Self-Publishing: Slideshows and Multimedia.

For the next three weeks, we will be looking at self-publishing in the photography industry. Today, we took a look at slideshows and multimedia. 

Slideshows and Multimedia

Slideshows are used as a sales technique, especially by wedding photographers. The aim is to have our potential clients see the slideshows and like them enough that they want one of their own, so they will therefore hire you. They are often coupled with suitable music, to make the experience greater. 

Some things to take into account when looking at creating a slideshow are the formatting and sizes, and publishing platforms. 

An early type of image projector was the Magic Lantern, developed in the late 17th century and used to project images from small, rectangular sheets of glass that contained the painted photographic image to be projected. These devices were not replaced until the 1860's. After that came slide projectors, such as the Kodak Carousel. 

Slideshows allowed stories to be told, ideas to be expressed. They are used for a range of reasons, including but not limited to entertainment, advertising, promotion, art and education. They can be seen in homes, galleries, online publications, events, and promotions in shops. 

Types of Slideshow

There are many types of slideshows. They can include: 

• static images, displayed in a sequential order; 
• images with transitions, eg. a dissolving effect; 
• multimedia slideshows - these can include images, video, sound/music, text, etc. 

Things to Consider

Some things to consider when creating your slideshow are: 

• Audience: who are you making the slideshow for? What is suitable content for this audience? 
• Format and Ratio: what format do you plan on projecting? What is the appropriate ratio? 
• Resolution: are your images capable of being projected at such a size? 
• Platform: what platform do you intend on using? 

It is worth mentioning that projecting panoramas require a different technology to your ordinary projection equipment. 

Platforms

There are many platforms you can use to display your slideshow. These include but are not limited to: 

• traditional platforms - transparency film onto a light coloured background; 
• computer/web slideshows; 
• TV/DVD displayed; 
• technological platforms - slideshowpro.net, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, etc. 

Tools for Multimedia Slideshows

Tools used for multimedia slideshows may include: 

• DSLRs capable of recording images, sound and video - as sound and video might also be a part of your slideshow; 
• dedicated sound recorders, for adding authentic sound as a backdrop to your images. 

My Attempt

 

For the purpose of a website, I personally prefer to have a slideshow without music - unless the sound actually adds something to the images. Other than that, I find it highly distracting.  

I also found this article rather interesting. 

The Angel Of Vengeance.

Have I mentioned previously that I might have an idea for the third part of my movements assignment, involving creating a poster/cover/something to do with a story that I am writing? Yes? Well, I am going to do it. 

I usually wouldn't post about this until after everything is said and done, because I hate to think of everything failing and me still having all this work up here as if things are going great, but I think it would be a good thing to put my planning here. It might motivate me to get things done, even if the first few attempts fail. So here it is - the first planning stages of my next assignment. 

I decided that I wanted to make a book cover/movie poster type thing for my current work in progress, The Angel Of Vengeance. I'm not going to bother finding perfect models for my characters - because let's face it, nobody's going to know the difference expect me! So this weekend I have my best friend coming over, and I'm probably going to end up using my two brothers as my two main male characters. (There is the potential of a third male character coming into play, and I have a co-worker in mind should this happen.) 

I have a general idea of how I want things to look, so I put my amazing drawing skills to practice and drew a mock-up: 

Gosh, what am I doing photography for?

Obviously, this isn't perfect. But it's an easy way of reminding myself how I plan for things to look. I also searched around on Google and found some images for inspiration, ideas, and for the way that I want things to look. It doesn't cover everything at the moment (because a lot of things are still just in my head, too) but I threw it all together and created a mini mood board: 

I want the image to be more dark than light, and I don't want the background to be distracting - which is why in the background inspiration images up there, we've got brick walls and smoke. 

Here's another thing I wouldn't usually do: give away spoilers, but in the spirit of noting down all of my idea-ing here... 

I want to try to create this image using only photos - as in, not artificially creating anything in Photoshop from scratch. It will be a challenge for me I think, but I'm up for it. Given the nature of the story, it's going to be interesting - so here are some ideas for how I intend to create the...crazier-looking things.

