The Selfie.

I went back to Rookwood Cemetery on Tuesday in the hopes of continuing my series, but I didn't have much luck when it came to being inspired. I did, however, find something that I liked: 

This little...hut, shall we call it? Well, it sits on the edge of the cemetery, surrounded by older-looking graves and just a little way up from a gravel road. There's a tiny amount of graffiti inside, but what caught my attention was the way that the multiple windows allowed the light to enter the interior. I decided that I wanted to do a portrait shoot there. 

So today I went back and did just that. 

I used myself as a model, as I usually do. (I rarely schedule these things since I only shoot when I feel like it.) I took a black, straw-looking hat of my mother's that I found, thinking maybe I could go for a witchy look. I wanted something dark. And I got something completely different. 

I actually played around with the chosen photo quite a bit before finally deciding on the final image. Here was my first attempt: 

As I said, I wanted something dark - and I guess I'm going through a phase of making art instead of just photos. But ultimately, I decided I didn't like this as the final shot. I went for a black and white film look: 

And while I do like this (and the first one, somewhat), I kept going back to the colour version. It's very rare that I prefer a colour photo over a black and white, so I thought, why not? Let's go with the colour. 

I'm always looking to improve my colouring of photos, and I'm currently quite happy with this one. So here's the final shot that I decided to go with: 

There was a previous version that had less contrast, but I decided I liked this one better.

The Angel Of Vengeance: Printing.

Now that I have my third assignment basically completed (I'm still bouncing some ideas around about the look - I'm a little iffy with the background at the moment) I've been thinking about how I want to print it. My initial thought was an A3 poster, as I created the file in A3 and a poster seemed like a practical idea. But I don't have access to a printer that can do such a thing, and I want to be a little more creative. 

So I have two ideas that I'm dwelling on. 

The first is to use the gel medium from my wood-printing assignment to print the image on canvas. I haven't yet tested the way that this would look, and as I'd be printing A4 it would take quite a bit of calculating to make sure everything lined up properly and looked the way it was supposed to. I should also mention that the canvas I bought for this idea ended up being much bigger than A3, and I haven't been able to locate A3-sized canvas just yet. 

The second is to print onto a shirt. This was one of my very first ideas, before I even had my image, and Charles brought it up again the other day as a suggestion. I agreed that it was a suitable idea. I've had transfer paper for dark coloured shirts lying around for years, so maybe it's time I use it. I bought some cheap black shirts on the weekend (two for $5!) so I'll be giving that a shot sometime soon.

The Angel Of Vengeance: Coming Together.

I've been working on The Angel Of Vengeance book cover/poster/whatever it is, and I'm liking the way that things are going so far. I took what I have so far to class on Wednesday, to ask Ben whether or not it would be suitable as my assignment, and he said I was on the right track. So that's a good thing. 

In the spirit of being more open with my work, like last time, here's some insight into what I have so far. 

These are the images that I started out with: 

Yes, even the text was a photo! I also used two pictures of the sky (with clouds) as the background for my image, but they're on a different hard drive and therefore not accessible to me at the moment. But every photo is mine, was taken by me, etc. 

Put together, here is what I have complied so far: 

I'm not quite ready to call it done yet, though I don't know what more I might be adding to it.

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.

Black and White: How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways.

Today's theory lesson had us looking at different ways to convert an image to black and white - which I found interesting, because who doesn't love a great black and white shot? I was, however, not thrilled to discover that the way I had been doing it was probably the worst. 

When I convert to black and white in Lightroom, I most often do this by entirely desaturating the image. I do this because most of the time it looks better than what you get if you just click "black and white", and I try to avoid the presets. I've never had much of an issue with it, except on occasion. Sometimes I wished there was a better way to do it. 

Then today, we did it using colour channels in Lightroom, and that changed everything. 

Through experimenting with this, we were asked to take one image and create two different versions of it - both black and white, but both with different moods. 

Same shot, different versions. It's truly amazing what you can do.

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.

The Pinhole Camera.

Last week we were discussing pin-hole photography, and as part of our homework we were to take a shot using a pin-hole lens. As I'm not in class today due to illness, I figured I would update my blog with the shot that I took last night. 

Obviously, something went wrong. 

Pin-hole shots are supposed to be known for their sharpness, and often vignetting around the edges. My shot isn't sharp at all! The only conclusion I can come to is that my home-made lens just didn't cut it. We don't own a drill, and I didn't have access to one (nor did I really like the idea of destroying one of my lens caps!), so I wrapped a piece of foil around my camera and stuck a pin through the front of it to make a hole. 

Maybe it wasn't straight; maybe the hole was too big or too thick. Whatever the case, my shot didn't work. But it's all part of the learning process, right?

Printing Onto Wood.

After my last experiment with using an inkjet printer to print onto contact paper failed, I figured I would give using an inkjet printer to print to wood a go - it seemed like an interesting thing to do, given that a majority of tutorials and blog entries I found said that it wouldn't work.

