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On the day we finally got our magazines, it was time to present them professionally to make them look great. Unfortunately on that day we had limited access to studios and equipment as that had to wait a little longer. However, we used our initiate and created our own mini studio using a large piece of paper, a clear table and wall with a couple of lamps and luckily some colour gels with of course a camera. The lighting wasn’t perfect but it sufficed and tied us over until the final shoot. It was a good experience on learning how effective a small studio can be when taking photos of small objects like magazines. 

Although I was waiting to take photos in a studio to give my magazines a liminal feel I still had a go at making some work here in preparation and to get some ideas going.

I had an issue with the camera that turned my images blue but luckily I wanted that any way to fit my theme. Later it was resolved by turning on flash so then I used some blue colour gels on the lamps. The Idea I had for this shoot was to either make a liminal scene, hence using the zines as stairs and a door but also using a similar on on the far outer grids If I were to reference to rule of thirds to space out the subject like I did with the inside content of my work. I couldn’t space them out the way I wanted due to room constraints but it was a good starting point. Unfortunately, my images are slightly out of focus due to my not setting up the camera right but this is another lesson for me in preparation for the final piece. 

After the shoot, toward the end of the day our stickers finally arrived and we were quite pleased with the result but the stickers weren’t as crisp or as vibrant as we hoped due to the cost of them as we had to get a lower quality print but the sizes and glue quality of them were great. They stuck so well I unfortunately ripped a little bit of paper off my cover, placing a sticker. Moving on, these personalized mags will be used in the final shoot. 

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20 page plan

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During our photography class we were tasked with a practical, hands on task of making some thing with photos in response to the work of Kensuke Koike who cuts and manipulates photos to create bizarre pieces of art in genius ways. 

The one that caught my eye on his YouTube channel was an illusion of a photo simply being stretched out. 

To try and keep true to my open project I used a picture of an abandoned place I used for reference in my magazine. The idea was to the stretch the image from the door way and create an illusion that could be like entering through a dimensional door. I did this by firstly printing a few duplicate photos and then cutting one in half and spray mounting it on card to increase toughness. Then for the stretched image I had some issues. Firstly I tried to photocopy the image and stretch it by following the scanner. This didn’t work as it was too quick.

This lead me to use a small scanner. At first I didn’t know how to position the paper as I scanned it by quickly rubbing the edge of the paper against the moving scanner which had the striped image you see here, which of course isn’t the intended outcome but you could argue it’s interesting. Moving on, I was advised to slowly move the print so the scanner slowly captured the whole image but as the print was moving with the scanner still I got the stretched illusion. Once I had this I mounted it on card then placed the two strip on top and pushed them away, making the illusion work. The only issue was that the background was the wrong way round so it wasn't a stretch of the photo I wanted. However, I kept it as it linked with my project of things not being normal in the liminal spaces while the outcome still looks like koike’s. I wasn’t 100% satisfied as it wasn’t as stretched as I wanted but for a first time I was pleased enough. 

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After using colour gels we experimented by taking a normal photo but with the studio settings and lightings we’ve learned and then taking it to photoshop to make a duo tone that’d work in a screen print. 

I chose to use my pencil case as the polygonal pattern looked appealing. I took a clean photo of the case while it was suspended from a wire with a perfectly white background, made possible by the studio lights strobe. 

I then got the image from the camera SD card and got the JPEG onto photoshop. From then I simply added a gradient map of blue and lime green which wasn’t planned but looked out there while at the same time the colours worked together. 

It took some playing around but eventually I settled with what you see here. I’m unsure if it would work in a screen print due to lack of experience but I’ll find out eventually. 

Finally, we got our duo tone and went onto a German website called 100-beste-plakate. This site is just a huge archive of German typographer’s posters in which they submitted for competitions going back nearly three decades. 

after a good look I found this poster that I have attached. I picked it as I like the one huge letter and other words placed around, breaking all laws of editorial design I'm used to coming from a corporate background. So I had a go myself at recreating it in my own way. Unfortunately I had a very slow mac and struggled to get a finished piece along with the fact I had no access to good fonts. However I did make something. I used a large letter then placed around the word creative as it could link with a pencil case since it can hold various art based products. I reflected and distorted the text, stretching the legibility but you can still tell what it says. I quite like what I've done but if I had more fonts to choose from and better luck with computers I could really improve on this which may be possible soon. 

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Carrying on with experimenting with studios and their accessories we ventured into using colour gels. We achieved these photos by removing the accessories and only using the cones on the studio lights. Then we picked colour gels and put them on each (2 lights) light sticking them with masking tape as anything else could ruin the gels as it would hard to remove the tape from them. 

