For my final outcome, I am going to use a projector to reflect my photos that have already been manipulated onto a plain background and place several prisms in front of the projector to distort it further and create an aesthetic that allows for viewers to feel emotion and freedom whilst also being able to depict the story behind it.
Initial Photoshop Pictures
These photos all contain multiple mediums, while making these Photoshop outcomes I included inspirations from the work I looked at made by Talmore and Casey, the rearrangement of the photos can be broken down into separate variables.
The intense make-up of vibrant colours really interested me as each photo contains different saturations and tones, the emotions felt whilst looking at a photo are down to the colours within it, colour psychology plays a huge role in the breakdown of the feelings viewers get whilst looking at a photo.
What goes into making these photos?
I chose to go into detail about this photo because the locations that make up this photo are very similar and after changing the opacity I was able to have both cityscapes in the shot but one more visible than the other, I was also able to enhance the colour by putting a filter over the two layers placed on top of the background which enhanced the purple hue throughout and also increased the saturation of the yellow artificial light.
WWW- This overlay of photos was a really interesting concept that originally started off quite bland due to the picture choice but after experimenting with different pictures I decided this was the best out of all of my attempts. This photo is quite dream-like and surreal making it seem like it has come from an alternate reality which was really thought-provoking to look at.
EBI- This photo could still have more texture added to it, the third layer is the photo that contains the clouds that can be seen meaning that I was able to manipulate the photo and fill the negative space but also the harshness of the purple could be seen to take away from the picture and monopolise it as a whole.
Prism photoshop Refined
The prism itself provides us with lots of vantage points and perspectives, by layering these I hope to gain an abundance of perspectives to help make the viewer feel trapped within one of my photos, the idea of no way out and being surrounded by the sky full of crazy vibrant colours and shapes feels like something out of a different universe or maybe even a movie. To be able to create these photos by using Lightroom really stood out to me as a technique to be able to use.
These are the 3 individual photos that have not been layered over each other yet, the prism adds detail to these all in different ways, there is repetition, slicing and rotation, all created by different shaped prisms, the pyramid, rectangular pyramid and the cube. These photos really dive into the differences between the outlook of each prism.
STEP BY STEP
STEP 1
The first step in this process was to open the background photo in Photoshop, I chose to use this photo as the prism distortion was simple so distorting it further and adding more layers would make it easier to see how the idea develops as a whole.
STEP 2
After deciding on a background I then had to pick photos to place on top of it and then edit them based off of how well they fit with the background and how they looked as one photo. I then experimented with opacity which represented how filled in the layer was, for this layer specifically it was 43%.
STEP 3
To finalise this photo I wanted to add more to fill the negative space, to choose the right photo for this I looked at one that contained subjects in the spaces I was originally lacking. After dragging and dropping my third photo into the already distorted arrangement I wanted to make sure you could still see the background and second layer. To make sure it fit in perfectly I fiddled with the opacity to make it more transparent, for layer 3 the opacity was set to 26%. This was the final product of this experimentation.
WWW- The shapes and complexity of this outcome make the photo abstract and surreal, the lines created by the trees are also organic and complement the geometric three-dimensional lines really well. the blue sky sets the tone for the whole photo as there is almost a purple cover over the whole photo. there are small glimpses of colour throughout, such as the bushes and grass representing a vibrant green contrast to the structure of the houses and walls, which are primarily brown, grey and white.
EBI- If this photo didn’t contain the house I feel like it would be more complex and dynamic as the house brings the viewer back to reality if the house wasn’t there viewers may be left guessing what the photo is and really trying to figure it out. Throughout the process of making this outcome, I felt like elements were missing in the original 2 layers which led to the creative decision to add a third.
Refined Photoshop Pictures
For these refinements, I wanted to make the editing more precise and make the photos look sharper. I focused more on the colours and the shapes that have been added as some of the photos that I chose were quite dark and seemed focused mainly on the technically more appealing aspects.
