Composite Photographs

Composite Photographs

I thought I’d start this post with a quote from Tom Miles

“The cameras never lie, but us photographers are a bunch of lying bastards”

When I became aware of just how much composite photography is used especially in commercial photography I’ve started to agree even more with this quote. I really took it for granted just how much goes into a commercial image. I mean this take this Toyota advert on the left. There is no way that this is one image. When shown this I thought there are five different elements for this shot. I suspected that the elements were: The car, the background [bridge being editing in post], the people, the dog and the paper.

 

However upon further analysis and a talk there could be between 12 and 15 elements in this one image. They are as follows:

• The Background
• The Sky
• The faint fountain in the far distance
• The mountains just behind the bridge
• The bridge is either A.edited or B. faked with CGI. But cgi was definitely used.
• The car
• The dog.
• The person at the car
• The car on the bridge
• The people on the bridge
• The paper on the floor. There is probably multiple, at minimum two.

We also looked this Land Rover commercial. This one is most likely a Land Rover on a Jeti which would’ve been cut along said jeti. Then a photo would’ve been taken of the tug boat. This would most likely be our water. At the same time, the water could be provided by the image of the ship. So we’ve got three elements. The ropes would’ve been created in post so thats five elements. The clouds are probably separate so 6. Seagulls make it seven. Then finally on the middle right of the frame we can see a small town. This is very common in commercial car photography. This is to set a vague location which could be anywhere.

We also looked at this Range Rover commercial. This car was most definitely shot in a studio. The motion blur has clearly been applied to the entire road which would be much easier to achieve if there is no car in the shot. Very interestingly, this advert can be flipped. So it can be used in both left-hand and right-hand drive countries. This is another thing which I’ve taken for granted even since I started photography.

So back to the quote earlier. We are able to fool clients and viewers into believing that everything was shot in the same place.

Chris Frazer-Smith

We we’re lucky to also have a look at this Samsung Advert. Chris shot this advert we we’re given a chance to look at the .psd file for the final image. There were around 150 layers just for this one image. That was just image files. Thats not counting adjustment layers. Every single subject in front of the man on the sofa was shot individually with a Canon 5D Mk.iii the foreground character and background image was shot on a Phase One. I think that viewers will look at this image and not care about the fact that this would’ve taken weeks of planning and even longer shooting and composing. But they’ll praise the commercial for being catching and promoting the television. If this technique wasn’t used, maybe the commercial wouldn’t have been as good or eye-catching.

Next we went out and started shooting to create our own composite photograph. These are what I settled for.

Cutting out the seats was a very fun and tough experience. It took a bit of time to get my head around the pen tool but when I got my head around it, cutting out the object was pretty simple. I however had to avoid cutting the shadows out because they weren’t defined enough. So I had to fake the shadow.

I must admit I did get the perspective and scale slightly wrong but I feel I made a good start and I’m feeling more confident about my car comp project.

 

Mono Front Covers

Mono Front Covers

So far I have made 12 front covers for my Mono project. However I’m struggling to pick four to submit come March. So I’ve decided to assemble a questionnaire where I’m displaying all 12 covers, followed by a question of do you like ‘cover 12’ for example.

At the end I’m also asking which four would you pick if you were in my shoes.

London Field Trip & Somerset House

London Field Trip & Somerset House

On Friday, my class went up London to do some street photography and also to see an exhibition at Somerset House.

We started the day at the National Theatre. Where we had non-commcercial photography passes to take pictures from the balcony of the theatre. We were told this is something which isn’t permit with out authorisation from the theatre. This was a very nice view to shoot from, it was just a shame that there wasn’t many people around to take pictures of on the street.

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Rene Burri. 1960

Even though I wasn’t anywhere near to the correct position to replicate his work. I wanted to take aspects from Rene Burri’s iconic image of Sao Paulo. I really like street photographer who shoot downwards on there subject. There is this sense of power that the photographer has with his camera overlooking the world. This is what CCTV is essentially. I was hoping to replicate this for my street photography shoot I felt I could replicate the long shadows which could be created by the low sun on a morning. However it was overcast, so there was very little chance of replicating this.

After this we had just over 3 hours to shoot our chosen street photography theme. I decided to look for hats in London. The wide range of hats, baseball caps, beanies etc. I also wanted to document the colours of the hats. Do the hat match the clothes worn?.

Below are a few of the photos that I took on Friday. Link to the full album.

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After the shoot. We went to Somerset House. Where my class saw the North: Fashioning Identity exhibition.

Alice Hawkins. 2012

The exhibition is all about the North of England. However rather than trying to portray an agenda, it is showing the agendas that creatives have put out how they have identified the North of England which many photographers have taken very different approaches to tell the story of places like the Steel Capital. A very big example of this, which is in this exhibition is the work of John Bulmer.

