timings at all but judging from other peoples exposures 15 was an average. I did a test strip with each part being exposed by adding 3 seconds on. I put the light on the lowest at 16 so that the contrast was hopefully brought out well which it was. Above the result showed that between 18 and 21 could work well.

Above is exposure of 19 seconds which was perfect.

Above my first attempt was trying 21 which when the whole photograph is exposed this much, it was too much, the lighter part of the neck worked well but this was too exposed for the face so I tried 19.

Using different trees in portrait, I put them over a portrait of my friend, realising after wards that the negative was the wrong way around, either way the composition worked well and the timings were 21 seconds, slightly longer than the first because of the lighter parts that need to be brought out. Quote on top too.

I thought that this composition would be good because of the focusing and she could be sitting in the leaves, it shows the scale of the fairy and it also quite surreal scale wise. Timing of 6 seconds under light 16, acetate on top.

I wanted to include quotes on my photographs, inspired by the appearance of the fairy character from Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Nights Dream' I quoted parts which referred to something magical and to do with fairies because this would work well with my theme. Using acetate and placing them in the right way I printed them and over-layed my photographs with it when using the enlarger.  Below are the quote in the right positions on the acetate for the chosen photographs.

I Also tried adding the fairies to my photographs just using photoshop but they looked too dark when the opacity was lowered but too fake when made brighter with the contrast and opacity.


Here I dragged in each image on top of the original in a new layer, used the magnetic lesso tool cut out the fairy parts I wanted to use, resized them and placed them, using the opacity I made them quite transparent and also used the colour balance of the darker tones to add a bold but not too over taking effect on them. I put the fairies in to see what it looked like and I quite like the result, I also inverted the colour son the fairy on the bottom left.

Similar style here but with different images, I preferred this attempt because it looked more natural, the fairies didn't look too harsh. My friend unaware in the corner adds to the idea of her dreaming or not knowing what is there.

For this one, I wanted to overlay 2 images similar to what I did in the darkroom, but with photoshop I could add colour, I dragged in the fairy image and using magnetic lesso cut out just her shape, putting the photograph of my friend on top I changed the opacity until it looked clear enough to see both images, and then playing around with the different blenders I chose lighten and got a contrasted effect like below, then I chose to adjust the colour balance and found that purple on the high tones and low tones worked really well and the leaves coming through gave me this effect below which I really liked.

Reversals below to see what they turned out like -