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Final images

The final modifications were made based on the previous feedback. For me, I have made progress in technical skills and learned new things. And the handling of details is better than before.

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Final reflection

Thinking with digital images: Reflection

By: Baoyi Liu

With the progress of technology, it is difficult for people to distinguish everything they see. What impressed me deeply in the course reading is that the joke mentioned in the article was on us. Jonas Bendiksen said, “People will find it difficult to distinguish whether an article was written by a journalist or a robot.” ( Katia,P. 2021). I think this is very ironic. Because although public media reports news to people, people still cannot distinguish whether the source of the news is reliable.

With the emergence of AI and Photoshop, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the authenticity of images and news. It can be said that due to the progress of technology, people know that images and text can be recombined, which has caused ordinary people to lose trust in the media (Arun,K,P. 2018). This also means that people can now tamper with the original meaning of information at will. Most of the information has become what you see is what others want you to see. People can freely change the real ambient lighting, edit and add materials that were not captured in an original image through Photoshop.

Although I was born in an era where everything I saw could be synthesized, I am relatively opposed to AI image synthesis. On the one hand, it can be imagined that in an era where without AI image synthesis, people have sufficient trust in this society and the media.

On the other hand, I believe that AI synthesis allows people to work less hard. Someone will take a camera to a beautiful place and wait for a long time, just to capture that moment. But now all you need to do is open Photoshop with new AI capabilities and use existing materials for image editing. AI synthesis may have more advantages than disadvantages for advertisers, as they can use this technology to 'optimize' their products and visually attract more customers.

The concept I chose for thinking with digital images is: Adopt an animal's public service announcement. The imagined advertising image shows a toy dog abandoned on a street corner in the city, representing abandoned or lost animals. I hope this public service announcement can evoke sympathy for abandoned animals and inspire people to consider adopting pets. This will improve the situation of stray cats and dogs and urban ecology. My goal is to make the advertisement and overall image as close to reality as possible. The reason is that I want to create realistic photos to mislead the audience, proving that some seemingly ordinary photos may also be fake. As a warning to people, that pictures can lie.

In the overall picture, I placed this advertisement on the advertising sites in the city. And added scenes of passersby passing by the billboard, running through these three images. I hope to achieve multi-level visual effects. The advertisement itself is black and white, and the world of abandoned animals may be gray. I used black to showcase their sadness and helplessness, and the vast black and desolate atmosphere contrasts sharply with the noisy world we live in. We cannot truly appreciate the sadness and loneliness of small animals being abandoned, but I want to do my best to protect them, so I came up with the idea of doing this advertisement.

In the background of each advertisement, there is another object accompanying this small animal, such as an umbrella, road cone, and garbage bin that has been casually abandoned on the roadside. They share the same situation as small animals, and this is also the real living environment for stray animals.

I feel that I have made progress in the application of Photoshop technology. In the last assignment, my skills were quite limited, and I didn't understand the techniques involved. During this process, I learned many new skills and applied them to the project.

Overall, during the course, I have continuously learned new skills and gained a deeper understanding of synthesis techniques. I know the road to excellence is still far away, but I guess I’m on my way.

Reference

Katia, P. (2021, October 26). A Photographer and Artist Walk into a Fake News Factory. Codastory.

Arun Kumar Bhuyan. (2018, October 26). What Are Some Reasons Not to Trust Photos You See on Social Media? Quora.

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Some of examples

There is no accurate photographer as my example. I found these three photos wanna create my works similar to these effects. After making my first attempt, I mentioned the possibility of adding billboard elements, so I searched for some pictures online to try to determine my direction. Finally, I found three images that I wanted to achieve and used them as a direction to make subsequent image modifications.

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Tests & Process

This time, I made modifications based on the previous feedback and changed the advertising slogan. Added the billboard on the street as the overall background. And added the element of 'passersby passing by'. Trying to make the visual hierarchy more rich. Achieve a realistic feeling overall, attempting to transform the entire images into a photo taken casually by others.

