Experimental

My Civilization

City in fire

People

Melting crowd

Formby in Impressionist Painters’ Eyes

Hypothetical brief

For this assignment I have come up with a hypothetical brief in which I am submitting 10 photographs for a local competition run by the Liverpool city council. The competition is entitled Formby in Impressionist Painters’ Eyes. The images will be printed and displayed in a Liverpool gallery. Participants of the competition are allowed to use digital imaging software in order to produce relevant effect. They are also expected to portray any element of the Formby area as long as all the images will have a common theme.

Aims and objectives

Following the brief specifications, I decided to focus my attention (and camera) on one of the most prominent features in the area in question, i.e. Formby’s beach. The aim of this assignment is to create 10 images which capture wild nature of Formby’s beach, which is conspicuous in mosaic of golden sand, dramatic sea views, coastal bushes, etc.

Planning

In preparation for the trip to Formby, the following aspects had to be taken into consideration and planned:

- camera with high resolution matrix – this was useful in landscape photography because large format images allowed me to accurately portray the views.

- lens (35mm, prime lens, bright) – I chose this particular lens for several reasons: (a) thanks to the aperture of the lens (and its brightness), I was able to use high F value (aperture size) (in this case it was 11). I chose this type of lens as the objects I was aiming to photograph were close to me. Also, I didn't want zooming to distort the natural balance of the images.

 - tripod – although the weather forecast anticipated a sunny day, I took my tripod anyway in case the lighting became a challenge (e.g. cloudy sky), which could have forced me to use lower F value. If I had to use wide aperture, I wouldn't be able to achieve favourable depth of field.

 -  lens hood – it was to ensure that in case of a very sunny day, my images aren't overexposed as a result of direct sunlight.

- extra batteries and spare memory card – these were just in case I took more images than expected

- clothing (raincoat), food, drink, mobile phone, watch, maps, money, printed weather reports

Research

I conducted preliminary research on Formby beaches and came across a lot of useful information on the National Trust website (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/formby/), which included some information about the area, as in the following:

This is one of the newer counties carved out of Lancashire and Cheshire and centred on the city of Liverpool. It covers part of the Wirral peninsula with the once-great shipyards of Birkenhead (previously Cheshire) and stretches up the (Lancashire) coast to reach beyond Southport. The county is split in two by the River Mersey under which there is a tunnel and on which there are ferries between Liverpool and Birkenhead. Lying between Liverpool and Southport is Formby with its sandy beach backed by dunes and woodland.

I also found several photographers’ images which I wanted to use as a source of inspiration for my images.

The photographers include the following:

Andrew Stannard

Ron Davies

Peter Heyes

The results of the research was my discovery of certain trends and tendencies spotted in the above three photographers’ work. First is the amount of the sky and the sand in the image. It looks like most of the photographers clearly focused on portraying either or both elements in their photos. This seems to have ensured a sense of vast, unrestricted space, which contributed to the dramatic effect of the images. The colours in the images of those photographers are extremely vivid and of high contrast, which adds a certain quality of movement, for example, the grass on the dunes creates an impression of swaying in the wind. Moreover, the composition of the photographs relies on a sense of balance, as most of the images seem to cover the same proportion of sky, sand and dunes. These help to capture the sight of the viewer, who can slowly explore the image by clear lines delineated by the balanced composition. Finally, reflections in the images contribute to the overall glamour of the landscape.

Evaluation

The result of the trip to Formby is 10 digitally processed images (see below). In terms of their evaluation, the composition is similar to those photographs which I identified as a result of my research. In other words, I tried to keep the following elements in my images: sand, water, sky and plants. As the images below demonstrate, in some cases I decided to prioritise some elements of the composition to achieve a given effect. For example, image 2 shows the beach in the foreground, while the sea and the sky occupy the background. The aim of this was to emphasise the trail left by a quad (used by maritime police), which allowed me to establish the point of departure for the viewer. This was based on an assumption that the trail will ‘draw’ the viewer into the picture and keep him/her focused on exploring the rest of it. The same use of composition lines are seen in other images. Image 8 portrays a fence which keeps the viewer examining the picture. The similar effect is achieved by path in image 9 and 10.

As far as technique is concerned, I used almost all the equipment I brought with myself, except for the tripod, as the weather turned out to be sunny. I used F 11 value for the aperture size, which was the same for all the images. The reason I used the same F value consistently is that I wanted to make sure that the depth of field is identical in all the images, especially that the ten images were to be used as an album. When shooting the pictures, I tried to keep all the objects photographed from the human eyesight point of view. I didn't experiment with shooting from the above or below, simply because I wanted to show the landscape as viewed by a human being (artist in this case).