WWW- The vibrancy of the colours in these photos were really eye-catching as they added dimensions, I like to think metaphorically about my work and think about how the colour could be depicted, in a lot of these photos the colour has been provided from the sky, purple and blue are the two strongest colours to be seen in these which in my eyes are quite contrasting colours as they go nicely together along with the orange undertones in some clouds. I think the colour in these photos works really well and doesn’t take too much away from the objects in the image as you are still able to see the sharpness of some lines.
where next?- next I’m going to start compiling my photographs to then lean further into the production of my final outcome, using a mixture of Photoshop images I’m going to create a slideshow or video to then project them onto a plain surface possibly through a prism to add further dimensions.
Starting to produce my video
This was my first attempt when I began to create a video for the final outcome. I had included all of my photos from Photoshop and had just put them in and adjusted the timings so they were all showing for the same amount of seconds (3 seconds).
Photos Included
These were my original selection of photos for my video as they were all outcomes from the sky theme photographs and also are all made up of different combinations and build-ups of different elements and mediums found from different environments which stimulated my thought process to help me wittle down which photos actually got used in my final outcome.
WWW- This video was a good starting point to help me see where I need to go from here in order to improve on it and make it perfect. the layout works really well and will help make the projection easy as the video can be on a continuous loop.
EBI and Where next? – This video is quite boring, the photos just switch from one to the other and there is no set theme throughout the photos picked. To improve this I’m going to deselect some of the photos chosen and start thinking of a theme so that only my best photos are displayed. I also want to experiment with adding audio to my video to provide viewers with a virtual reality type experience when watching this.
Second attempt
In this attempt, I added some audio that replicated the sound of rainfall and wind, this made the video a lived experience making you feel that you are almost part of it. The audio also helps use senses to imagine what the place would feel like and how it may provoke and convey feelings of fear or calm due to the rain and thunder as it can be evaluated to be quite ominous. On the other hand, it does sound peaceful.
WWW- The cross-dissolve added between the photos helps clean up the making of the video, it makes the transition between images a lot smoother but also just gives it that bit of excitement as when the next photo is revealed u can immerse yourself in it.
EBI- The rainfall audio is only placed in for 2 photos, although I liked this at first, after really looking at and listening to the video I have started to realise it ruins the vibe and aesthetic i was aiming for.
Third attempt
This attempt is very similar to the last one, there are just more theme-specific photos included rather than just any photo I made in photoshop. I am aiming for a dream-like, summery day aesthetic not really a dark, rainy day.
WWW- Since this video attempt I am starting to visualise what I want my final video outcome to look like and what audio I want accompanying it.
EBI- This video is very similar to all of my previous attempts which could make it quite useless within the process of refining until I reach my final outcome as if there’s not much change it might not help me find the photos I wanted to include.
Fourth Attempt
This attempt helped me recognise that I was getting closer to the final outcome as I felt excited to continue as my ideal aesthetic had been met in terms of audio within this video but I knew that the photos hadn’t quite reached the level I had set out for.
WWW- The audio in this video feels more aesthetically pleasing than the audio from all of my previous attempts. The heavy rainfall was taken out and the wind was set to a lower volume to allow for the cheerful chirping of the birds to almost take over and fill the area in which this will be projected.
EBI- To finalise my video I am going to go through the photos and deselect the ones that don’t fit with the cheerfulness that I wanted, I want the photos to be quite light and airy as i am projecting them in a fully white room to represent the clouds.
Final Outcome Video
This video really fits the aesthetic of the summery vibe I wanted it to be, After testing it out with the projector, I knew I needed to elongate the photo’s display time to make sure the image is seen before it does change to the next. I also lowered the volume of the birds chirping as if it was on a loop it would feel quite consistent and may have got annoying.
I turned my photos from portrait to landscape to help fill up the screen so that when it was projected there were no dark blocks that reduced the amount of the photo being shown, this change has impacted my work as it has made my final outcome more appealing as there is a wider frame and more space for the photo to be displayed.
Photos used
Below is a gallery containing the 5 photos used to create my final outcome video, I chose these because they all contain bright, vibrant and joyful colours, making it easy to show pure emotions. I also am quite attentive to the shapes and lines that can help with framing and differentiation between background and foreground within an image.