John Bulmer. 1960s

John Bulmer is a British photographer who was commissioned by The Sunday Times to document the North of England. This was the first time that the North of England was documented in colour. It was considered criminal the North was only documented in B&W. This was done during the “colour explosion of the 1960s“. It was felt that B&W was best to represent the dark working class North, dark as the coal they mine I guess you could say. I however think the the muted colours that Bulmer used did really well in representing how the North of England. In my eyes it perfectly mirrors the emergence of the North more than a place of the working man. Leeds United were the envy of English football, Sheffield was a city on the move. It’s reputation was on the rise but there was uncertainty about this rise. In the end Leeds United would fall from grace and the Sheffield mines were shut down. I mirror this uncertainty with the muted colours.

Street Photography Ideas

Street Photography Ideas

I’ve been having a few more thoughts about my theme for tomorrows street photography shoot. I did have a think about getting pictures of people on there phones. Like the one on the left that I shot during my Foundation. However this could potentially be very repetitive. Getting people staring into there phones.

So I think I’m gonna try to focus on one particular colour, however I can’t narrow down to one colour until I arrive at Southbank. Maybe I could try to focus on types of clothes, people in suits, overcoats, jeans etc.

Decisions for Mono

Decisions for Mono

I’ve made a few more Mono layouts form the images I shot on Monday.

These are now the options I have:

The only sure selection

I really like this front cover. However there is a foot print on the backdrop both in the shadow and the light. Would take a significant amount of Photoshop to remove

Subject to a few tweaks to tagline

Really like this cover

If I had to pick four today, this would be my selection:

 

Really like this cover

The only sure selection

The Genius Of Photography

The Genius Of Photography

I’ve just watched episode 4 of 6 of BBC’s Genius Of Photography. This episode opens with British Photographer Martin Parr & American Photographer John Gossage who both make “very different kinds of pictures but a photographic journey, is at the heart of what the both do“ In this documentary they are both documenting the Mississippi Delta in Memphis. One of the most iconic cities in the South of America.

They were both attracted to photos and subjects that the average tourist wouldn’t be drawn to.

 

 

Whilst shooting inside the supermarket, Martin Parr said “I have a responsibility as a documentary photographer, to document the times that we live in.“. He followed this with the big thing about America is the big chain stores like Walmart. With American chain stores, you also have Black Friday. I’d take a guess the image on the right was taken during this occasion.

“My job is to document and if you take a great photo, that is a bonus”

The ultimate mission statement of a photographer was to see what the world looked like photographed. In America this was made possible by cars being aimed at the masses. You could drive California to New York.

One work that I’m aware of is of Robert Frank. He created the photo-book The Americans. “Few have been as influential as one taken by Robert Frank, it produced a book of photographs that laid bare the soul of 1950’s America“. Opinion on the book is widely divided for photographer it is incredibly influential. For some Americans it controversial and even considered racist today. The Guardian described the series as the “power of the photographer’s eye“.

He brought an outsiders perspective of post-war America. He started up north in New York and then traveled South down to South Carolina, Texas and then California. He didn’t hop from one place to another like Cartier-Bresson, instead he shot everywhere he went. He produced a photographic equivalent of the Great American Novel.

Americans felt that they we’re ambushed by work.

Mono Front-covers

Mono Front-covers

Below are a few front cover designs that I have made from my Mono shoot.

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I’m really pleased with this layout. I think this is one that I am definitely going to submit. I’d planned this shot since I had the formative assessment with Matt and Terry and I had in recent weeks decided to dismiss the idea as not being possible.

I thought it would be to hard to plunge the face into darkness and make the shadows clearly stand out in B&W. So I scrapped this idea because I wasn’t confident in syncing lights. However when the shoot started it was very easy to sync the lights.

The image is 100% what I wanted to achieve, I wanted the face to have a shadow all over it. However I’m very impressed with this image. It feels like he is holding the glasses forward to the viewer, saying these are the next big thing. Also the fact that there is light on his face, says he has got the sun in his eyes and he’s about to put his sunglasses on.

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This is another layout that I’m not sure about. The composition is near amount perfect. The only problem I’m having is the tagline “Glasses Define The Look” it seems to blend into the shadows, which is a shame because I really want to use this image as one of the covers.

I need to ask my tutor and ask if I could cut the line in half, to which the line and “Shady Deals” could be moved upwards to above the arm.

 

 

 

 

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This is another layout which I’m very impressed with. If I could shoot this image again. I would’ve got the sunglasses closer to Nathan, probably on his neck. Then I would’ve been able to put his head in the top right for a very tight crop. Maybe if I was shooting tethered, I would’ve used the live-view and I could’ve created this shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I was to pick four front covers now, I would pick these:

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Mono Shoot

Mono Shoot

Yesterday was my Mono shoot. In my opinion the shoot went very well I came out with a nice range of images.