Feedback from class and teacher: The details still need to be addressed, including some shadows and lighting. The position of the person can be further modified. Need to add the website of SPCA on the advertisement to make the overall advertising more realistic.

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Reflection Draft

Feedback：Some grammar and vocabulary are incorrect. Some viewpoints in the article lack evidence and require references to support some sentences and viewpoints. Some places do not express clear meanings and need to be explained clearly.

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Photo Shoot 1

This shooting mainly focuses on the street corners of the city, abandoned objects on the roadside, and my toy puppy. I want to combine these three elements because of the theme of the advertisement. The picture shows a puppy abandoned in a corner of the city, with a poor environment. The puppy is placed together with the garbage thrown casually on the street. But this shooting was scheduled for the evening due to my personal reasons, which resulted in some photos having a lot of noise. And the body of the toy puppy is not easy to shoot, which refers to its form. In order to capture the posture of the toy puppy I wanted, I used a string to tie the puppy's hands and feet, and asked my friend to help me control the puppy's posture for filming. This is quite interesting.

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Class Activity

Call Sheet

Elements:

Snail

Pink smoke

Building

Graffiti

Clothesline

Figure

Sky

Tower

Street lamp

Model-

Outside natural photo of a girl - can tell from the lighting from her leg 

Building-

Roof /floor being edited in

Lighting-

Natural lighting

Edit-

Graffiti edited on top of the building

Washing line from outside

Lamp photos taken from outside in the street and edited on

Powerline

Pipe on the building

Location-

Sky photo being taken during sunset

Building

Castle looking part of the building

Props-

Snail

Washing line

Pink smoke

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Photo Shoot 2

Considering the previous feedback, I would like to add billboard as the background layer. The main purpose of this shoot is to find the background panels of various parts of the city. Before filming, I try to shoot as many things as possible, so that it's convenient for me to match my advertisement. But there are some that I am not very satisfied with upon review, so there are not many suitable ones to use.

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Task 1 image:

This is my first attempt and I received feedback

there are too few layers, which is a bit simple.

The feeling of public service announcement is not obvious enough.

Can try not to use black and white.

Make it visually more diverse.

The advertising slogan is incorrect, and sentences that are more relevant to the topic can be changed.

Can try placing this advertisement on the billboard.

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Brainstorm

Concept: Adopt an Animal PSA (public service announcement)-Advertisements

Context/The where: Adverting billboard

Content: The image I have planned is of a doll dog abandoned on a city corner, where the doll dog represents an animal that has been abandoned or lost and cannot be found by its owner. I hope that this image will inspire people to consider adopting a pet. This will improve the situation of stray dogs and cats and the urban ecology. My goal is to make my advertising look as close to reality as possible. And to provoke sympathy for abandoned animals.

Shooting Planning: Photograph street corners as much as possible, these can be used as a background for this advertisement (first layer). Photographing the corners of the puppy dolls makes it easy to use them with different angles of the background.

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Case Studies

Fake News: How Jonas Bendiksen deceived the photography world with The Book of Veles

-People usually only believe what they see with their eyes, and believe that what they see is the so-called truth, but Bendixon's works are all synthesized. He deceived the media and deceived the audience, even if his works look very real. , so in real society we need the ability and means to distinguish between true and false, right from wrong, so as to better help us understand and respect every period of history.

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Concept: Art work/Daily life advertisements

hese are two completely different directions.

Artwork: Because I want to try to synthesize some surreal works. I'm not sure about the theme yet.

Advertisments: Because my major is adverting, recently I've seen some advertisements for daily necessities that are very interesting or visually appealing to me, so I'd like to try my hand at making some advertisements for daily necessities. So I thought I might try to make some advertisements about daily life.

Context/The where: Gellery/Adverting billboard

Content: Some of the elements I might use are combining the ''product'' with some seemingly unrelated objects or venues. It's an interesting effect that catches the eye of the viewer.