Final Outcome Trials
what I’m doing?
For my final outcome, I am creating a projection to show my photos from the perspective of a raindrop and trying to create elements of the sky in real life, the bright colours and distortions represent the rainbows and how the sky may appear different with it present than when it isn’t, the idea of creating my own rainbow to show my photos for this project helped finalise my ideas for this outcome and helped me decide how I wanted to present this. To do this I am using a: projector, a prism and an electric turntable I originally also had a board to have my photos reflected onto, but I changed that to have my photos reflected on a wall in a dark hallway to make the experience more immersive so that instead of looking at a board you can walk around and look as the photos spin around you and change each time. I uploaded the video to a USB drive with a memory card in the back to be able to show my video through the projector.
I set this all up in a dark hallway and had the projector slightly propped up and the electric turntable in front of it with the rectangular pyramid stood vertically so that the photo was distorted and broken up into sections, two different-sized square-based prisms and a square that gave off different colours each time It is spun round.
This was what my trial projection looked like projected onto the board when I took photos of it, although this was cool I think it would look better on a wider background with no light to add vibrancy and highlights to the tones i have used.
I think this worked really well but I would prefer to have it in a larger more open space to make it appear more as an immersive experience where viewers get a feel for the setting but also the audio as well.
To continue my experimentation I used different types of prisms all at one time, they were all placed in the turn table in front of the projector to add distortions to my projections.
WWW- The use of four prisms made the projection so much more interesting than it was before, the cube added a coloured filter which would pass by and surround the viewer with an intense coloured version of my images, and the larger pyramid worked in sync with the smaller pyramid and the rectangular pyramid to offset the balance and create more than one image at a time.
What does it look like?
These next two clips were videos I took once I had the laptop plugged into the new projector I was using, I chose the have the video playing on a loop so that the scenery created with the use of my chosen photos would stay distorted due to the prism being present and the fact it was on a constantly moving plate helped maintain the distortion.
Whole Project Evaluation
AO1- Develop
During this project, I have researched different photographers due to the techniques they use in their work, For example I have looked at Hiroshi Yamazaki, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Ernst Haas, Minor White, Elena Kulikova, Dafna Talmor, Gustave Le Gray and Alethia Casey.
Hiroshi Yamazaki & Hiroshi Sugimoto – I found Yamazaki and Sugimoto when looking at minimalistic compositions, they both take photos of serene, calming landscapes and horizons. Since studying their work I was able to understand their techniques and how they were able to use mostly technical aspects to make their photos instead of the visual elements. The simplicity to their work could be seen but in reality, the thought process makes the shoot very complex, the use of different mediums made this photo appear visually appealing as the sky appears very similar to the sea, these types of photos create an optical illusion that show movement within a captured photo.
Ernst Haas & Minor White – Haas and White both have photos using a puddle to reflect the subject they had intended too. Haas used bright colours that were accompanied by black shadows and white highlights, his photo also looked into cityscapes from different vantage points that were made interesting through adding layers. Minor white studied the natural environment through the eye of a puddle similar to Haas, one of his most popular photos contained stones and trees but also a reflection of the sky, I used their techniques in my own work as I wanted to reflect the skyscape in a puddle to add metaphorical layers as the puddle represents how the weather could change the layout.
Elena Kulikova -I studied Elena Kulikova due to her focus in her photography on bending and refracting light through the use of prisms, I carried out a similar process by using a prism to photograph the sky, my project is about distorting the sky digitally or manually, using photoshop helps me distort my images using technology whereas the prism helped me distort the image before I took the photo, making I easier for me to distort the photo how I wanted rather than having to wait to see if the photo fits my aim and then editing it later.
Dafna Talmor & Gustave Le Gray – I looked into these photographers to analyse the use of deconstruction and rearrangement of different mediums, this helped inspire my Photoshop work as it gave me ideas on how to structure and align my photographs. Both photographers used techniques commonly used during pictorialism, combination printing and slicing & splicing. I used the idea of Combination Printing to encourage the use of layering on Photoshop.
