#constructedimage

[harry-mortlock]

Photoshop tutorial:

For our tutorial, we were taught how to use a variety of tools such as the lasso tool and the mask tool in order to combine multiple images. As this is very useful when shooting on a tripod as you can select different areas from each of your images and easily combine them. You could even use this technique to add something new to your images to make it stand out more. For our task, we had to pick three portraits of each other that were taken at the start of the year and then use all the different tool on photoshop to combine them to create a single person. I decided to use myself as the base of the image, then I chose to use Miro for the top half of my face and then taking the mouth from Gabby to replace mine. 

After this, I then went through to colour balance all three layers to make the skin colour as even as possible. I did not do a perfect job but definitely, at a first quick glance, it looks okay. Obviously, if I were to do this properly I would spend more time on it.

Overall I found the session to be quite useful and it was a lot of fun to do which I believe helped people to engage and really learn how to use the tools as they were enjoying what they were doing.

[lightriderstudios]

we have new ( to us ) lights ! combine with our seamless backgrounds to warm up & illuminate your days / dark nights… use hourly or as a Member https://lightriderstudios.com/?page_id=1117 #drawwithlight #lightdrawing #alienbees #constructedimage (at Corvallis, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/light.rider.studios/p/CZH181rv0Pd/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ninomema]

My photo “University Campus” is featured at @fstopmagazine February-March Issue - “Constructed Images”

[julianwigley-blog]

Keep the flame burning. #makesafe #Refugees #FourYearsTooMany #injustice #digital #collage #lightthedark #graphicart #art #artist #minimalism #constructedimage

[rexhenry]

chun quoit. constructed image. chûn quoit is one of group of similar monuments found in west penwith, although a few exist further east in cornwall. these are described as portal dolmen or chambered tombs and are also found elsewhere along the atlantic seaboard, and suggest close links with those in wales, ireland and brittany. dated to the 3rd or 4th millennia bc. chun quoit is surrounded by traces of a large low stony mound, surrounded by kerb stones. this was unlikely to have been very high and the capstone at least always visible. other stones visible in the top of the mound have been interpreted as the remains of burial boxes or cists. there may have been a ‘forecourt’ in front of the entrance to the chamber which would have provided the setting for ceremonial rites and rituals. the monument is certainly likely to be multi functional with their architectures expressing a sophisticated and highly developed cosmology. acting as a repository for ancestral remains, establishing claims or ties with an associated territory, often sited with panoramic views over surrounding hills, rivers and seascapes, underlining the communities stewardship of the surrounding landscape. local ground stones carefully chosen for their mimetic form, and reflecting the shape of the surrounding hills and tors. lifted up and finely balanced on their supporting portal stones so they appear to float, demonstrating through this communal act of labour the growing importance of the bond between land and tribal identity. the site may well be a conspicuous arrangement of found but specific stones, landscape positioning and aspect, lunar and solar orientation, expressive architectural construction in establishing a highly sophisticated motivated and developing collective identity. . . . #neolithic #ancientarchitecture #monument #monuments #quoits #portaldolmen #ancientpenwith #archaeology #architecture #constructedimage #montage #capstone #ritual #ceremony #mimesis #ancientlandscape #ancestors https://instagr.am/p/CJidHVQLOwh/

[pvd223constructedimage-blog]

Faking It, before Photoshop was an exhibition at The Metropolitan in New York and explores how the manipulating and constructing images isn’t a new phenomenon. It explores our relationship with photography as a truth and challenges the idea that photography (pre photoshop) depicted the truth. The exhibition consists of work from the 1840’s right through to the 1980’s and focuses on images manipulated in post process, ie after the negative has been made. There is a series of techniques explored within this exhibition including: multiple exposure, combination printing, photomontage and retouching the negative. There are seven themes explored in this exhibition.

Picture Perfect

Looks at a group of photographers who primarily wanted to please customer, they would hand pain on to achieve a life like richness to their images.

As this was at a time when photography was still in the developing stages, film used to be almost ‘colour blind’ to blue yet, meaning that the sky would be a different exposure time to the ground, thus causing problems for landscape photographers. This meant that landscape photographers would combine two negatives, one exposed for the ground and one for the sky in order to achieve an image with a good exposure.

Another problem faced by photographers was the long exposure time on group portraits, photographers would often find somebody had moved during the exposure, for this reason group portraits where often shot individually then pasted together.

