Exam Project - Digital Experiments

Looking at the starting point of inner character I decided to take these digital images to try and create an emotion. I tried to use artificial lighting to create some nice highlights and shadows. Here are my orginals before edited. 

Then I started edited them to really try and enhance my images as much as possible. I used a photo editing site to create the effects.

Use duo tone effect of two different tones of pink. I like using two of the same colour and the fact that some of image you cant really see any more. Maybe need to have some more shadows to pick up more detail. I decided to use this effect as I have never done it before. Completely changing the colour makes it quite interesting.

This is called 'grunge effect'. I really like this effect as I think that it really adds to the distressed mood I wanted to create. I think it really gives it dark mood. 

For this image I used high contrast and high sharpness to really capture all the detail. I really like this edit as it has captured all the detail the camera and lighting didn't really catch. It really enhanced all the colours.  

Brightness and contrast has been taken up. Just really clean I think that the soft focus really compliments the lighting and work very well together. 

I have de saturated the colour I little bit, I felt this impacted the emotion. I have also used the edit focal zoom. This has created some depth of field. The zoom adds to the image and she looks lost and fade out of the image make her centre image. 

I have used the pixel effect, you get to choose where about you want it. I also used high contrast. to really enhance the colours.

I have played around with the levels, brightness and contrast,. I really wanted to highlight ever, If needed I would crop as I really don't like the composition of these images now. 

I really like these image and felt I have perused what I wanted todo. I used artist Latif's ideas and developed them further into my own. I wanted to take images of reflective emotion. Not image has to be clean and planned and pretty, sometimes realistic raw image can be visually interesting too.

Exam Unit - Darkroom Prints

Exam Unit - Darkroom Experiments

As you can see it's a bit dark,  as there was no filter on. This was a solar effect done
for 3,0 seconds, 5,7 aperture, no filter solared for 2,0 seconds.

This is an image of negatives put together, i halved the exposure time which was 3,0 and then slighting moved my paper to get a quite distorted effect. I also put a handmade negative on top of the paper before exposing it, This had vaseline and salt of top of it to give a much textured effect. 

Again here this a double exposure of two negatives combined together, I found that this really worked well as the two light images would not appear on there own. 4,0 seconds, 5,7 aperture 5,0 filter. 

This is an negative I used before with a handmade negative put
over the top. I put the filter not this time to bring up as much contrast as I could.
I felt this really helped this image.
4,0 seconds, 5,0 filter, 5,7 aperture.  

This is an experiment where again I have used double exposure and put one slightly lower
(as you can lighting see the holes from the edge of the negative). I also put a handmade negative in the negative carrier on top on the two negative. I really wanted to create layers here and Ive felt that I have achieved this.
5,0 seconds, 5,7 aperture, 5,0 filter 

This is a double exposure moved after half the exposure time, I also put washing up liquid
onto of my photo paper to created the technique photo batik. I really like this image as you can slightly
see through the liquid. I think by putting the liquid on top it gave the image more texture. To improve this image i would adjust the times where you can see the image behind a lot more.

Double exposure moved halved the time. 5,0 seconds, 5,0 filer, 5,7 aperture.
I really like the way this image has been giving an illusion effect, with the image I used with the bridge dark and the lights, I found this effect has particularly worked well with this technique

This  image is of different negative double exposed and slightly moved half way through exposure time, To take it a step further I put a handmade negative on top of the negatives in the carrier, exposed for 4,0 seconds , 5,7 aperture, 5,0 filter, I then put in the developer, as soon as the image starts to appear put it back under the light for a second and back into the developer.  This is the solarisation effect.

double exposure, 4,0 seconds, 5,7 aperture, 5,0 filter. Again been moved half way  through exposure time.