Alethia Casey – Casey’s work was also inspirational and helped me add emotion to my photographs. Her work was used to convey emotions throughout the COVID pandemic, her abstract compositions and use of small amounts of colour surrounded by darker space helped viewers understand what the isolation caused by COVID could’ve felt like. I carried her ideas over into my work as I wanted the emotions to be seen and felt throughout my own work like viewers did with hers.
What theme did I explore? – I chose to study and complete photos for the theme of the sky as I enjoy experiencing nature first-hand, the sky is a dreamlike combination of metaphorical and physical elements, it holds so much power over different elements for humans. My first idea for this theme was to try and capture the different types of weather through photos that might not show that straight away, but as my project developed my ideas did too, the use of objects to add these perspectives and visibly show the difference between opinions of the sky was a really interesting concept that I wanted to use to help move my work forward. The idea for my final outcome started when I saw a rainbow in the sky, it had been raining so the sky looked grey and bland but the sun had come out and so did the rainbow, the fact that the rainbow could be seen in such miserable weather made ideas flow about how I could reach a point in my photography where I can make a photograph that can be as visually striking as a rainbow but still include the elements of the sky during a sunny day.
AO2 – Explore
To create the best piece of work I could, I did trial and error to find out which photos worked well together or which filter best suited the composition. The first experiment I did was in Photoshop, layering photos and deleting them if they didn’t work in the way I wanted until I made the perfect combination. I then had to try using different photos to create the video that I was using to project onto the board. Once I had made my first video I had to trial it through the projector to make sure it would be distorted if the original, singular prism I was using was stood in front of the lens. Another experiment I did was that I projected it onto different materials and different places within the studio, for example, a low-ceiling corner that had the most dimension in the room. Experiments are what help finalise an idea within work, my final experiment took place with several prisms, I set up the projector with the turntable and started playing the video, this expressed my ideas of a rainbow perfectly due to the colour and just the way the photo was broken up differently each time the prisms passed the lens.
The refning process of choosing photos that went into the video was quite a tedious process that took time and focus, it seems easy but it was hard to eliminate some photos as I originally thought they would look best when projected due to the vibrancy of the colours within, however as I was watching the video back, they were all too dramatically different that it was hard to watch it and find an audio that could be used throughout. Some of the photos contained quite dark black shadows that did outweigh and cancel out any colour so when these were projected it didn’t look like the sky at all. After getting rid of these I then looked into my photos that contained white highlights as these would appear brighter once in the video, the white highlights also fit well with the audio as it is bright and cheery and could be interpreted as uplifting. I chose to add the bird sounds as it is almost something I look forward to hearing during the months of summer, the fact I could wake up and go outside and just hear these sounds could be a form of pathetic fallacy as they set the whole scene of the sun shining through the corner of your window to you then opening them and allowed such a large amount of light in. The light wind throughout the whole video was to add some sort of background noise and to provide viewers with a stimulus that triggered personal memories that the chirping of the birds could bring back.
Most things throughout my project worked well, I am interested in nature and the way it can look so beautiful without any manipulation, that when my ideas led to manipulating the mediums to change them into my own personal view of what is beautiful I seized it. There were some hiccups along the way to my final outcome, I started my project thinking it was going to be simplistic shoots, looking up at clouds and just taking the photo and being done with it, but looking back now I realise my mind was not open to many ideas at the time, I then started to think about how I can move my project forward into a positive view, and to be honest I had no ideas, it was only when I walked to my car and noticed the reflection of the sky that I knew I wanted to incorporate that form of photography in my project. I started thinking about other materials that would reenact what I saw, so I chose mirrors, perspex, cars and puddles. These are all reflective materials that helped push me in a direction with my photography so that I could reach the idea for my final outcome. Another challenge I faced was the fact I didn’t know where to go next, it was only until I looked into Elena Kulikova that I realised prisms would be perfect to use and incorporate in my work, a photo made up of multiple perspectives, all showing the same thing but all holding slightly different meaning, maybe due to the placement of the refraction or maybe due to the change in colours due to the prism itself, this was my favourite part of my project, the constant distorting and manipulating of such a simple idea to give it more meaning and beauty. All of this development helped me take a different approach to the theme of the sky and focus more on how my own photographs can show individuality and represent my own outlook on the world. The observations I have of a photo will be completely different to someone else’s and I really wanted to show that through my work so when the idea of using a prism presented itself i wanted to use it and see where it took me.
