Final Piece GIF.

As part of my final piece, presented on a laptop on top of my chest of drawers piece. These three GIFs. My evaluation of my prep. work is in the second sketch book.

Final Piece Post Production.

Here I started experimenting with my ideas for my final piece to see what would work best and what materials would give me the best results.

I started by simply printing off a variety of my digital shots and placing them in a chest of drawers to give the idea that they are reaching out and to see what would work best.

Hand pushing out, wooden tones are the same on the drawers and on the edges of this photograph which works well, gives an illusion that it is 3D and actually there.

Here I photographed it from another view just to see if the illusional effect would still work and it did, also to see what my viewers would experience when first looking at my piece if it be this.

Newspaper print didn't work as well because the colours of it and the wood didn't sit well together which meant this looked randomly plonked in the draws rather than being effective.

Ignoring the fact this print is too small for the draw, I also felt the colours clashed again, a black or white set of drawers would be needed if I was to use these photographs or my darkroom prints as they would be black and white because of the developing chemicals in college can only produce black and white prints. I felt it could work well though as she looks like she is pushing the actual wood of the drawer.

I felt this set worked well before so here is another composition, this time both hands are pushing upwards, it makes us feel as if somebody is trapped just like I aiming for so it is effective.

I put both of the successful pictures in the drawer here so that there was no negative space in the drawer didn't take over and make the drawer as a whole look boring. By having the space filled up it made it much more visually interesting, also as if it represented more than one person feeling trapped or enclosed, a common thing, presenting peoples inner character and desire to escape negative feelings. The hand at the front being brighter sets off a realistic illusion that the light from opening the drawer is doing this.

Here I filled the drawer with two photographs again see as this was the most successful result so far, this time from different shoots, the same as the balck and white not matching the drawers, the colours of these photographs didn't match or sit well with eachother, the scale of her is also too small in the black and white photograph compared to the newspaper one which makes it look unrealistic. The shadow captured in the photograph of the close up creates depth and looks good because it matches the shadows in the actual photograph.

The blur worked well because it didn't stand out too much instead it gradually blended the tones from her body, to it being transparent and then leaving just the wood which matches on the drawers and in the photograph.

This confirmed my opinion stated before - that photographs from different shoots shouldn't be used together because of the unrealistic vibe it gives off because of the colour clash and in this case the techniques clash too.

I then used the headlines image I had found for my experimenting with it in photoshop and printed it, cut it up and placed it randomly on my photographs as other enhancment.

These words were the most gritty and presented expected narratives from this kidnapping scenario. Worked as the newspapers did but distracted us from irrelevant headlines.

I don't think that they look like obviously healines here because of the lack of newspaper to back it up and the rounded font.

Here they stand out a lot, a bit too much and too distracting from the original image.

This experiment became quite repetitive and I didn't think it made the photographs look much better and I thought that they could do without them, Although I photographed them in the drawers to see if this would change anything.

I don't think this made a difference or improvement to the text experiment because it made it look unrealistically in the draws and took away the illusion effect and made it look quite tacky because of the font and the boldness drawing us to the words not the image content.

I then decided to experiment with cubomania on my images, I cut them up into squares this time seen as I have already experimented with ripping them randomly, I felt the rips could become too distractive of the image and the dquares could seem more stiff and tight rather than free and random which represents the inner content of the photographs.

Black and white mixed with colour so that the separate pieces stand out, I learned this from the experimenting I did before, the different tones worked well this way. I liked the cube shapes and the way they created a stuck movement. Also the odd scale and positioning of the arms, hands and feet, it was unrealistic flexibility which is usually related to mental cases which could represent the trapped feeling.

I don't like it in the drawers because they're realism point needs to put across and this doesn't do that.

I now decorated the drawers with the text to see if they would look better plain or covered.

It looked too crowded and unnecessary, it looked tacky and didn't give away what was inside but made it very clear, it didn't look creeping or intriguing it just didn't work because of this, I feel that scratching into the draws could look quite unnatural and scary but also subtle which would work well, if I decide to do this for my final I will take that into consideration.