Artifice in the Name of Art

Focuses on work from the early 1860’s when photography as an art form was under debate. For many art critics at this time the aesthetic value of photography came from the photographers’ ability to shape what was recorded by the camera as more value was put upon the art of crafting art works. Artists featured in this section focused upon combinations of negatives to create dreamlike, mythical worlds of artistic aspirations. As technologies advances artists began to using staging and multiple exposures to create such scenes.

Politics and persuasion

Looks at work manipulated with a political interest in mind. Weather this to be sway public opinion or to support or protest against government regimes.

Novelties and amusements

This section looks at the 1850’s where commercial portrait studios where moving in to the mainstream and man offered novelty images to support business. These were much like the photobooths we have today where people could have humorous images created. These where later commercialised and mass produced as post cards.

Pictures in print

When photojournalism was in its very early stages many magazine/newspapers found that the limitations of the camera often meant photographers couldn’t capture events as they happened as we do today. This lead too many news images been completely fabricated/manipulated, thus dropping the reliability of news imagery at this time. Advertisements and fashion imagery are also

Minds Eye

This images in this section stemmed from the surrealist movement in Paris in the 1960’s where photographers where experimenting with new ways to express the power of dreams and the unconsciousness through photography. These artist where working with manipulating reality in order to depict an inner world and their own sub-conscious. They sought to challenge and expand the medium beyond the restrictions of ‘straight’ photography. Surrealist photographers such as Man Ray and Maurice Tabard still influence photographers today

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/arts/design/faking-it-at-the-met-a-photography-exhibition.html?_r=0

 http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/faking-it/picture-perfect

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[harry-mortlock]

[julianwigley-blog]

Lunchtime doodle. Macro monsters #constructedimage #workingwithwhatigot #iphonography #graphics #minimal #sillouette #lightanddark #insects #spiders #mosquito #nature #shape

[rexhenry]

constructed image prepared piano. john cage in providing a dance piece at the cornish school in seattle, he used a 'prepared piano' he first heard used by henry cowell. this took the form of imposing small foreign objects - nails, screws, feathers, hardware of various sorts - between the strings of a piano thus producing a hazy pichless percussive sound. from this he went on to produce his first significant prepared piano piece - another dance creation, bacchanale. lithophones, so called because they are believed to be early prehistoric 'instruments' for producing percussive sounds struck to produce musical notes leaving tell-tale cup marks. the most common is in the form of individual rocks that have good acoustic properties. these rock gongs are found around the world most frequently in africa, asia and north america but also in scotland and parts of europe, thought to be the residue of ceremonial activity, maybe in the form of dance where the production of percussive sound from hammering or drumming was required. this one is in tanzania. . . . #preparedpiano #modernmusic #percussivemusic #ancientmusic #paleolithicart #paleolithicmusic #ancientinstrument #moderninstruments #ancientandmodern #johncage #lithophones #dancemusic #ceremonialdance #ancientsounds #constructedimage. https://instagr.am/p/CMU4-aGrs9H/

[pvd223constructedimage-blog]

Gregory Crewdson

Twilight

Beneath The Roses

Gregory Crewdson creates highly constructed scenes of typical American homes and suburbs. The locations themselves almost fit into the genre of deadpan photography – photographing the normal, everyday. Yet despite this through the use of cinematic devices and extensive lighting these ‘normal’ scenes are elevated to have this dramatic, surreal quality to them – not unlike the work of Hannah Starkey. This results in a haunting tension within the work, the images feel familiar and ordinary yet strange and unsettling. This blurs the lines between fact and fiction, we are aware that these are fantasy world yet the feel so real, so familiar they are relatable. Crewdson works with an extensive production crew when creating these images, not unlike that of a movie – the process can be seen here. http://www.gregorycrewdsonmovie.com/. Sometimes Crewdson adds artificial rain, dry ice and smoke into his work to further enhance the filmic feel his photographs have. This building and construction of this new world almost references child’s play. Crewdson is bringing these scenes and fantasies in his mind to life.

 Through the use of cinematic devices these ordinary American locations and representations of small town life are transformed into these dreamlike scenes. There is a sense of an ambiguous narrative surrounding these works yet we are given no context within the images, meaning that often the viewer’s own dreams and anxieties are projected onto the images. The figures in these images appear disconnected to the camera rather than encaging with it they appear to be isolated, lost in their own minds. There is an alienation with the subjects that hints at some kind of narrative yet the images and the narratives that go with them are not resolved. In an interview (http://theamericanreader.com/interview-with-photographer-gregory-crewdson/) Crewdson speaks about the limitations of the still image and how these are moments frozen in time with no past and no future.

