This is the assignment paper that was given to me. We had the choices of: crowds, manipulating reality, concealment, paper or moments in time. I decided to choose manipulating reality.
I think that it would be best for me because I am already fairly experienced in photoshop and I was already doing a lot of manipulating of reality in my unusual portraiture unit. I also think that the idea of manipulating reality is pretty vague and gives me a lot of opportunities for what I could do. We were told that research is really important in this component but I didn't find any of the mentioned photographers particularly inspiring so I looked for my inspiration elsewhere.
Named Photographers Research:
Paul Biddle
These are my favourite photos that I have found by Paul Biddle. I like his use of colour and texture and I think that I can achieve something similar, my favourite of all of the work that I've seen of his is "The eye of the potato". I would like to do something like this and I think that it would be pretty easy to do, . I also like the confusing size of different things in "Self portrait of Surrealist photographer Paul Biddle". I purposefully chose his less photoshopped images because I would like to achieve are more physical and homemade feel to my photography.
Kevin Corrado
These are my favourite images from what I've seen of Kevin Corrado's work. I like a lot of the techniques that he uses, I especially like the double exposure images and I think that I could easily achieve this either through photoshop or with my polaroid camera. I also like the colours that he uses and the compositions of his photography. I also would like to shoot or edit my photos to be in 3:2 aspect ratio as seen in the fourth image because I have been mainly relying on square aspect ratios and I think it would be better if I tried to vary that and I think 3:2 looks very good.
I also looked at Eresha Sale's film "Surreal Film" but I didn't really like it or want to replicate anything that was in the film besides from it being a film so I just left it out of my website.
I think that I might experiment with film because in the past I've loved some films that have manipulated reality, here are my picks.
Here I put Un Chien Andalou, Luis Bunuel's absurd film, that defies many film theories such as the 3 act structure. It is famous for it's imagery of an eye getting split open with a razor. I also chose 2001: a space odyssey which is my favourite film of all time. In the final scenes, all things turn completely surreal. There are walls of light, galactic imagery, stills of the main character freezing, shots of eyes blinking and changing the colours of the shot completely. The film ends with a classic, extremely warps and manipulates reality, it's pretty hard to describe but in my opinion is one of the most beautiful and absurd pieces of filmmaking ever. Memento is Christopher Nolan's (Inception, Interstellar, the Dark Knight trilogy) debut film. The story line is very incredibly unusual for a film but it still isn't that hard to follow. The film goes both backwards and forwards and follows a man with short term memory loss. Pulp fiction may seem to be a regular movie, without much reality bending however it features a lot of playing around with time that doesn't take away from the viewing experience but does really make the audience think when they realise what they are doing.
I think that experimenting with film will be a lot harder than just taking photos because there is a lot more things that you need to take into account such as: narrative, cinematography, editing etc.
I think that experimenting with film will be a lot harder than just taking photos because there is a lot more things that you need to take into account such as: narrative, cinematography, editing etc.
Here is a mind map that I made that shows all my current ideas about the topic
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a space odyssey
Here are some frames from the film 2001: a space odyssey which inspired me. I think that some of these will be difficult to accomplish to the same standards as were achieved during the production of the film because of the large sets that they could afford to make with the film's budget but I think that I would be able to do something similar to the closeups of the actor's face with the abstractions of light across his helmet and the light across his face. But one thing that really struck me as being both easy to accomplish and aesthetically pleasing was his eye scenes. Where the edited colours of the eye would change dramatically whenever the actor would blink.
For my first attempt at a photoshoot, there was not much success as it was pretty uninspired and the only good photo I could produce was this one
2001: A Space Odyssey Visual Response
For my next real photoshoot I decided to take photos that took inspiration from the eye scene and I much prefer the results
For this shoot I used different coloured layers and layer settings to layers and layer settings to create different versions of one image of my face, I was initially just going to do a picture of my eye but I found that I create many other good works with the picture of my whole face. I really like all of these photos and I think that I can definitely add more to some of the ideas that I use in this shoot. I liked to use the layer settings that only blended the darker colours because I think that it gave a more gritty look to it as apposed to Kubrick's more sleek editing of the colours in 2001: a space odyssey. I think that some of these look kind of like movie posters or book covers or something so I tried to add text to some but nothing really worked, but I think that is also to do with the fact that I had nothing interesting to write on these images. I would say that these photos fit the theme of manipulating reality although I don't think that I have really pushed to the extent that I could go with my chosen theme. I would also like to put something like this into film but I need to be cautious for it not to seem like I'm ripping 2001 off. I think that it could be better if I used this style of editing on other pieces of portraiture as I was fairly limited as I was only using a badly taken self portrait.
Here are my edits of the picture that I took of Harkeerat with the mirror, I like how some of them came out but they still aren't great, I don't think that the editing really improved on the picture and I don't think I should have spent as much time as I did on this sub-average picture
Here are some more of my homework pieces, I really like these set of photographs because they gave me a lot of options for not particularly great images because the editing is pretty interesting and I really like the textures and colours tat I used in them. I'd say that this shoot was an overall success and I'd like to expand on the ideas that I set out in these photos and explore on the editing techniques that I used.
For this set I continued with my editing style of my previous shoots and tried to expand on it.
For this shoot I expanded on my editing style and used variations of what I have already tried, I really like how this shoot came out but I think that I should move on and try to do more different styles and move away from my editing style. I think it would be best for me to try and take inspiration from other sources for me to achieve this. I would like to try and do some less edited photography too
Kevin Corrado Visual Response
Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind's photography consists of close ups of various things such as derelict buildings and trees, I really like these images because of the textures that he explores and the intricacies of his compositions. I think that the images being black and white adds to the textures and I think the heavy contrast of light creates a sense of depth to the images. I reckon that this style could be accomplished but I'm not sure that it completely is connected to the theme of manipulated reality but I think that I could try and implement some photoshop elements to change that.
Aaron Siskind Visual Response
For this visual response I tried to recreate the derelict walls of Aaron Siskind's work. I don't think that the shoot came out too well because I don't think there were enough good derelict walls that I have access to.
Ola Kolehmainen
I chose Ola Kolehmainen's work because I really like his use of colour and composition and I would like to take photos similar to this. I think that I can achieve some of the effects seen in his work through the use of photoshop, I really like the effect he uses where there are layers on top of layers to create a more blurry kind of feel.
Ola Kolehmainen Visual Response
I think that this set was too edited to look like Ola Kolehmainen's work but I quite like how it has come out.