So once we chose two colours that would work well together (I chose blue and purple as its my favourite combination then yellow and orange to set a mood) we linked the triggers with the camera and lights and began positioning our chosen objects. I brought in two piece of gaming hardware, an old ds and a GameCube controller in hopes of making something that would look like an old magazine advert. 

For the the controller I suspended it with fishing wire to make it float for an extra detail that is more out there than just placing it. If I edited these photos of the controller and removed the wire it would make a very striking outcome but my only issue is how the analogue stick is being pulled but unfortunately that was the best way to suspend it without damage. 

Moving on to the Ds, I used a black, wooden box to mount the subjects onto. Then changed the colour gels as I thought these colours were more retro as blue and purple is more future retro these days which toed well with the new controller but now using old hardware I thought it was fitting. I utilised not only the Ds but the case and GBA cartridge also to make some nice photos. However, some were too dark or bland but when I suspended the Ds I had some great outcomes. Once in particular. I’ve shown here the main photo I was most proud of as the gradient in the backdrop looks beautiful with also the Ds itself having some colour on the bottom and rising up. The fishing wire isn’t as invasive as the controller photos either which is a big plus. All the details of the Ds is visible too which is a great bonus for the old advert aesthetic I was going for. If I get these into photoshop I feel lie I wouldn’t need to do a lot as the photos them self saved me all the work. 

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As a side project we were given a brief to make a Christmas card for a Birmingham based design company called provide. The only info I was given was to include the word “Bab” then have something that historically links to Birmingham.

So, using some brief research I found out that some designs from provide use vector based characters with speech bubbles. So, my idea was to make a cute Santa Claus that linked to Birmingham So, I thought I’d set him back in time to the 20′s so I could use old free licence photos  of Birmingham and dress Santa like a peaky blinder to appeal to a wide audience. Then made a car in illustrator to pair with him and subtly named it “rudolph” for keen eyes. Then to finish added a speech bubble with a questionable typeface. The photo itself was edited in photo shop by having an orange rectangle overlaid to emphasise the age of the image as I wanted it to look almost like an old photo. Then finally used a gaussian blur on ellipses to make lights in the lamps for an extra effect. 

Although this image wasn’t completely final I really like where it was going. So, when the speaker for the client came in she assessed what I had done and provided me with this feedback. 

 “Provide is a luxurious brand. designs have no illustration idea of old town and font choice is good”

This meant I had to make a new image all together and only keep the background with a new direction that, unfortunately I didn’t have the time to do and as it was quite a competitive brief as many people were trying to be picked by the client for their design. Also, I thought I made a good attempt for what was an optional brief as it was mainly a second year task. If the audience was slightly different I believe it would’ve been a worthy candidate for print it I polished some things. However, If i get an opportunity like this again I will definitely have another go and research deeper so I don’t fail the clients views of the design they want. 

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Just after glitching with a website we took the task of glitching images ourselves but in an way we didn’t imagine. 

We were given a sheet of paper with some instructions. The objective was to take our Jpeg photos and images and open the files in the text edit app on the Mac. Then simply altar the rows of text in many ways like changing the lines around, adding text, removing text and even adding your own words. As you can see, at first I tried this using the tree image and I had no luck apart from a couple glitches like the image tearing in half. Then the same outcome with the photo of my self. So I went to the internet and found a JPEG of the famous blade runner scene. For some reason this file reacted to the distortion of text edit much better, possibly because the file had shorter text since it was a small file. Anyway I messed with the images in the ways the instructions said and also experimented doing all the edits on one images. I was more than pleased with the results as they looked like real pieces of glitched art that someone did on actual design software. A couple were just broken completely but images like the top and bottom left looked great. I would definitely use this again just for fun as it’s easy to do with big outcomes. 

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During one of our photography lessons we explored the effectiveness of glitch websites, tools that scan your photos or images and essential destroy them and turn them into something new, weird and interesting. Normally, a glitch is a technical error that is usually bad such as corrupted files or parts of software like videogames not working properly due to many factors that I can’t comprehend personally. However, in the world of photography, purposeful glitches can have fun outcomes like you see here. All I did was visit the websites that all labelled and uploaded my photo that someone took in the class studio setup. 

Each website has their own algorithm with how they change the photos. Some are random while other website have sliders to control the carnage. Unfortunately I couldn’t play with Glitchatron’s website as their load times for converting an image was terrible but the one outcome was interesting and definitely an effective glitch. Photo mosh was more of an extreme editor than a glitch as they looked more like filters than anything else. But then image glitcher was a lot of fun as the amount of outcomes were completely unpredictable with me (the subject of the photo) being duplicated or well glitched in different ways. 