Half way through exposure time I turned the paper around to get this upside down effect.
5,0 seconds, 5,0 filter, 5,7 aperture. 

upside double exposure, with a handmade negative on top containing salt.
4,0 seconds, 5,7 aperture, 5,0 filter 

A combination of all techniques, double exposure, 5,0 seconds,5,7 aperture, 5,0 filter, liquid and vaseline on top of the image technique called photo batik, with handmade negative also put on top. 4,0 seconds, 5,7 aperture, 5,0 filter

Original 5,0 filter, 5,7 aperture, 4,0 seconds

Here is a roll of film I shooted in the dark at Southbank that didn't really turn out that well. I also used exhausted  developer therefore this effected my negatives. I then decided that I wasn't going to not use them and go into the darkroom and see what experiments I could create. I used many techniques such as double exposures, hand made negatives, solarisation,photo batik, dodging and burning, highlighting and being selective. I then wanted to really push myself and start to layer up these techniques and see the outcome. I really enjoyed experimenting in the darkroom today and using different techniques to get an abstract effect. I felt by doing this, I really enhanced the images what used to very dark and not really usable.

Exam Unit - Indepth Analysis - Inzajeano Latif

'' This is Tottenham''

Became interested in photography five years ago and took a photography degree.''Inzajeano is primarily a portrait photography engaging with people that often live on the fringes of society. He examines how they interact in their environments. The work he produces leaves room for the viewer to impart a little of themselves within each photograph, bringing them closer to what otherwise would be absent.'' - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/inzajeano

 This image has been taken from quite a far distance view maybe over the road of a young girl at a bus stop. She looks like shes coming home from school as she's in her uniform waiting for a bus home of her own. The framing been done is the the girl is in central foreground therefore our main focus is her.

I think that this photograph could have been planned and could of asked someone to dress in uniform for him and pose but I think that the artist may have come across this young girl and have asked her to take a photograph. I think this image would have been taken on a digital camera then edited in Photoshop to decreased the colours to make the image look more dark and cool.

I think the artist has really captured a mood from the young girl from her blank expression. The dark colours coming off the bus stop also adds to the depressing mood. Could this reflect on what the young girl is thinking? It reflects the loneliness of London and also young people. You could relate to this work as young girl trying to look older through jewellery and piercings when from her face you can tell her youth. Most young girls today are like this. This image represent most young girls in London today. I think the artist was trying to show how we feel about the environment around us. He particularly looks at much poorer areas where there are more council estate and unemployment  This to show the real urban side of London and what's really going on.

I really liked looking at this artist as I can relate to this work. In the area that I live in we have a lot of blocks and little parks that children play in. I think the work in Latif has inspired me to do some of my own shots to try and portray where I live and the kind of people that live here with me.

Exam Unit- Trip - Juergen Teller & Man Ray Exhibitions

We also visited the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Man Ray was born in 1890 in Philadelphia, in 1921 went to france and spent most of his career there. He considered himself as a painter. He worked a lot with photograms which he later called ''rayograms'' referenced to himself.

Le Violan D'ingres, 1934 Photograms that were inspired by paintings. Kiki, then later musical notes were photogrammed on her body.  I really liked the soft light coming in from the top left corner and the soft focus of the image. The composition on the image is perfect and our main focus of the image is the model. He then adds another layer by adding a photogram which makes the image more visually interesting. The reason why I chose this image as I really like image of figures and is something that I want todo myself which is why it was one of my favourite. This was put in a nice frame on a small wall with a dark background. Myself I would put them on a white background as I feel this would make the images more powerful.

"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence." — Undated interview, circa 1970s; published in Man Ray: Photographer, 1981.

Image of Lee Miller, 1929. Who was a photographer and ex lover of Many Ray. The two experimented with solarisation. I really like this image as it a strong portrait and can really see the lines. The solarisation has highlight and darkened key areas. I really like the image as it seems very soft and pretty and gentle, maybe symbolic of the person. This has inspired to go back to the solarised effect and really produce some beautiful images.

Marie, Lawerencin, 1923
I chose this image because of the dramatic lighting.
after exposure in the darkroom the contrast is really good with the black  and
white and give the image quite a dark and mysterious mood. It makes me wonder what the
women is thinking an who she is? The image is very mysterious to me which is why I chose it.  

Juergen Teller has an exhibitions at the ICA gallery. Since the 90s Teller has been involved in commercial photograph and Art. He moved to London when he was 22. He uses contax G2 cameras with an onboard flash. He has had many different exhibition all over the world and is very influential today. He has worked with iconic celebrities such as Lily Cole, Kurt Cobain and Vivienne Westwood. 