It however did have a few problems. Firstly in the rush I forgot my sunglasses, luckily I live ten minutes away and my Dad was able to drive down and give them to me.

However during the shoot there was a potentially series technical problem.

Kareem who shoots with Nikon, decided to book out a Canon 5D Mk.iii from CLR, this was because we had already booked out a 50mm f1.2 and 24-70 f4, I also had my 70-200 f2.8 all L lenses. So we would get best images with a full frame camera. Kareem and Gabriella used it for there shoot. To which some of there images were glitched when they reached Capture One.

Julian felt that this was because the images were shot on the CLR’s memories cards however he wasn’t fully sure. So I felt I don’t want to risk it, so I shot on my Canon 70D.

Back with technical, getting the lights to sync was actually very easy.

Below are a few of the images that I liked from the shoot.

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After a quick glance, I’m very pleased with my images. I must admit that a fair amount of my images were from the waist upwards. But I think I’ve covered a nice range of poses.

I was very impressed and glad that I chose to use Nathan as my model. He was very helpful on set, whenever lights had to be moved or backdrops had to be changed, he was always asking if he we needed any help.

My best images from the shoot can be viewed in this Google Drive Folder.

The only problem was the fact that Nathan was 6’2. So I wasn’t holding up much hopes of shooting from a low angle like I originally intended. However when I asked Nathan to come down lower for some shots he was very understanding.

I’m currently in the process of choosing which images to use for my Mono cover. I like the one on the left. However I’m not sure about the Minimal cover lines, mainly “Glasses Define The Look”. The work ‘Glasses’ seem to be lost in the shadows. Which is a shame because the image is a very good composition with the Masthead.

Greenwich Street Photography Shoot

Greenwich Street Photography Shoot

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Last Thursday we learnt about Street Photography. It is something that I’ve always been interested in doing however I haven’t really known what I need to photograph. Do I do a Cartier-Bresson and look for the decisive moment where everything lines up.

 

 

Saul Leiter

Or do I do a Saul Leiter and look for colours.

 

 

 

 

We started by learning about some famous photographers who’s subject is the street, we learnt mainly about two photographers who were at very different ends of the scale as to how to shoot street photography.

Nick Turpin.

We first learnt about Nick Turpin who is most famous for his series “Through a glass darkly“. In this series he shot people through the windows of night buses that through Elephant & Castle. I’ve been a big fan of his work. This is how most people view Street Photography, you are hidden, your out of sight. Another series that Turpin does is London Bridge, where he essentially walks up and down London Bridge and takes

Nick Turpin

pictures of people who use the bridge. However there is still that feel that the subjects don’t know that he is there.

 

 

 

 

Bruce Gilden

On the other end of the scale there is Bruce Gilden. Gilden wants his subject to he is there, he wants the subject to know that images are being taken. He get’s in close to the subject.

He also shoots with flash to bring the face of the subject to life. Gilden’s techniques are very controversial and some people believe are misunderstood.

One result of his technique is when a woman was upset that the image was took, but Gilden explained that he found her beautiful in a unique way as a result, the street was turned into her unique walkway

He photographs “who he is“.

My friend said “It can’t be long till someone hits out at him” another friend replied “He probably already has“.

After this we set off for Greenwich where we we’re given two street photography tasks.

First we had to do normal street photography of people who use the streets. This meant taping my lens to 50mm and pre fixing my focus. This was very tough, I think this was made even tougher because I was shooting digital. I knew that I could very easily switch to auto-focus. If I did this on Film I would have no choice but to adapt. There were a few times where I reset my focus but I never used auto-focus for this task. This meant that a lot of images were soft, I think this was also because I was shooting on the move, rather than waiting for a shot to come to me.

For the 2nd task we had to show the background. We had to show Greenwich. I decided to go to the Trafalgar Tavern. I was hoping that people would be outside having a few drinks, maybe even having some fish and chips. I felt this would really work as a background for Greenwich. It is known for the Naval tradition [Cutty Sark, Naval College] so I decided for the Navy of the past. I think my images for task two were a lot stronger than the images for task one.

 

 

 

 

Below are a few more images from task two.

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On Friday I will be doing another street photography shoot around Southbank in London, to which I need to think of a theme for that shoot.

I think I want to do mine around colour. Want to look for people who have a red jacket or a white jumper etc. However I haven’t fully decided yet

Canon 50MM

Canon 50MM

I’ve just purchased a Canon EF 50MM STM F/1.8 lens. I was originally going to but he F/1.4 lens, however when speaking to Cody who owns both, he said there is very little difference between the two, it isn’t worth spending a further £250 for very little.