I wanted to improve my favourite GIF and make the background seem more still because this would be better if I decide to use it in my exam.

The framing had to be tighter for me to even the background out, I did this on photoshop by starting with the first picture and opening up the other photographs in a separte document and lining the background elements up and cropping them until they were the same size, this gave me a more accurate result.

I wanted to enhance my gif more so I decided to see if I could combine the blurring effect with it, I did this by creating the blurs by opening the first still photograph, then dragging the next one on top of it as a new layer and lowering the opacity again, I saved this and then opened the original still of the photograph that had just become the transparent layer on the first photographs, I used the third photograph in the dequence to be the transparent layer this time. This pattern would carry on until the end of the photographs, I stopped after using 5 images to see if this theory worked or not. I closed everything on photoshop and clicked the window tab and opened animation to begin creating the gif. My still photographs I used were named 99, 001, 002, 003 and 004, in this order I loaded them to become a gif but between each of them I opened the blur combination of two of them.

Here is my result, I felt the stills were too long and the blur wasn't emphasised enough to reach its full effect.

I took out the still photographs and just used the blurs, this worked much better and I think that I could use this in my exam with all of the still photographs being used. The words are still clear but they look more ghostly with this effect on, also the negative space with be filled as I produce the rest of the gif so it progresses.
I liked the solarising on my gif from the previous set of my Dobinson inspired photographs so I thought I could experiment with my negatives in the darkroom starting by solarising them. I chose the solarising time and lighting strength (F) randomly because I have never known what make a perfect solarisation and I wanted to find out.

1 second exposure, F8, filter off. Really subtle silver and grey tones worked well but I wanted them a bit more strong and bold looking.

1 second exposure time, F 5.6, filter off. I really liked this, these are the tones I have always wanted to achieve with a solarisation, they aren't too dark and really bring out the light on the skin as a negative effective.

4 seocnd exposure, F8, filter off. I loved the tones on the back here, my first solarisation that I don't think I could improve on because of the contrast and all tones when solarising are seen here.

3 seocnds exposure time, F5.6, filter off. This one was also extremely successful, the outline of the body was highlighted keeping it distinctive from the background. Dark tones on body show a smooth texture and draw us to her skin and figure then lead onto the text on the wall because she is looking at it.

3 seconds exposure, F8, filter off. I don't know why but this one came out a lot darker, still worked and successful but I didn't like the tones as much as the other ones.

3 seconds exposure, F5.6, filter off. Slightly too dark. Could have dodged the left side background.

3 seconds exposure, F5.6, filter off. Could have dodged the left side background, too dark, tones aren't bought out enough.

3 seconds exposure, F8, filter off. Developer set on this quite unevenely when I took it out of the chemicals to solarise, I can see different shapes of black in the large areas which shows this.

Out of all of these experiments I feel that my solarisations, images placed in the drawers and blurred gif work best. The gif shows digital ability and the use of photoshop whereas the solarising shows advanced and accurate use of the darkroom. To conclude, I will produce a blurred gif and a photo covered chest of drawers (including solarisations) for my exam piece.

Final Piece Ideas.

I have came to the point in the project where my ideas for a final composition need to be put together, I have mixed up my experiments that have turned out the best and put together some compositions and experiments that I think could go well as a final piece.

Photoshop Double Exposure Experiment.

Here I used photoshop in exactly the same way and using the exact same method and tools as I did for the headlines experiment, except here I used my Dobinson inspired digital stills and overlayed more than one of them onto eachother to create a blur. I thought that this would create a sense of movement in the still, the blur would also look creepy because of the extra limbs seen around on it, it would also give a ghostly impression as they are stereotypically transparent figures.

Below shows the still I originally opened in photoshop in the layers box, and then the second layer I added which was another one of the stills. I lowered the opacity to 42% so that it was quite transparent.

This was how it looked with only one blur on top of the photograph (below).

The background lined up and the text on the body doubled because of the movement yet it was still close together which draws our attention straight to it.

Below is the layers box after I added two more of the photographs by dragging them in and lowering the opacity to 42% again, one by one.

