Final Image of Choice

"On the Endless Coast of Worthing"

Aperture: f/8

Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec

ISO: 200

Task 3 Image of Choice

For the third task, we were allowed to take a photograph of our choice within any type of genre. I have always enjoyed taking photographs of landscapes and interesting buildings, which was only heightened by my recent trips to Yorkshire and Devon. As I had taken many photos within the cities of London and York, as well as the countryside in Devon, I decided to try a new location with a whole different atmosphere to it, which is why I decided to take advantage of the bright and sunny weather and head off to Worthing Beach! Below are some photographs that I personally really like. I feel that they make the coast look extremely peaceful, especially the first two images. I have increased the contrast within most of the photos so that the colours really stand out well. I feel it works particularly well for the fifth image as the green of the seaweed works really nicely with the blues of the sea and sky.

(Aperture: f/9, Shutter speed: 1/320sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/13, Shutter speed: 1/320sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/13, Shutter speed: 1/200sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/11, Shutter speed: 1/250sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/7.1, Shutter speed: 1/640sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/9, Shutter speed: 1/1250sec, ISO: 200)

I was quite fascinated by these wooden planks that ran all the way along Worthing Beach. I'm not quite sure as to why they are there but I really found it quite interesting how the run from the top of the beach and end up disappearing into the water.

(Aperture: f/8, Shutter speed: 1/1000sec, ISO: 200)

Final Surreal Image 3

"Tall Over Paul"

Surreal Image Number 3

Deciding to stay with the London theme, I travelled back to the city and walked along the River. This is something that I haven't done for a while, which is normally what happens when you have lived in the same place for such a long time; you realise you've seen more outside the city compared to where you actually live. I took quite a few interesting photographs yet I feel the most interesting where of some ducks I found not far from the River.

(Aperture: f/5.4, Shutter Speed: 1/200sec, ISO: 64)

(Aperture: f/5.6, Shutter Speed: 1/250sec, ISO: 500)

(Aperture: f/5, Shutter Speed: 1/250sec, ISO: 1000)

(Aperture: f/5.6, Shutter Speed: 1/125sec, ISO: 500)

I didn't particularly think I would be able to combine two completely different images together yet I feel that for this 'surreal' task anything can become possible, and that was also the point of it; to push your creativity and skills using Photoshop. I then started to experiment with the pictures I had taken of London, specifically St Paul's Cathedral. I began creating more depth within my photos, adding different London Landmarks into the background that were not necessarily visible from this point of view in real life.

This was when I began experimenting the most, by inserting the image of a duck from one of my photos. I tried many different sizes and positions, for example having the duck flee from the top of St Paul's Cathedral. I thought this looked interesting yet it didn't really contribute much to the image as a whole. If I wanted to combine two extremely different images together in one photo, it would have to be something much more bolder and eye catching. The duck would have to be bigger and perhaps the centre of the picture, competing with the grand building that is St Paul's. I also felt that the sky needed to be a lot deeper in sense of colouring, which is why I also experimented with this. I enjoyed using Photoshop to really just let loose and try as many different things as possible. This I feel is how I came up with an interesting final surreal image.

This is a printscreen from when I had inserted the image of the main duck, yet I wanted to cast a shadow to make it look much more realistic. I decided to do this by duplicating the original image of the duck and rotating it 180 degrees. I then selected the shape of the duck and selected the layer that was the image of St Paul's Cathedral. I then decreased the brightness before finally hiding the layer of the duplicated duck so that a realistic shadow in the same shape as the animal above was cast across the building.

Final Surreal Image 2

"Lit Up London"

Surreal Image Number 2

I thought this task was slightly more harder than the rest of the other tasks. It requires a huge amount of creativity and imagination, which is infuriating if you are lacking it when trying to think of ideas. However, I feel that the idea for this image below simply came by playing around and experimenting, putting images that I had taken specifically for this project with ones that I had taken before from a completely different location, time or event. Below I wanted to see how I drastically I could change the scene from my previous image, yet keeping the main framework of Big Ben and the bridge. I looked through previous photographs I had taken and found some from when it was New Year's Day and I went to Embankment to watch the firework display.

(Aperture: f/4.8, Shutter Speed: 1/40sec, ISO: 400)

(Aperture: f/4.8, Shutter Speed: 1/25sec, ISO: 400)

I really like the second photo and feel the purples will really work well with the yellows of Big Ben, and purple is a complementary colour of yellow/orange. I began playing around on Photoshop, deleting the previous background and replacing it with the fireworks. This worked better than I thought and created a completely different scene to the image taken before. It was so much more alive and colourful, an atmosphere I'm much used to London having.

