Edges
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In this project I looked at edges in photography, the
inspiration for this came from Jed Devine who also uses edges in his
photography. Every photo taken in this project used different pieces of the environment
to cover up certain parts of the image and make the rest of the image stand
out, nearly all of the photos taken have part of the image that is focused on
the subject matter that covers up some of the background, or where the depth of
field is adjusted to then leave the subject matter out of focus while making
the background very detailed and refined. I decided to take my photos in a
forest/woodland area as there a various types of trees and other environmental objects
and structures that could be used that has a lot of detail and texture that
could reflect the background also, such as the lines and tone of the bark on a
tree being similar to the layers of leaves and faint pathways on that you could
see within the background. The way that the camera was positioned was key for
the theme of edges, as showing a decent amount of the background needed so the
camera is not covered up to much by the subject matter or have barely any
subject matter in it at all as it would not meet my criteria of being able to
show enough detail and texture for both the subject matter and the background.
When taking lighting into account within my photos I tried to make sure that
the lighting was on the darker textures on some of my subject matter so I could
get a better look at the detail in the photo, while still keeping an even
amount of lighting between the subject matter and the background as I wanted it
to be as abstract as I could and also wanted the lighting to be even enough for
editing in the future. One more thing I look at while taking these photos is
what the background actually contained, as in some of my images there are
simple backgrounds that contained a few leaves and some grass, while I also had
a few that were much more complex and had branches layering over one another,
multiple shades of leaves and grass, this was how I ranged my images so that
some images had a similar subject matter texture and background texture while
some had a much larger range in how they appeared so there where very smooth and
simple subject matters with complex backgrounds or simple backgrounds with very
high level of complexity in detail on the subject matter.
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Edits
When editing my photos I looked to explore the colour in each
image and how I could refine the edge’s within each image and how I could make
them stand out, to do this I would get the image up on Photoshop and I would
select the part of the image that contained either the background or the subject
matter of the image. With this area of the image selected I would turn up the
contrast on the area of the photo that was in focus, this area of the image is
the part I want to stand out the most and make really eye catching, so using
the contrast slider I was able to make the texture and detail within the
background or subject matter to expose these parts of the image, however not to
much as I did not want to make the image non abstract nor did I want to put so
much contrast in the subject matter/ background that the texture and detail
would not be visible enough. Once I had edited the side of the photo that was
in focus I would turn to the other part of the image that was not in focus and
tweak with it a bit, because I wanted the non-focused part of the image to be
the blurred out however I wanted the viewer of the image to still be able to
tell what that part of the image was, so tweaking the image with a few tools
was used so that that part of the images seemed to be a bit more in focus, but
only just enough to be able to tell what the image was. After this I would then
focus on colour, I would test each image and see whether I can turn up the
saturation a bit without posturizing the image nor making the image non-abstract
to make the image seem natural.
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Mixed Media
Finally for my mixed media I looked at pushing the limits of
being abstract, I overdid as much colour as I could ant made the edges within
my work stand out as much as I possible could, this was the part where I just
went out and only focus on the colours and edges, this combination was done so
it could be as eye catching as possible with the only limit being the viewer is
still able to tell what the image is of, the steps I took for this starts of
similar to how I performed the abstract edits, first I went through the image
and selected either the background or the subject matter depending on which one
my camera was focused on, then I would take that part of the image and turn up
the contrast as much as I could before u the image started to get to dark so I could
make the texture and colours stand out, then I would turn up the saturation to
a decent amount where I would then change the hue of the subject matter or
background a bit to a different colour that would stand out against its opposite
(background/ subject matter) doing once the focused part of the image was done I
would switch to the other part of the image where I would then start to blur it
out a bit, I did this because I wanted to make the main focused image the main
part of the image, by doing this also, it would make the edge between the
background and the subject matter very refined, and finally once I have made
the edge stand out, I would a little bit more hue to the parts of the image I felt
where too dull or did not make the edge stand out enough and add patterns on
top of a certain part of the image to add a bit more texture to the image where
needed.
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