Because the images were supposed to have impressionist-like quality, I used Photoshop to process them after the shooting period. One of the Photoshop features I used is brightness and contrast. These enabled to use HDR and increase the dramatic effect of the image. This is especially visible in image 6, where the sky and the beach are dimmer and darker than the dunes. As a result, it looks like the dunes are sunlit, while the other parts of the landscape are dark due to coming clouds (and potentially violent storm). The most prominent Photoshop technique is an ‘oil paint’ filter. Thanks to this I was able to convert the images into paint-like pictures, which was very important because of the brief, which asked the participants of the contest to create impressionist-like images. The filter I used created an effect of subtle brush strokes, which is one of the most typical features identifiable in impressionist paintings.

Finally, the ten images are bound by one common theme and underlying message: however hard we try to portray nature in photography, it will always remain undiscovered to some extent. For example, the presence of dunes, which in a sense obscure one’s view, is to symbolise an obstacle in grasping nature’s full picture. Even if a person went over the dunes, they would still be able to see as far as another obstacle on the horizon.

In my opinion, this project was mostly successful because I was able to produce images in line with the requirements of the hypothetical brief. I succeeded in selecting proper equipment and relevant software to add impressionistic quality to my images. Regarding areas for improvement, I should have paid more attention to light, which turned out to be brighter than expected. As a result, the choice of ISO (320) seemed slightly inadequate, as 50 would have sufficed, given the sunny weather on that day. At the same time, some of the images wouldn't have been spoiled by occasionally visible ‘noise’. However, overall I believe I used my skills learnt during the course appropriately, which resulted in good-quality images.

 image 1

 image 2

 image 3

 image 4

 image 5

 image 6

 image 7

 image 8

 image 9

image 10

Experimental - flowers part 2

For this assignment (experimental flowers part 1 and 2) I was inspired by a well-known watercolour painter, Ann Blockley (http://www.annblockley.com/), who presents in her book ‘Experimental Flowers in Watercolour’ flowers through a variety of interpretations, from traditional to unconventional in both technique and concept. She is well-known for dramatic painting of seedheads, foliage, fruit and berries in winter, as well as the more traditional flowers and blossoms.

http://www.annblockley.com/artwork.htm

The second artist I was inspired by is Shirley Trevena (http://www.shirleytrevena.com/), who explores the boundaries of watercolour and is regarded as one of Britain's most innovative artists in that sense. Shirley goes against the conventional rules of watercolour in many different ways: through her compositions, strange perspectives, fascinating textures and, above all, the strength and vibrancy of her colour combinations.

http://www.shirleytrevena.com/gallery/?album=4&gallery=29

I found several images in book written by Jean Haines' Watercolour Passion,  some students work from University of Auckland from New Zealand and Jo Casson work I used them as a source of inspiration for my images.

http://flickrhivemind.net/User/Jo%20Casson/Interesting

http://www.jeanhaines.com/gallery

Student's work from University of Auckland (New Zealand)

All water-colourist artists encourage me to experiment with my photographs and produce challenging and exciting pieces of my work. They inspired me to look into, develop and eventually create my own style. My target was to combine oil paint style with photographs to achieve the abstract. I would like to show how we can combine digital montage techniques with mixed media equipment only to create art paint work.

Colour was one of the most important subjects for the painter and I find it as well fascinating, but also at times challenging.

I started with my own images of flowers which I used as a point of departure. The images I chose for the project displayed clear shapes of flowers to make sure that my composition is strong and that despite the abstract nature of the photographs, the viewer can quickly identify their theme.

I mixed colours, textures in unusual ways to achieve interesting atmosphere, which is different in every picture. By mixing colours, I achieved an effect similar to what was painted by the three artists mentioned above. In other words, the image received a quality of painting. This quality was also ensured by vibrant and vivid colours, which appeared in the images thanks to using textures by applying layers in Photoshop.

When placing individual layers on my images, I played with opacity level. This allowed me to modify an extent to which some layers (or their parts) were more visible than others. This is how I used colours in an innovative way, that is by making some of the colours stronger and others more faded. By doing this, the viewer has a chance to look at the images from a new perspective, determined by his/her fondness to particular types of colours and their intensity.

I also combined manipulating opacity levels with other textures, e.g. fingerprint, sponge, broken glass and water splash texture. By resizing the area of the texture, I was able to achieve an effect of paint drops and brush strokes, in a similar way that is done by such artists as Shirley Trevena. 

Another technique of my choice was painting with the mixer brush (wet and dry) to blend colours. Similarly to other techniques, this one contributed to the effect of brush painting and brush strokes. As a result, the images can be seen as a sort of hybrid between painting and digital image. At the same time, the colour level feature in Photoshop allowed me to experiment with the depth and intensity of colours and to choose the ones which I thought will be captivating for the viewer. This is mainly achieved by adding to ‘surreal’ quality of the images.

To sum up, my aim was to create effects which cannot be achieved by shooting a picture only. By applying Photoshop to digital images, I think I was able to create unique pictures which benefit from opportunities given by digital processing. The effect of surreal conception is visible mainly through strong composition, vibrancy of colour and texture surreal effect.

My images