I then also saw that the time 20:25 wasn't very appropriate for this sort of scene. I obviously imagined it to be 12am which I why I also changed the time of the digital screen to 00.00. After looking at my new scene, I tried to think of even more ways to make it realistic. I thought that if the sky was this illuminated with the pinks and purples, the water below would also be tinted, as well as the buildings as well. I then selected the layer of Big Ben and adjusted the colour variations, increasing the blues and purples to produce I final image I felt was quite successful.

Trip to Devon

As the weather recently has been particularly bright and sunny, I took it upon myself to book a trip to Devon for a couple of days as one of my flatmates at Brunel happens to live there and said I could come down. She lives in a small village called Combeinteignhead which is in a remote part of Devon, approximately a 45 minute drive from the city centre. The area was even more remote than Yorkshire, and the views from the hilltop where she lives were beautiful. I was shocked as to how quiet it was compared to London city, and we must have only passed one person in the whole two hours we were out in the fields. This is something that really struck me, even though my flatmate was used to it and didn't quite understand what I meant. Living my entire life in London, you become used to the hustle and bustle. Even at night, it felt strange without the sound of traffic being heard from outside the window. It became clear how isolated she was here and so I tried to capture this with my camera. Below are some photos I took when walking across the fields, trying to show how remote and desolate it is.

(Aperture: f/6.3, Shutter Speed: 1/125sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/4.5, Shutter Speed: 1/60sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/11, Shutter Speed: 1/60sec, ISO: 200)

This photo just above was taken on the south bank of the Teign esturary, with the Coombe Cellars restaurant on the right. It was strange that such a place could even afford to run here as literally noone lived within a 15 minute radius from this spot. It shows that this is probably just one of many hidden gems within Combeinteignhead and that the people who do live in this village have probably done so for a very long time and become very familiar with small places like this.

As we were walking away from the Coombe cellars, I noticed a sign not too far from it. It looked as if it had been there for many years and probably not many people took notice of it (my flatmate certainly walked past it!). It was clearly hand carved, nothing like the signs you get in central London, which is probably what I liked more about it. It was personal to this particular village and there was probably not another sign nearby like it. 

(Aperture: f/8, Shutter Speed: 1/320sec, ISO: 200)

Final Surreal Image

'Digital Turnover'

Aperture: f/5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/15sec

ISO: 1600

Post Production

I used my camera to take a picture of an LED clock within my house. Below is the image that I will be using:

I used Photoshop to cut around the analogue face and then copy a section from another part of the clock to fill in the background with. This made it look quite realistic. After adjusting the colours of the digital clock face (making the light more yellow rather than bright blue), I pasted and resized the image onto either sides of Big Ben. I then used the ALT and CTRL keys to resize and angle the clock face so that it looked as if it was actually there. You can see how I did this in the print screen below.

Once I had positioned the digital clock face, I enhanced the contrast and colouring slightly of the whole image, again trying to really bring out the warm colours of the Houses of Parliament and make them stand out against the cold blues of the sky, Thames and London Eye.

London

For the second task, we are asked to take surreal photographs which is where I hope to turn the face of Big Ben into a digital clock rather than an analogue. I wanted it to be at night so that the neon LED screen would light up the city, which is why I decided to visit central London at around 8.30 in the evening when the sun was just setting. Whilst waiting for it to get dark, I took other photos around the area. Below are some that I feel were quite interesting:

(Aperture: f/4.5, Shutter Speed: 1/10 sec, ISO: 1600)

(Aperture: f/4, Shutter Speed: 1/15 sec, ISO: 1600)

(Aperture: f/4.5, Shutter Speed: 1/20 sec, ISO: 1600)

I then began taking photos of Big Ben and the surrounding area. I did not want to focus on just Big Ben but also the Thames and maybe even The Eye as well just so that when I do change the clock face, I don't want it to look too obvious. I want people to not notice it at first and then be surprised when they did not even realise it had changed! Below are some of the photos that I had taken and am considering using:

(Aperture: f/3.5, Shutter Speed: 1/15 sec, ISO: 1600)

(Aperture: f/3.5, Shutter Speed: 1/20 sec, ISO: 1600)

(Aperture: f/4.5, Shutter Speed: 1/6 sec, ISO: 1600)

These photos above were taken at around 9.30pm yet surprisingly, a photograph that I took by chance when I first arrived at around 8pm actually turned out to be quite successful.

(Aperture: f/5.6, Shutter Speed: 1/15 sec, ISO: 1600)

I really like the light blue with the deep contrasting oranges and yellows. The glowing lights are also quite soft and make London appear to be quite peaceful and quiet for a change. I enhanced the contrast slightly to really bring out the colours, and feel that I will definitely use this picture in post production.

Final Landscape Image

'Beyond The Wall'

Aperture: f/13

Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec

ISO: 200

Trip to York

I just returned from a week's break in Yorkshire and can honestly say it is such a beautiful city! The Wall which runs around the city offers spectacular views, especially of the York Minster in the far background. The weather was wonderful, not a day when it rained which I've heard is a rare occurance in the North! The Minster in real life is as breath taking as I imagined from looking at the photos on the Internet before. Below are some images that I took and edited slightly in post production.