It was good to see how these websites work as in a rush these could save a lot of time instead of using photoshop.  

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After many sessions of exploring the town and campus it was time for us to get to grips with how to set up a studio environment. 

This involved viewing how to set up the lights themselves and seeing how they flash and strobe while also seeing how different attachments like the soft box, umbrella, snoot and reflectors all change how the lighting comes out in photos. 

This was only possible by having triggers that fitted into the camera and lights so the flash matched the shutter of the camera. 

We had a small tutorial trying an accessory with the set up studio. AS you see here we took a photo of someone holding a pencil case using a soft box. This caused the outcome to be very clean as the light was set up without any unwanted light due to the flash nullifying any extra.  Then the soft box covering the light made the photo have softer shadows with some darkness too. Soon I will experiment more with other attachments and how they affects photos. 

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Another photography task we were given with the digital cameras that involved creating exposure photos, executed by using the slowest shutter speed possible. This enabled us to capture light moving as well as people and anything else that moved. The blur of the photos shows evidence of this. 

Once again I found it rather difficult at first as the lowest possible shutter speed took in far too much light and caused the images to be completely white or black. but some of these blank images had some interesting outcomes such as moving light and gradients that looked like fractured light. 

As me and my partner went outside the same failed outcome kept repeating even after changing the shutter speed. Until we found out that us holding the camera by hand contributed to the altered images as every slight movement was captured in the multiple second exposure. So we mounted the camera on what seemed to be some sort of electrical box in the street and started to get some really good exposure photos of traffic and people walking by. We also changed the speeds of the shutter slightly to get different blur effects. My favourite one is of the grey bus turning into the camera. I say this as everything in the photo is sharp and still but the bus is blurred and in motion. but I also like the few photos we have of people looking like ghosts and only having parts like shoes that are clear. 

Overall, this task was very successful despite the hiccup at the start. 

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in either week three or four of the project we were tasked with taking photos of complete strangers but there was a twist. It was a focus/ out of focus photo task. So by once again widening the aperture me and two others walked around the campus and surrounding areas of Aston University to hopefully find people to take photos of. This was a difficult challenge as many people didn’t want to participate then when they did their patience seemed very thin. This lead us to take the photos ineffectively. We didn’t get close enough to these strangers in order to blur out the background. So as a result we didn’t get the results we needed. However we found success in taking photos of objects instead. 

We took a huge amount of these focus/ out of focus photos. The subjects consisted of parts of statues or buildings, bike handles to fauna like tree bark and flowers. At first we stumbled partly on the settings of the camera, causing us to only take sharp photos. This meant the first few photos were unsuccessful for the outcome we wanted. but after some tweaking we began to take some really effective photos. The reference we had for the outcomes was photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Typically, his  Learning to See ‘No-Focus’ collection as in there are photos of branches and twigs that have the focus/out of focus effect. These are in black and white but I believe our photos were quite similar, especially when we experimented with fauna. 

Overall, this task was very successful apart from the strangers part of the task. If we were to take pictures of each other the effect would of been pulled off but the bad outweighed the good in this instance. 

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The next task we had in our photography session was to to create purely out of focus photos. This is achieved by setting the aperture number really low. The rest of the settings are normal. Such as 125 shutter speed and 100 ISO. 

It sounded quite simple but trying to recreate images in the likes of great photographers like Saul Leiter and Uta Barth was quite a challenge. This was because getting an out of focus image that wasn’t just blank became a challenge. After some time we had some good examples after a good few attempts while also taking photos of something in focus then the rest is out of focus. This was achieved by putting the lens right next to the image you want sharp then the background would then be out of focus. 

As you see, the further you look down the camera roll, the images got slightly better and better, showing it just took some getting used to. Unfortunately we didn’t venture outside to the the bad weather. As we could of taken some great pictures. It was debated whether  we went out to get rain shots but it was feared that we could damage the camera we didn’t own. In final, this task was successful and a good lesson for us but it could’ve been better if it wasn’t for the poor conditions. 

Another separate mini task was to keep the same settings of the camera and take portraits of each other, completely out of focus. The end result was quite interesting as it was enough detail to make out who it was but out of focus enough for the image to have a unique detail other than them feeling like a school photo as the lighting in the studio wasn’t set up too well and I feel like they were rushed. The outcome wasn’t un successful but I feel with more time, better images could’ve came through. The rush was due to the low number of cameras and being against the clock so, for the time we did have it was adequate. 