The attention to detail within these images is on an epic scale and Crewdson constructs and selects every minute detail within the frame. Here (http://www.aperture.org/crewdson/) you can explore the images in greater detail and on a larger scale. Despite this attention to detail there is a surprising lack of information within the image – this is done consciously in order to conserve the sense of ambiguity that surrounds the images. We are given no reference to a before or after and thus the images are more open to interpretation and encourage the viewer to project their own thoughts onto the scenes.

I have included images from two series of works in this post, the earlier series ‘twilight’ deals with this sense of the in-between time, just after day but just before night and thus the images have more literal interpretations. This transformative quality to his work could be seen as a metaphor for suburban America and the American Dream. His later works ‘Beneath the Roses’ are somewhat more ambiguous and deal with more psychological themes and the workings of the inner mind.

[melissaadriannee]

I love my major 🙌 #photography #sunynewpaltz #studio #constructedimage

[harry-mortlock]

Photographer - Jeff Wall

These two images from Jeff Walls work have been whats given me inspiration for our group project. I really like the use of the reflection in the top image as it gives you a view of what you can’t normally see from a camera. More specifically what/ who is behind the camera. Then for the second image, I find it to be very controversial which is what I really like about the image. Since it almost creates multiple scenarios of what is actually going on in the picture depending on who looks at the image. 

[harry-mortlock]

Group Project: Second shoot

Completed our second shoot for the group project and sadly I don't think it went as well as our original shoot. First of all, I would like to add that not all is bad since we did get to have our actual actress within the image which is a good representation of how we want her to look. However, as I said I am not too keen on what we had produced. As a group, we decided to shoot the image in one of the studios at the university since we would then have all the ProPhoto kit at our disposal. Because of this, we had a black background rather than the previous white wall we had in the last image. Although it did add the pipes positioned on the right-hand side of the image, which gave an interesting touch.  We were unable to actually hang the mirror on the wall, as you can see we used string to tie it up onto the wall, this was not ideal as it left the string exposed but of course, this can be edited out in the post-production. once again the image that I have enlarged is still in its raw form but I still think that when it comes to the positioning of the subject this is the most successful. This is because the gaze of both characters crosses which creates a real sense of tension in the scene.

I definitely think that the last location worked a lot better since there was more going on in the background within the reflection of the mirror and again with the last shoot the mirror does not fit the location and will have to be changed.

Hopefully, we can get together again soon to talk as a group on how we can improve the image further.

[harry-mortlock]

Lighting Tutorial:

For our practical lesson, we were each given a portable lighting kit and we had two first off recreate the top image which was done by using balancing daylight with flash. We were told to get the correct exposure for the background and then work our way forward to the foreground. 

The second image is our recreation which I think went very well as we have Miro as our subject who is perfectly lit.

The final image is our other task which was to balance flash with ambient light. As you can see we used the strip lighting bar on the top right-hand side of the image. I thought this was much easier than balancing flash with daylight as it was always the same amount of light whereas with the daylight it would change when the clouds moved and overlapping the sun.

[harry-mortlock]

Studio Induction:

For our studio induction, we had Chris one of the studio technicians come in and show us how to use all of the ProPhot kits. After this, we went straight into practising how to use them by taking five portraits on polaroids. We used different backgrounds and changed the positions of both the lights and the subject in all of our images. Above you will see each image we had taken along with some information about the setting we shot at and also a top-down view of our set up for each image.  

[harry-mortlock]

Word link exercise:

For our first session back after Christmas, we were asked to get into groups and complete a word link exercise. Each group were given 4 words and with this, we had to represent them through an image. Our words were: Search, glare, observe and survey.

Search - For our first image, we had anna stand down one side of the library and got her to search for a book that Denise had spotted earlier. Since Anna was actually looking for a real book rather than just pretending, it allowed for a more realistic image.

Glare - For this photo we had miro stand behind the row of bookshelf's next to me. We had then got him to look through the gaps of the books to ‘glare’ at me.

Observe - We have Denise ‘observing’ the fight which is taking place at her feet between myself and Miro. We had Denise to put her hands in her pockets to really emphasise that she was not getting involved with the altercation and was purely there just to watch.

Survey - In this image, we have Elsa and me in the frame. You can see that whilst I am stood up reading a book, Elsa surveys my shoe as it seems to be of great interest to her.

Bonus image - Since we completed this task quite quickly we decided to create a picture which includes all of our words. We can see that Denise is glaring at the book, whilst I am observing what she is doing, Miro is searching through my bag all whilst the camera/ the viewer is Surveying the scene.

Overall I thought this was a really interesting task as it got us all used to tell a story through a single image which is good practice for our group project.