AO4 – Present
My final outcome is a projection of images of the sky, they all contain bright colours and a lot of shapes and lines. My photos were all distorted in some way whether it was through a mirror or a prism, but to manipulate them further I was able to take photos that had nothing but the sky in common and make one photo through editing in Photoshop that could be used in my final outcome. Once I made a video of a collection of my photos I then thought about how distorting it more could be more interesting, the idea of my photos just being presented on a wall through a projector was interesting and all but I knew it’s not what my final outcome would be, I knew there was one more element needed to make it perfect. A prism. I set up the projector and placed the prism in front of it and it appeared way better than I had previously imagined, i started to turn it to see what different angles I could get and how they were all different, having the prism turning constantly as my video was playing just made sense so that all the different angles and perspectives could be seen due to what way the prism was facing. I originally was going to tie it to the projector or tie it to the ceiling but then I thought about how that might not necessarily work in the way I wanted, so I then found a turntable that was electric and could do this all for me, this concept really helped in the final few stages of developing my final outcome as it really brought all my ideas together. My projection is now shown in a dark hallway with four different prisms balanced on the turntable to add more of an effect as they all affect the video in a different way.
I was hoping to create just one distorted image and possibly frame it so that it looks clean and sharp, but as I continued taking photos I knew a frame wouldn’t be enough to express my thoughts on the project as a whole. The final projection, after a lot of trial and error has really turned out better than anything I could’ve imagined, the simplicity of a realistic rainbow created by refractions of light works really well with the added audio and photos as they all tie each other together in a way that if one element was missing, the photo would not feel complete if one was missing. My success criteria throughout this process were to purely be able to create complex, brightly coloured compositions that are able to be photographed through different materials that also express my love for the sky and nature itself without too much interference in the photo, another thing I counted as success criteria would be that I needed to be excited and starstruck by my final outcome to know it worked out the best way possible, being able to turn the projector on and sit there watching my photography turn out to be displayed in such an interesting way was a moment that had me almost in a chokehold, it was nothing like I had once pictured it, the bright colours and distortions were amazing to look at and I think at that moment I knew I had finally completed my final outcome for this project.
In some ways I believe I didn’t explore this theme correctly as the sky is present in most of my photos but isn’t always the main subject so I see that as some sort of cheating as it does not directly exploring the sky as a whole. On the other hand I think I have taken a more metaphorical approach and taking the sky as a concept and showing that through my photography as I have looked at the weather and made photos that signify different types of weather instead of them direct and straight on.
My work is quite insightful to how I am as a person, I believe that my photos can show the calming nature I have been described to have. On the other hand, I can see that although my photos are calming and serene I also want viewers to pick up on the slight traces of anxiety, as a person I describe myself as being quite hesitant when it comes to anything, to be honest, but I feel more free being able to express myself through photography as there aren’t any holdbacks so the anxiety isn’t very prevalent. Another way this may be seen as personal is the fact that no one else has really done it, there have been photographers who use prisms to distort people but the fact that a whole environmental scene has been changed by one object really amazes me as it does hold so much power over how it can be interpreted.
After looking at my work I hope viewers can see my thought processes behind it, I also hope there is a clear and coherent story being deciphered. When I was looking at it I saw it as a kaleidoscope, the mix of colours that are moving around really engages you as a viewer and kind of keeps you looking at it as you don’t want to miss out but also the aesthetic and set up could be depicted as a disco ball. It could come off as some sort of party atmosphere as the bright lights control the mood.
If I had more time to work with the photos I have taken and improve upon my final outcome I would try finding more prisms similar to the cube that can distort the colour of the projection too. Still, also I would try and get more photos using the prisms on a sunnier day to capture the blue sky. In contrast, most of my photos using prisms have been taken on days where the sky is grey and there are not many detailed and distinctive clouds so the photos are focused more on the distortion instead of the sky itself.