Cerith, Suffolk 2011. I chose this photo to analyse as it reminds me of a old family photo.
Old man looking lifeless in bed with candles holding many coloured balloons. I really liked the contrast
of the models lying down on the bed and the bright balloons looking full of energy ready to escape. This was displayed big singularly on a wall. I thought because of the colours of the balloons this is what drew my attention first off as I entered the room. I think the composition and framing could be better and to really bring out the colours of the balloons I would have used some more lighting as the flash hasn't really brought out as much colour as it could have. 

Victoria Beckham in a Marc Jacobs bag for a campaign in LA 2007,
This was displayed on a small wall on it's own. I really enjoyed looking at this image as
her face was hidden and we couldn't see who it was un till you read the caption beneath and fund out it
was Victoria Beckham.

This was the first image I saw in the gallery. Automatically it drew my attention as I prefer black and white images over colour. I also really liked the fact that it was so close, and to me was symbolic of the time with his guitar. This was taken 1999, whilst on tour with Kurt Cobain in Berlin. This image really show the era of Rock and Roll, and the mood was calm and mellow whilst enjoying the music. This was blown up big and I felt this was the right thing todo and it made the piece even more powerful. I also felt that being the first image in the gallery that you see that this could suggest that this was also Teller's favourite piece of work.


In the gallery there was also a framing room with lots of images posting over the walls like a collage effect. This was all of Teller commercial fashion work and contained lots of images of naked women. There was an image of a women lying on a bed with her make up smudged smoking a cigarette. This image particularly caught my attention and I eventually went back to that image after I looked around the room. I felt like this was relevant to my exam starting point inner character. It was such a raw natural image symbolising the morning after the night before this really inspired to take more natural image that isn't been put together to look pretty and is taken there and then whatever it looks like.

I really enjoyed going into the framing room because I liked the burst of images everywhere and it was exciting to not know where to looks you were bombarded with all types of images. I preferred the framing to the other parts of the gallery where few images were blown up really big onto white walls. I felt that having the selection of image plastered of the walls with the same theme was very powerful and definitely my favourite part of the exhibition


Overall, I think I enjoyed the presentation of Teller's exhibition more as it was more interesting to look at. I felt like Man Ray's was quite boring and there was a lot to look at so you lost focus very quickly. With Teller's work the white walls and being blown in your face was more visually pleasing for me. Man Ray work was very small scale and a lot of it. In Terms of work I did preferred Man Ray as it was more tradition and very good use of darkroom techniques. Where as Tellers work was very modern and digital work. For me I always prefer black and white prints so it was easy to chose Man Ray's over Teller's just for me I would have presented it the way Teller did. 

Exam Unit - Indepth analysis - bruce davidson

Bruce Davidson is an american photographer. He first started photographing when he was 10 years old. The majority of his photographs were taken in Harlem, New York City. At 16, he won his first reward in a snapshot contest. He been involved in many different documentaries. He also went through a stage where he focused mainly photographing where he produced the ''brooklyn gang'' and ''the dwarf''.

For the first image I really like the framing, I like that the models face is really close up. Relating to the theme inside,outside, in-between, it looks like the model is inside a box or a stage from the white cloth above. This could show the size of the model. Also having the black background really empathises the models face paint. The face paint acts as creating a new character but could also reflects the models emotions. This could be symbolic of the model painting on a face for other people to see to show his happy and his expression of the no emotion, shown in his eyes he's not a happy.

For the second image, the image has been taken from a top down angle. This could be to show the background. The model is sitting on the bed bed with shoes lying beside him. Is there a reason for the objects being placed in the photograph? These could symbolise comfortability. The models again has face paint on although we cannot see much of the models face as he's playing the trombone.


For the first image I think that high filters have been used in the darkroom to really enhance the contrast of the black and white, cropping could have been done. For the second image less filter has been used as it seems to be quite grey. Cropping could be done to get good framing.

I think for because of the use of colour its captures quite a calm mood, and reflect that the shoot was quite calm and everyone seemed comfortable therefore got quite natural shots. These shots reflect the models time in the circus which I know these images were taken from. Trying to show the background life outside of the circus. I like these images as they do not seem put on and they look really natural, simple but beautiful shots.