Zoe will potentially have lightning coming from her hands. Unsurprisingly, I've never managed to obtain a great image of lightning. I considered buying a plasma ball and taking shots of that, but then as I was walking to work on Tuesday morning another idea struck me. As I looked up into the trees, I was amazed at how much their branches looked like lightning strikes. And so I intend to use tree branches. 

Paris's hands were a little more difficult at first, but then the idea was obvious when it finally came to me - coloured smoke (or maybe just white, we'll see) and a sun flare or two. Again, we'll see how things go. 

Nathaniel has a force field surrounding him. When I first attempted a practice image on my brother, I followed a tutorial online that showed you how to make a force field. I didn't really like the look of it, but I figured it would do if I needed it. (I didn't save this image, so I sadly can't post it here!) But as I want to create this image now using only photos, I came up with a simple idea: shooting the rim of a glass. 

I also want to shoot a glass with a sparkler inside of it - both because it might create another interesting lightning shot, and because it might make for an interesting force field. 

If the third male character is included, he will be behind all of the others - looking back at the scene over his shoulder. 

This is obviously going to take quite a bit of work, and I don't have all the time in the world, but I have my hopes that it will work. If it does, then I'll tackle the issue of how I'm going to print it.

Tilt-Shift Effect In Photoshop.

Today we looked at how to achieve the tilt-shift effect using Photoshop - which is obviously a hell of a lot cheaper than doing it with a $1,200+ lens, and probably a little more professional than doing it in Instagram. 

It's also really simple to do - load your image into Photoshop, go up to Filters, go to Blur and select Tilt-Shift. Then just go nuts! 

I didn't have any suitable images to work on, so here's one I borrowed from Google:

Before (Upper) and After (Lower).

Assignmenting...Eventually.

The past few weeks have not been good to me. I've fallen off a ladder, contracted ringworm from a cat we rescued, and not completed anything productive that I had intended to. I have, at least, been thinking about my assignments - so that's a start, right? 

To Do

• catch up on blog; 
• bring workbook up to speed; 
• decide on physical or digital visual diary - complete that; 
• come up with ideas for photo-essay fill-flash assignment - shoot it; 
• complete part three of movements assignment; 
• finish portfolio - work out mounting. 

I've been thinking mostly about part three of the movements assignment, trying to work out what I want to do, how I want to do it, how I'm going to print it. For the most part, I get no ideas - except for one that I've had in the back of my mind, that I'm likely just going to go for. 

It's always been an idea I've had, but I've thought about it more and more since Ben asked me about it. I'm a writer - why have I never created any images to correspond to the stories that I'm working on? Maybe it's time I do that. The digital manipulation would come in because I write fantasy, but how would such an image correspond to a movement? I've already tackled modern surrealism. 

I've been thinking I'll just ignore the movement thing and go for gold. This is the last assignment - I want to create something I can be happy with. I might not be able to find the perfect model, but I can at least try to create a stunning image. 

Likewise, I'll hopefully be getting some more shots for my portfolio. I'm shooting Xavier Rudd at Big Top Luna Park, a venue that will at the very least have better lighting than the Hi-Fi. 

I'm hoping to get something productive done before heading back to TAFE next week.

Printing Onto Wood.

As stated in an early entry, I decided that for my assignment I was going to print an image onto wood. 

Some problems that I expected to run into while doing this assignment were: 

• most people said that you couldn't use an Inkjet printer for this process, but not having access to a laser printer, I decided to attempt using my Inkjet;
• I expected to have trouble working out how much of the gel medium I was going to need to use; 
• I expected to have issues with rubbing off the paper, because I felt I would end up rubbing off the ink as well; 
• I decided to attempt this in colour, when I had only read tutorials for black and white - as such, I wasn't sure that the colours would come out, which would result in a very faded photograph or no image at all.

Let's start with the process. First, my equipment: a wooden box, white acrylic paint, Matisse Gel Medium, an Inkjet printer, a paintbrush, a roller, and my image. 

 

This was the photograph I chose to use for my assignment. It's a picture of my mother's dahlias, where I have edited the colours and sharpness to give it more of a pictorialist look. A soft focus and wider aperture were also used to achieve this.

