Exhibition Review

Exhibition Review

The Exhibition was on Wednesday 10th December and it was held at UCLan University in central lancashire. It was held by a group of Preston's College Photography Students that are eager to impress their newly developed skills in the photography world. The Exhibition was called 'Perspectives', this is because every photographer in the group had a different image, a different idea in mind when taking photos. There was roughly 25 students who participated in the show. In the show, the photos were hung in a room about head height and there was no visually similar images placed next to each other. The images weren't placed in groups because the whole idea of the name 'Perspectives' was that every photo was different.
      People would agree that the artwork was brilliant, but only a few were outstanding. I would argue that the best painting was the one below. This is because the emotion that has gone into the thought of the picture. A lot of the photos were done with colour, however its good that the fact that this one is black and white because it makes the facial details stand out with more emotion in the photo.
     The Theme in the exhibition was Perspectives which gives the idea that everybody's photo was meant to be different in their own creative, distinctive way. Compared to other exhibitions I've seen, i would argue that the is one of the best. This is due to the fact of the theme and the work and effort that has clearly gone into the show. The artist that created this photo drew my attention straight away to this photo. This was because it showed more emotion that the other photos. A lot of the photos had no expression to the models face. A few of the pictures the model was dressed up in different clothes, but with less emotion than this photo.
Aswell as my favorite one, there was a couple of other photos that stood out to me from the start and caught my eye. You could argue that the most unique photos were the ones with the coloured backgrounds. This is because they are the first pictures that catch your eye when you walk in the room. A couple had Orange backgrounds which looks effective and gave it a summer effect. The model in front of the orange photo was wearing sunglasses and shorts which made gave the picture a hot summer look. Another effect which looked professionally unique was a a sky blue background tone. The model in the blue background was wearing a coat which gave it a cold, wintery look. By having completely different photos it explains the exhibition name 'perspectives'.

    

Exhibition

Exhibition

This was my final image that I took for the exhibition. This was the image before it had been photoshopped. As you can see, the position of the face in the portrait is perfect as it is central. However the lighting on her facial details is overexposed so that needed correcting before it becoming the final edit. You may not be able to see from this photo, but the model had freckles. So by editing it in photoshop by using the spot removal tool, it got rid of 90% of her freckles.

This was my final image that I used for the exhibition. I found that a black and white effect looked better on the photo and I thought that it looked like she was showing more emotion than the original photo. The photo before edit was overexposed so I changed it a little to make it look even better.

Exhibition Photos

Adjustment Layers

LOTC

An adjustment layer is a tool that uses color and tonal adjustments to your image without changing the picture permanently. The color and tonal adjustments are kept in the adjustment layer. You can correct several layers by making just one change, rather than adjusting each layer separately. You can get rid of your changes and get back the original image at any time.

Evaluation

Evaluation

If I was to do Light Paintings, Scanograms and Projections again I would most certainly spend more time doing each task. I would take a variety of photos within each task to make sure I had a few different photos to experiment with. With only having 1 or 2 photos such as what I did, it limits you to what you can do with the photo. For example, if you were to take a dull photo with bad lighting and low exposure with the models hair cut out of the photo, correcting it on Photoshop would almost be an impossible task. However if you were to take a range of photos, then you can mix around with them and see which photo comes out the best. I would say my strong point is light paintings. This is because I have had experience in this area and I know how to make a light painting look effective. I would like to say another strong point is Scanograms. This is because I have done various images whilst I was working with my peers and found that imagination with the image on Photoshop can turn a very dull image, to a very detailed creative image within a couple of steps. My weak points are most likely Emulsion transfers. This is due to the fact that I haven't spent much time doing emulsion transfers as yet. However I plan on practicing it until I feel confident with my work.  

Scanograms

Scanograms

My First Step was to upload the Scanogram to Photoshop. When it first started off it didn't look effective, however i saw potential in the photo as I knew I could give it a unique style. The first thing i did was crop out the bottom bit of the picture so that there wasn't an empty space in the bottom of the picture.

The Second Step was to change the color of the scan. I opted to go for a black and white effect and i gave it a higher exposure to show the face details.

For the Next Step i used the 'Curves' tool which you could use to higher the light exposure or darken it within certain areas. By using darker areas on the face, it gave the scan a balance of high and low key lighting. Using this toll you can change the amount of light balance on the photo by dragging the line on the chart and bringing it to a curve. Hence the 'Curve tool'.

The final effect I made on the scan was to add a coloured effect to the photo. For a few minutes I experimented with different colours and effects. I found that by increasing the amount of red and green it gave it a gold effect which in essence made it look unique. By adding this look to the face, it highlighted some areas of the face and kept the outline details of the face darkened keeping the outline detail to a minimum, however giving the centre of the face a lift in detail which is which every bit of detail is taken into the picture.

Projections

Projections

The First thing i did was to pick a night image because i thought a shadow in front of a city life photo would look great. However after experimenting, I found that i was wrong. So i went back to finding an image that i thought would look creative on the background of my model. I picked an image of Big Ben with Westminster Abbey and a bus in the scene. I experimented with different standing positions and the most effective look was when the model held both of his arms up.

After i played around with this picture on Photoshop, i gave it a threshold look
which gave it an old fashioned effect which i quite liked. The threshold look darkened the picture, in essence giving more shadows to the picture. This meant that the details such as the models face and clothing wouldn't be seen. However having details in the background such as big ben, it made the picture look like it was from an old fashioned newspaper article or a photographers old sketchbook.

For these pictures I used an ISO of 100, and the cameras exposure was set to 1/4 and F4 to increase the time limit the shutter would be open for. By increasing the exposure to 1/4, it meant that I was letting more light into the shutter because the shutter would be open for longer.

 

For a darker picture and ISO of 300-500 and an a lower exposure of 1/15 would mean that the shutter would be open for a shorter amount of time, meaning that less light would be allowed into the shutter.