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In our  second photography session we were tasked with equipping a camera and setting it up to have a wide aperture to let in more light than needed while also lowering the shutter speed to have some blur with the flash on too. This created very interesting and distorted photos. The aim of this was to replicate the iconic photos from the Provoke magazine. A magazine developed in post war japan during the 1960′s.

These unorthodox settings caused the photos to have some very interesting outcomes and some that didn’t work at all due to the sheer amount of light coming into the lens. This lead me and my partner to make the decision of closing the aperture slightly more than recommended for lighter areas. 

The most successful image however, was one I took inside of the college cafeteria. Mainly because the blur and angle had this odd, haunting feel to it that made me think of liminal spaces and thought it would be appropriate to pick this one to develop into a provoke style image. The one person in the photo also added a nice touch but not not to my liminal spaces project as no people at all is the aim. Except if I think to the myth of the backrooms there are creatures and entities within them so this blurred figure could fit well. Overall, it was my favourite photo I took that day. 

Once I got back to class I took the photo into photoshop and changed it to black and white. from then I adjusted the levels to set a darker mood and finally added some noise to the photo to make it look older. As a result, it almost looked like it would fit inside a provoke magazine. I say this as the lonely figure and distorted imagery sends mixed feelings and makes the viewer look at the photo for long periods of time, making them think what they are seeing. 

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Once the magazine was done it was time to make my sticker. At first I was unsure with what I wanted. My first idea outside the screen was always to just use the door as that’s the icon I used in previous front cover ideas but now I placed it in digital form as a sticker I wasn’t impressed. At first I was a bit creatively stunned. This lead me to creating a few attempts that I didn’t like one bit. As a result I left this for one day and came back to it the next day with fresh ideas. 

My first good idea consisted of using the door and a blue polygon with forced perspective then adding my font with matching the perspective with of course the title of my work. All four of these were effective in some way but according to feedback and my personal preference the idea of reversing the colours of the word as the entered different background was a nice detail. However, It was suggested I could just create sticker with the word “liminal” utilising my gradients, colours and fonts all as one along with the thick stroke to make the picture become a sticker.

From this I made a huge variety of “liminal” stickers. This consisted of my varying how I wanted the gradients, colours and shape of the sticker boarder itself. My personal favourite was the white text with gradient border as I re used the rectangular thickness of the letters and applied it to the border. However, the squaring wouldn't work too well as a sticker due to the border being agreed to be rounded. This meant the favourite was the top right image as the font fading into the thick rounded border worked well and symbolised my narrative well. The only critique was to altar the fade lower so it could be read easier and make the stroke thicker. 

However, I was already aiming at making another idea that combined my first idea of using forced perspective while using the word “liminal”. I did this by splitting the word liminal in half and lining them back up with the perspective tool in illustrator. This made the illusion of the text slipping between axis’s which I felt was a very effective detail. this was made in an almost isometric image by having a corner of a floor and a wall on an uneven line to show extra depth to the image. This concept of my triangular room however, wasn’t too well received as it didn’t represent my work too well which I agree on. The solution was to keep the text and trim around it so the spaces are completely filled with text. I quickly made an example to clarify and see if this would work. To my surprise, with a thick border this outcome was far more effective than I thought. 

I made three final variations and the unanimous winner was of course the white text with gradient. It’s a great piece that shows everything my work is about along with an extra technical detail to advertise my work further by using a peculiar method of showing type. All that was left to do was rescale to 50 x 50mm and send it to print. 

This was a small dilemma that was solved within the group. At first it was decided we all pay for our own sticker then come in with them when delivered as the magazines will be ready by then. However, as we were slightly behind schedule delivery was very expensive for us (up to £30) on top of the £20 initial cost. As a result we all made a google drive folder and placed all of our final stickers as PDFs and nominated the person closest to the college to get all our work printed via vista print on one order. This made fast delivery free and allowed us to not spend hundreds collectively. All we had to do then was transfer our payments to one of our colleagues. Thanks to this quick solution we saved the sticker idea and could follow on with the plan. 

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After going back to the drawing board, we as a group went on adobe fonts and browsed fonts we liked. It was apparent that we wanted extended, sans serif fonts with some thickness too as it just fitted all the empty space well without it feeling lost. At the early stage of late development we were going to have signatures at the front page too. This was scrapped once again but the ideas of where the word was placed remained relevant.

In the end it was agreed the word would be on the bottom right of the page as if it were an instruction or invitation to pinch that part of the page and start looking into the contents of the magazine. The font of choice was called “Archivo expanded Black”

This meant everything was ready to send to Will for combining everyone's work and sending the magazine as a finished piece.