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Final Manipulated Image

In fact, manipulated image can be seen everywhere in our life, in our social media, in the media, in advertisements, and even in news websites. Some manipulated images may serve the purpose of optimising a image to create a better visual effect. Some manipulated images are manipulating facts. Before creating my manipulated images, I wondered if it is possible to take a photo "interpret out of context". My position is against this. In my opinion, the starting point of a composite work should be good intentioned. It can be an artistic creation of imagined images through compositing techniques, and it can be used for visual creativity in advertisements. But it should never be used to actually engage in deception.There are many different categories of photo manipulation art, and in this case

I chose realism for my work. I actually got my inspiration from real life. At that time,I thought that many people should be like me, every time after taking photos, whether it is landscape or portrait images, we will do "secondary processing ". The purpose of this "secondary processing " is to make our photos look more refined and closer to what we imagine. So I want my manipulated image to look actual. I did some research outside of class to get a better understanding of the concept, and found Cath Simard 's manipulated work and an article on her website. In it there was a reference to how elements of reality can be combined with creativity to produce  pleasing images. By compositing different parts of reality, the photographer creates seemingly beautiful images that give the viewer a sense of the reality involved. I feel that this concept fits with the work I want to present, I try to convey realistic thinking by compositing different elements of reality and at the same time create a wonderful and realistic visual effect. Secondly I learnt from my research how to create an emotional resonance between the viewer and the work. I want my work to make the viewer feel the authenticity and beauty of it, creating an experience that resonates with the viewer.

This is the first time I have created a full composite work, and the techniques required for compositing were a challenge for me. During some parts of the process of creating a composite image, I had to look at tutorials and learn a few tricks of the trade in order to make the image look the way I wanted it to. I have mastered the basic Photoshop techniques in this project, but I would like to improve on them next time so that I can use them better to achieve the desired effect. This is where I need to improve. Overall, this presented a result that was closer to what I had imagined at the beginning. I hope that I can make up for the mistakes I made this time and do more research and thinking in my next assignment.

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Research and Inspiration

When I analyzed Cath Simard‘s work and her methodology in depth, I could see how to relate her ideas to my work. Cath Simard sees the landscape as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and by visiting the same location several times and capturing moments in different times and perspectives, she is able to better understand the variations and nature of the landscape. Her approach has inspired me to manipulate different elements of the real world to create an integrated, rich picture. This echoes the idea that she visits the same location multiple times to gain more dimensions. Just as she masters the movement of a landscape by capturing its different facets at different times, I demonstrate the diversity and complexity of reality by manipulate different elements in my work.

At the same time, another way Cath Simard works is by manipulate multiple locations into a single image, creating a scene from her imagination. This also resonates with my goal of trying to create a seemingly beautiful image by manipulate real elements and not so beautiful parts of reality. Her approach provides me with an example of how different elements can be blended together to create an imaginative scene. Just as she expresses her experiences by combining different locations, I convey a realist reflection and expression by manipulate different parts of reality.

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Image 2 process:

Firstly import the beach image and use the tool to crop out the sky. Also crop the galaxy sky image to the part I want and add it to the beach image. For the galaxy part I used a different camera raw filter to fix the colours and contrast, this is to make the colours of the galaxy look more natural with the sea. Finally, the blur tool was used to blur the borders of the moon and the borders of the sea and the galaxy in an attempt to make them blend naturally. Once this is done, make colour adjustments to the whole operation.

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Image 2 process:

Firstly I imported the building image as layer 1 and cut out the sky above the original building image. Then use the tool to crop out the pigeon from image 3 and import it to this image. Adjust the right size and position, copy the dove and paste the dove. As well as adjusting the colour of the dove to prevent it from looking out of place. Finally, use the blur tool to blur the edges of the pigeons again, so that these pigeons and the sky have a better articulation effect.