Here it was with 3 photographs on top of it for 3 blurs, it looks very quick and fast, the layers give a really good effect because of how we see the background through her skin, we lose the bright colour and get more of the blue cold lighting with the limbs looking like white mist.

For the last blur I lowered the opacity to 26% because for some reason this layer stood out more than the others when on 42%

Here is the result, it reminds me of Idris Khan's work of blurring exposures because this is a similar effect (I looked at him for my courseword unit this year. I enjoyed creating this becaue it was simple and quick yet very effective, it created an unclear panic and creepy vibe to her in herself and her surroundings.

I repeated this experiment on the other sets of stills I did. The first was still my favourite because of the evil effect it gave but below I really liked the idea of the limbs being the full focus and could see the tones from the layers of flesh, also the head being in obviously different positions which weren't so noticable before, this gave and impression that somebody else was in there with her.

I felt that the black and white result looked even more like two people were in the box, as if it was a joint experience, very confined, a race to get out and a panic because of all the hands clearly trying to push out. I felt the individual photographs I chose to use for this image worked really well together because they are the most separated and different when compared to the sets of photographs used in the other images, the limbs filled more of the negative space, they looked very ghostly here because of the lack of colour.

I feel that this experiment could work as a final outcome or part of one, I feel that it has been very successful but if I was to improve it I would use more various body shapes/positions in the photographs I used for my coloured images to have an effect like the black and white result.

Photoshop Headlines Experiment.

I wanted to do some digital experimenting on my photograph stills, I really liked the headlines idea on the newspapers which were included in my shoot but I wanted to make them more relevant. I found this picture below on google images when searching for devastating headlines, it could cover the whole of the photograph I would be editing so I decided to use it in a similar way a double exposure of two photographs would be created on photoshop.

- First of all I opened my own photograph into photoshop, I chose to use the bright newspaper photographs because these were bright enough to allow the headlines photograph to stand out rathe than be unseen like it would be on my more blue and dark still photographs. Also by not using my plain photographs I was enhancing a photograph that had already been enhanced, taking its limits even further.

- I then dragged the headlines photograph from my desktop to the document with my photographs in, this will let it appear as another layer in my layers box (below, the background layer being my image, and the image layer my headlines image).

- I then resized my headlines image by holding the shift key to keep its measurements accurate and dragging it out enough to cover my whole photograph.
- Finally I adjusted the opacity by lowering it to 77% from 100% which was just enough to make it slightly transparent revealing my photograph underneath.

I really like my above result, I felt that it was quite poster like, she looks down and upset, vulnerable, which is how somebody would feel if they were kidnapped and on the news, the variety of headlines let us interpret many narratives, the words dead and crack stand out which make us think is she dead? Is crack to do with it? Are drugs the result of her problems and existence like this? The phrase 'the news' gives away that she is being searched for and that this is a serious case.

I then typed missing people headlines into google and the photograph below came up, this shows real missing peoples profile changing up, this was very personal but I thought this would work well and give more meaning to my photograph because it is more shocking, also the famous face of Madeline McCann would instantly give away the narrative which will shock.

I used the exact same method as I did for my first experiment. Below is the image on photoshop, I have stretched it up to cover my photograph and also erased the man from it so the narrative doesn't become too busy and confusing, the focus is fully on the missing people and the police info.

Below I have shown the step of having two layers - my photograph and the image.

Here is my result, I preferred it because of the perspective change and the more personal aspect, the far tit has numbers for people to get involved too. The photographs and text still looks quite like a newspaper because of the newspaper background, it hides the irrelevant headlines and works well with them to create a relevant newspaper effect.

I did the same thing again with the photograph of her facing the words on the wall, we can figure out what they say when we really look which adds more story, it shows her helpline and the fact she is physically trapped, this could also be interpreted mentally.

I enjoyed this because it was quick and simple but effective. To improve them I would create headlines of my own and photograph them and use these as the top layer, I could create a singular and personal narrative this way. When brainstorming my ideas for a final piece this will be considered.