I found a YouTube tutorial where the creator said that she and her sister both used an inkjet printer. Much to my surprise, it was basically the same as every other "don't-use-an-inkjet!" tutorial I had seen: apply a gel medium to the wood, place the print ink-side to the gel, let it dry over night, then remove the paper under running water. 

Obviously, I had my doubts. 

 

For my test run, I didn't bother leaving it overnight. I let it dry for a few hours and then started the process of removing the paper. As a result, some of the gel medium hadn't dried properly. I ended up rubbing some of it off and getting holes in my image! 

I let the wood dry a few times, and always felt like I still hadn't removed all of the paper. Even now I'm not so sure that I've removed all of it, but I do think that it leaves quite an interesting effect. And either way, I have achieved using an inkjet printer to print on wood! 

The next step is to take a photo to use for this assignment, and then to print it to my wooden box. At this point in time, I'm leaning towards pictorialism as a movement, because printing to wood gives some lovely, old-looking effects that will go well with this.

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.

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. 

Ethel.

Yesterday my friend and I took an afternoon trip to Rookwood Cemetery so that I could attempt to get a decent shot for my assignment. 

My idea was simple. I wanted her to be a ghost, lingering behind in the cemetery even after she was "gone" from our world. So we traveled around to different sections in search of the perfect lighting and the perfect setting. 

The first shot I took was one in the Russian section of the cemetery; she was standing in a gazebo-type monument, and you could see all the graves behind her. But in the end, the shot just didn't work for me. The atmosphere was all wrong, and it was far too bright. 

Another shot I did was of her walking towards me between two rows of graves - so she wasn't attached to any one of them in particular, she was just "wandering". I feel that this shot might have been acceptable to me if only the two rows of graves had been closer together. As it was, the photo had too much sky, too much grass, and not enough subject. 

It was the middle shot that worked for me. 

To me, the atmosphere here feels right. She looks sad, she looks somewhat lost, and we even managed to find a girl's grave where the age was right - Ethel Francis died when she was twenty-three. The only thing off here is that she died in 1908, and my friend is clearly dressed for the twenty-first century. 

The process for achieving this photo is simple, but effective. I took two shots of the grave - one with my friend in it, and one without her in it. Then I layered them over the top of each other until they were perfectly aligned and lowered the opacity of the layer that contained my friend. The original shot had a washed-out sky, so I also added some more interesting clouds. 

Obviously, this wasn't exactly the shot that I had in mind. I couldn't find anybody else to model for me, so I only had my friend to work with. 

But even after the shot was done, I kept playing with the idea. And now I have another shoot scheduled for Saturday with another of my friends and her boyfriend, so I'm going to spend some time really planning out that shoot, looking for a location with the perfect light and fine-tuning the idea. Hopefully I will come up with something better - if not for this assignment, then for my portfolio at the end of the year.

EXPERIMENT: Concert Photography.

Last time I wrote about concert photography, I set out two things that I wanted to try the next time that I shot a show: faster shutter speeds and smaller apertures.

Last night I shot another show. Dutch band DeWolff played at the Oxford Art Factory with Group and Lines, and The 59th Sound sent me along again to capture the show. 

The first thing I did when I found out I would be shooting this show was ask a friend of mine what the venue would be like. He told me there would be no barrier, that the venue was tiny, and that the lighting was generally shocking. Despite this, I held my hopes high. Because in my opinion, it would take a lot to have lighting worse than the Hi-Fi. 

And I was pleasantly surprised! The lighting, in my opinion, was wonderful - where the Hi-Fi tends to overuse their reds, the Oxford Art Factory stuck mostly to shades of blue, purple and yellow, which made for much more flattering lighting. 

My ISO ranged from anywhere between 2500 and 5000, though since this was my first time shooting on full frame, I've found that this doesn't bother me. Compared to the shots my 7D gets at the same ISO settings, the noise here is almost unnoticeable. 

My shutter speed varied a lot more than it usually would have - I went anywhere from 1/80th of a second up to 1/250th of a second, depending on the lighting and the action. This is a huge change from the way my shutter speed usually doesn't vary much from 1/125th. 

And my aperture, which usually stays at f/2.8 and doesn't change, moved up to f/3.5. I think it made quite a bit of difference. 

As I've already told Gwen today, last night I feel like I achieved a lot. It was the first time that I woke up in the morning feeling like maybe, just maybe, I had taken some shots that I could really be proud of. After editing, I don't feel like I got any stunners - but I do feel like I've grown as a concert photographer, that I've learned some important lessons, and that things can only keep going up from here.

View the entire gallery here. 

EXPERIMENT: White Balance In Concert Photography.

For the longest while, I have refused to change my white balance settings for concert photos in Lightroom, believing that it would mess with my entire shot and make it look way off from what the scene was actually like. But after speaking with Gwen, and asking how she and others always managed to get such fantastic skin tones in their shots, she told me that sometimes white balance can be your best friend. So I gave it a shot, and now I can't help but agree.