 (Aperture: f/7.1, Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/11, Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec, ISO: 200)

(Aperture: f/7.1, Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec, ISO: 200)

I increased the red hues in this picture above and really feel it makes the building look almost Victorian and extremely gothic. The building is extremely angular and taken from this angle, it just looks so grand. 

After taking a few photos, I decided to start recreating the painting that I had found a few weeks ago online. Below was my first attempt:

It was extremely interesting to see how York has changed through the years since this original painting. As you can see, the obvious difference are the cars in contrast to the horse and carriages! There is also a lot more street furniture such as the lamp-post and road signs. For my image on the right, I used an aperture of 3.8, a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec and an ISO of 64. 

After recreating the first painting, I also tried to mimic another painting I had found, knowing beforehand it would have a completely different feel to it even though it was from the same angle. The painting was presumably taken at dusk after a heavy snowfall probably between the months of September and December. My photo on the right however was taken at around 5pm on a bright sunny day in the middle of April.

For the photo on the right, I used an aperture of 13, a shutter speed of 1/250 sec and an ISO of 200. I really like the photo as even though there isn't a strong shallow depth of field, there still appears to be many different layers to it. For example, it is clear that the path is very much in the foreground but then leads on to the buildings below in the middle ground, which then take you the York Minster standing tall in the background.

The Brief Continued

The second part of the assignment is to take an image and make it surreal. This part of the assignment is where I feel you can be most imaginative with your ideas and make anything possible (depending on how good your Photoshop skills are!). With this particular task, I felt it was something you just cannot rush into which is why I brainstormed a few ideas beforehand.
I came up with three ideas in particular which I thought were quite simple yet extremely effective.

1. The River Thames spiralling down a plug hole. This would require extremely good Photoshop skills which is something I do not have at the moment to achieve this image yet I felt it would have been quite an interesting picture.

2. The zebra crossing outside the Abbey Road Studios transformed into a bar code, as if to suggest it was up for sale. This would be quite a humorous image and feel it would cause quite some controversy as it is such a famous landmark for North West London.

My final idea was one that I feel was most interesting as, although would probably never happen, it is quite thought provoking to see what London would actually look in the future. It was to make the face of the Big Ben clock digital rather than analogue, and I feel I have the skills to make this look realistic and believable. I therefore recently went into central London and took some photos from angles I thought it might look most interesting from.

(Shutter Speed: 1/160 second, F stop: f-8, ISO: 64)

I quite like this angle as it looks quite natural and not focused directly on Big Ben. This means that when the face on the clock changes, hopefully it might take the viewer a bit longer to notice what exactly is different and when they do realise, it will be far more of a surprise. I would also like to take this photograph at night so that the digital face on the clock really stands out and illuminates to surrounding area. 

(http://www.desktopwallpapers.co.uk/view/59/BigBenatNight)

The Brief

After reading the brief online, I began starting to vaguely think of ideas that I could do for each of the topics. They all seem quite inspiring and I thoroughly enjoy the freedom of this particular assignment.

Task One: Landscape
I was very passionate about Art and Design at A Level whilst studying at my previous Sixth Form and so was quite excited about the idea of incorporating artists' work into my own photography. Although the artists mentioned in the brief are of course very inspiring, I have in fact lived in London my whole life, never really having the need to travel out of London. I would therefore really like to push myself and travel somewhere completely different to city life. I recently purchased a Rail Card (a rival to my faithful Oyster card!) and luckily for me, an opportunity has arisen for me to travel to York next week. This is when I began research into famous paintings of landmarks within York and it is safe to say that some of the sights within the city and suberbs look truely inspirational; completely different to city life in London. The painting below caught my attention for some reason. I thought it just looked so peaceful and tranquil, and the building in the distance reminded me of Westminster Abbey in London.

(Title: Towards York Minster, Artist: K Melling, oil on canvas)

http://www.kmelling.com/www.kmelling.coms/info.php?p=4&pno=0)

After researching the Minster more, I found many paintings and interpretations of this particular gothic cathedral. This one in particular I thought was rather interesting:

It is a painting by Russell Platt and I feel it is an interesting interpretation of the Yokr Minster. The shapes have been reduced to a geometric form and the colours implified to simply yellows and browns. This painting is the opposite to the one below, which is a realistic view of the Minster. It stands tall in the centre of the painting, and clearly quite some time ago taking into account the horse and carriage. Although not much information is available on this painting, I do know that the artist is named Pat Bell and this painting has now been produced onto postcards and sold within the York city centre.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/castlekay/2056820619/)

It will be interesting to see the York Minster in real life next week, as I have only ever seen it on paintings and photos published on the Internet.