Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Portraits from South Africa

Whilst in Cape Town I wanted to capture striking portraits of the locals with the use of my 35mm film SLR camera, therefore I dedicated this camera to capturing only portraits using a prime 90mm portrait lens and photographing on Black and White film (Ilford FP4 125)

Black and White imagery can evoke more emotion due to the viewer not being distracted from colour but just to the simple compositional values and sharp focus on the subject matter . . . however this being an experimental brief I have taken steps within a majority of my black and white portraits to incorporate colour via layering textures to see if this opinion can be argued.

This is my Contact Sheet of the Portraits of People I Photographed in South Africa, created via scanning the original negatives.

This is the original scanned image direct from the negative

Edited Image via Lightroom

Texture applied via Photoshop

Experimental Digital Imagery using Layered Textures

Originality

FAILURE is seen as a 'lack of achievement' however through failure comes SUCCESS

"LEARN from your mistakes and PUSH BOUNDARY LIMITS"

Before combining two of my own photographs I have decided to experiment with layering textures over a variety of both my South African images and my recent images taken from the shoreline of Liverpool at Crosby Beach.

All textures used have been sourced from the web, in particular from these two sites who offer free usage of textures :-)

http://best-textures.deviantart.com/

http://punk-rose.com/freebies/textures/

Further Inspiration via Email

Since the beginning of the BA (Hons) Course I have signed up to many artistic email newsletters.

The newsletters have aided my knowledge immensely into other contemporary photographic artists and given me a great source of inspiration into different styles and approaches in regards to photographic media production and workflow.

Below are the logo's from my favourite web locations to which continue to provide me excellent references for inspiration:

Photography Art Cafe

Luminous-Lint - for collectors and connoisseurs of fine photography

thephotographybiz.com

tips, tricks, tutorials, comment and insight on the business of photography

Yesterday I received a email from Link to The D-Photo

Titled: Surreal photography by ƒenk

The above images from the artist who goes by the name of fenk (who's real name has not been disclosed on his/her flickr account) http://www.flickr.com/photos/fenk/ have inspired me to experiment with combining both my seascapes from South Africa with my recent seascapes from Crosby Beach to hopefully re-invent imagery from two completely contrasting area's of the World.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Digital Photography at Crosby Beach

The major advantage with using Digital Photography is the speed in which you are able to view your recorded image. It is therefore advantageous to use your DSLR as a light metering tool to capture a correctly exposed image before photographing using film. In this sense you can be extra confident that you are exposing the film correctly and also have the advantage of playing around with compositional elements before committing to your final film shot.

I used this method before taking my Seascape views on the 5 x 4 camera.

http://joannestudholme-bahons.blogspot.com/2011/12/large-format-at-crosby-beach.html

Just a shame that the 60mph winds caused havoc in regards to the tripod staying steady on the uneven ground of the beach; however I did manage to capture 1 focussed image on my 2nd attempt.

Due to the day not being the most sensible of days to take large format photographs, I also ensured that I captured different Seascape photographs with my Canon 50D, to which I hope to later use and be experimental with by combining them with my previous Digital imagery from South Africa . . . to create contrasting effects.

Below are example's of photographs I have done my usual basic editing too them within Lightroom and after my exploration edits using Photoshop