These photographs showed my first attempt at this assignment, which didn't go quite according to plan, but is exactly the same as what I did the second time around bar one thing: the first time around, I painted the box in full before printing the photo to the lid. The second time, I only coated the top part of the box in paint. We will see why shortly. 

One everything was ready, I applied the gel medium to the top of the box in an even layer. The first time I did this, I used a medium sized paint brush and didn't take much notice of my speed. The second time, I used a larger paintbrush and did this quickly, so that the gel medium would all remain wet before the image was applied. 

Once applied, the image and the gel medium were left to dry overnight. Once it was done, I ran the paper under running warm water and began to peel away as much as I could. 

The first time I attempted this, this was where things started to go wrong. I didn't know that acrylic paint became slippery and began to come off once it was wet. As such, I ended up getting paint all over my hands and my image began to rub off in places that I didn't want it to. 

The second time, the rest of the box was paintless while only the side that held the image had been painted. I also used cold water this time, and achieved the effect I was after. 

Overall, I am very pleased with the way my assignment came out: 

This was finished by applying acid free Mat Spray to the image to protect it.

I quite enjoyed this, as it was both fun and rewarding. I can see myself doing this a lot in future, as such things make for great gifts. Overall, it didn't cost too much either. From the Riot! arts and crafts store that I got all of my materials from, I spent $10 on the box, $10 on a container of paint that still has most of its contents, and $15 on the gel medium while is also still mostly full. Paintbrushes were pre-owned and the roller was $2.

Inkjet Printers and Contact Paper.

Although I haven't decided on a photo for it yet, I've been thinking on part two of the assignment and decided that I either want to print on glass or wood - because I love the look of both. 

The catch is that I didn't want it to be expensive, and it needed to be something that I could do at home - so the collodion method was out of the question. With that said, I came across a tutorial that would essentially enable me to make a sticker out of one of my photographs, so that the sticker could then be applied to glass. 

Not exactly printing on glass, but it looked like fun regardless. 

The only problem was that these prints need to be made using a laser printer, as those use toner instead of ink. I decided I would try with my inkjet anyway - I don't currently have access to a laser printer, and I wanted to see if inkjet would work anyway. 

It didn't. 

I printed a high contrast black and white photograph onto plain paper and then stuck a sheet of clear, self-adhesive contact to it - with the ink side of the photo meeting the adhesive side of the contact. I let it dry for a while and then put it into warm water, where I then left it to soak for ten minutes. 

After that you're supposed to rub the paper off the contact, and the photograph is supposed to be left behind. But for me, the ink simply washed away and I was left with a blank sheet of contact paper. 

I plan on trying it again when I have access to a laser printer, but my next experiment will be with wood.

Post-Modernism.

I was off sick for two weeks, so I completely missed the classes on Post-Modernism and am only now finding the time to start catching up on that. So here we go. 

Post-Modernism

From the mid- to late-1960's, as Abstract Expressionism had been falling out of favour, many artists began turning to such movements as Conceptualism, Super-Realism and Neo-Expressionism - all precursors to Post-Modernism. 

So what is Post-Modernism? According to our PowerPoint presentation, it is the rejection of the utopian aspects of modernism; Wikipedia describes it as skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It also says that post-modernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism. 

Cindy Sherman

One of the photographers mentioned in the slideshow is Cindy Sherman. Her name is familiar to me, though I can't remember why. Sherman is best known for her conceptual portraits, something that I want to get into myself, so she seems like a good person to research. 

And going through her images now, I know where I have heard her name - John Dobson mentioned her in class, as he loved the images that she takes of dolls. Personally I find them to be a little creepy, though I know many people were inspired by said images.

Weddings.

I've been off TAFE sick for the past two weeks and haven't yet had the time to jump into our next movement of study, so I thought I might talk a little about the wedding that I second shot on Saturday with one of my classmates. 

This was my second time shooting a wedding. My first time was a complete disaster - it was the beginning of 2011, I wasn't highly experienced with people or with my camera, and I was the only shooter there! As hard as I tried, I went in far too unprepared and made rookie mistakes that I look back and laugh on now. Back then I said I would never do another wedding again, so this one was a challenge to me. It was a way of seeing if I could do it. It was a way of seeing if I wanted to. 

I was definitely less stressed than what I had been the first time around, likely because I wasn't the one who had to worry about getting all of those important shots. And that, in itself, is what should have tipped me off straight away - if I can't handle that stress, why would I want to be a wedding photographer? 

My reasoning for it was always that I wanted to capture those moments, to take pictures that people would want to take out and look at all the time and hang on their walls. But I can do all of that without having to shoot weddings. 

So if this wedding taught me anything, it's that I don't want to shoot weddings at all - I just want to shoot portraits. Things where I can be in control and there's not a long list of shots that I must get.

I feel lighter for having made this decision.

The Double Exposure.

Before I even knew what they were, double exposures were always an interest of mine. I loved the way that people could have two images overlapping and still have the form a beautiful, interesting photograph, and it was something that I had always wanted to try. But up until now, I never had - and that was why I wanted to use a double exposure for my first assignment. 

This photo is one that I loved at first sight, and I can still never get enough of it - because it shows both fantastic technique and a flare of creativity. I also love that although there is a lot happening in the image, it still manages to stay clean and composed.

Jeen Na on Flickr.

With the digital age, double exposures have become less common - both because in the days of film they were quite often happy accidents, and because with digital it is not as easy to achieve them. Whereas with film all you needed to do was roll the film back and take a second shot over the first one, with digital it requires going into Photoshop or other such programs and messing with opacity. Many people never bother to experiment with it.

Going with my theme of loving fantasy novels and wanting to get more into taking shots that look like they've come out of a fantasy world, I came up with a story behind a set of new shots that I want to get this weekend when I work with my friend and her boyfriend.

I want these shots to look both real and surreal at the same time, and I'm hoping that I can achieve that. 

Pop Art.

Another photography movement! 

Pop Art

Pop art came to be in the mid-1950's in Britain and in the late 1950's in the United States, and is still widely known and used today. It is a very distinctive style that involves using imagery from the pop culture of the day - for example, images taken from advertising and the news. Often seen in these images are bits and pieces from comic books, popular advertising and even clippings from photographs in newspapers. 

When most people think of pop art, the first thing that comes to mind are the bright colours and over-contrasty images. It also includes a lot of the halftone look, which is often seen in comic books. 

According to this website, there are five key characteristics of pop art. They are: 

• recognisable imagery, drawn from popular media and products; 
• usually very bright colours; 
• flat imagery influenced by comic books and newspaper photographs; 
• images of celebrities or fictional characters in comic books, advertisements and fan magazines; 
• in sculpture, an innovative use of media. 

Andy Warhol

Likely the most famous photographer associated with pop art is Andy Warhol. Even those who do not know his name likely know his famous painting of the Campbell's soup cans. Warhol's works, particularly his paintings, are some of the most expensive pieces that have ever been sold. One of his works, Eight Elvises, is the highest-selling painting to date. It sold for US$100million. 

Personally, I don't like pop art. I think it looks terrible. 

Modern Surrealism.

Wednesday had us continuing our research on surrealism to a degree, but we moved forward into modern surrealism. 

Modern Surrealism

I said that surrealism was one of my favourite movements, but I didn't know that modern surrealism existed! Modern surrealism is, I suppose, the movement that most of my favourite photographers fall into. It deals greatly with image manipulation, with making things look unreal, and I could never get enough of it.  

Like surrealism, when it comes to film this would be achieved with double exposures, putting things onto the negative, blending two negatives and making them one. It obviously got easier when the digital age came along, with the advent of programs like Photoshop and Illustrator.

I know, without a doubt, that my love of this movement stems from my love of reading and writing fantasy novels. The two go hand in hand. 

Jerry Uelsmann

Since I already know a fair few modern surrealists who use Photoshop as their main tool, I wanted to take a look at somebody who was doing this before the digital age came into being. Uelsmann is one such photographer.

Some of his images are so simple and yet so breathtaking. Then the more complex ones just blow my mind and make me wonder how he managed to do it.

Surrealism.

Today had us looking at our next photographic movement: surrealism. 

Surrealism

This is a movement that I was at least a little bit familiar with when we started out. Surrealism was all about the strange - making things look abnormal or unreal. 

These results were achieved by use of double exposure, distortion, manipulation of the negative, and many, many other ways. 

Philippe Halsman

I've mentioned previously that I briefly studied Halsman last year, so now is a good time to bring him up again. It is well known that he often collaborated with surrealist painter Salvador Dali, and as such produced many images that fall into this movement. By far his most famous, I believe, is Dali Atomicus. 

 

 Dali Atomicus.

Halsman was not only known for his surrealist work - he was also known for being a fashion photographer, and for having the most images featured as the cover of Life magazine before they stopped publication. But his fashion work was more in the style of the modernist. It's really only his collaborations with Dali that were surrealistic. 

I think it goes without saying that surrealism is one of my favourite movements. I just love it.

Modernism.

Yesterday it was back to studying photographic movements. 

Modernism

Unlike pictorialism, modernism is based around taking a "straight photograph" - that is, exactly what the camera sees without adding manipulation to the negative and so forth. Where the pictorialists went for soft focus, the modernists went for sharper images. 

Images were often taken in direct sunlight, as the harsher shadows were able to really reveal the form of the subject. 

This period stretched from 1867 - 1975 and included such movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. 

One of my first thoughts was this - last year for our History assignments, I studied Phillipe Halsman. One of Halsman's most famous shots is Dali Atomicus, a shot of surrealist Salvador Dali surrounded by floating objects. This, among a few other surreal works of his, is what drew me to the photographer. Without needing to do further study, I know that I like the surreal. 

Edward Weston

The photographer that I did choose to study for this era was Edward Weston, who I had never heard of before yesterday.  He was considered a master of the "straight photograph" and was a member of the famous Group f/64, along with other greats such as Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham. He is most noted for his nudes and for his famous photograph of a pepper. 

Pepper #30

What I really like about this image is that it doesn't look like a simple pepper - as was discussed in class, it almost looks like a distorted human form. And in a way, it reminds me of another of my favourite photographers (Nikki Sixx, who I will have to do a post on later) in the way that it looks deformed, but it's still so beautiful and so very fascinating. 

I thoroughly enjoyed researching Weston, as his work was absolutely stunning. And it's easy enough to say that I enjoyed modernism a whole lot more than I enjoyed the pictorialist era.

Pictorialism and Secessionism.

Today in class we are looking at these two early photographic movements.

Pictorialism This style seems to entail taking a photograph and then making it look like a painting. Photographs lacked sharpness, were often printed in one or more colours that were not black and white, and were often manipulated to look like the prints had brush strokes in them. It was a style that developed during the late 19th and early 20th century, and was more focused on making sure that photography was considered an art form than it was on what was actually in front of the camera. Many people believed that the camera was nothing more than a tool to document reality, not create art.

Photo-Secession Photo-secession came about because of pictorialism. As defined by Wikipedia, it was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general, photographic pictorialism in general. It was a movement started by Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day, and it held the viewpoint that the importance of a photograph was not what was in front of the camera, but the manipulation done to the image by the photographer so that they could get their vision across.

Pierre Dubreuil Pierre Dubreuil was a French photographer often referred to as a Modernist who laboured under a Pictorialist veil. He first started taking photos at the age of sixteen, in 1888, but it wasn't until 1896 that he began to become better known in the circle of pictorial photographers. He was also known as a creator of bizarre distoritions.

Between 1904 and 1930 he chose to use the Bromoil process to make his prints. This is a process that often resulted in soft, paint-like qualities, which was popular at the time and has started becoming popular again today.

Elephantaisie, 1908.
This is one of his more famous shots, evidently taken in Paris. Although I generally prefer sharper images, I find that I'm quite enjoying the painterly quality of this one. I also like that the subject is something unexpected, that the Eiffel Tower has been pushed into the background in favour of something that I haven't seen a thousand times before.

Pictorialism and photo-secessionism are probably not two movements that I would say I thoroughly enjoy. I don't mind looking at the style every now and then, but they aren't particular styles that I think I would really enjoy trying to portray.