portfolio; photo genres

Composite Images

Composite Images ( & making )

What is Photoshop?

Photoshop is an image editing software often used to manipulate images to a determinable extent.

Examples of its use consist of;

Colour Balance

Contrast

Cropping

Retouching

Airbrushing

Compositing

Arguably Photoshop can be used in a similar way to Dark room processing of prints.  The artist can however manipulate images far beyond the capabilities of conventional dark room techniques. 

What is Digital Composite?

Digital Compositing is the process of digitally assembling multiple images to create a final image.

In its simple form it's similar to photo montages, which artists like Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann use. 

Dadaist Composite Examples;

Hannah Hoch

Raoul Hausmann - Der Kunstkritiker

Which ways can images be edited and manipulated for composite Images?

Using;

Layers

Brightness

Saturation

Muted Colours

The Ethics of Manipulating Images ( e.g. in Journalism )

"Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images' content and context," according to the ethics code for the National Press Photographers Association, a professional society. "Do not manipulate images ... in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects."

Digital Editing

Is Photo-Manipulation New?

Jerry Uelsmann

Denotations

In the image we see a shadow boy standing in the ocean, sprouting a small pair of wings from his back. The image is a physical, monochrome photographic print, where Uelsmann has used composite image editing to create the image. He has complied the images of; a shadowy child, a pair of birds wings, an image of the ocean with a moody sky and a few seagulls. He has also used a shadowy vignette to draw the eye to look at the the boy in the middle, along with the reflection in the water which leads directly to the boy, and the dark broody clouds, which dissipate around the boy. 

Connotations

The image has multiple religious and cultural allusions and references, for example; the boy with the wings can link to the angels from Judaism, Christianity and Islam as they are often described as humanoid creatures with wings and servants of Allah, or God. The boy also links to old Greek God and Mythology relating to Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun and died, and whose father created the labyrinth containing the minotaur under the Court of King Minos. The water also symbolises rebirth; as water is where we, supposedly, came from originally, but also as water is essential to all life.

Artistic Research

MC Escher

Mc Escher ( Maurits Cornelis Escher ), born the 17th of June 1898 - March 1972, was a Dutch graphic design artist who used wood cuts and math to meticulously create woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints, using the theory and practical use of Tessellation. He was ignored in the artistic sphere, even in his home country of the Netherlands, he only got an exhibition at the age of 70. He specialised in surrealistic arts, and his works has become apart of pop fiction and numerical thereoms, for example his piece The Impossible Triangle , as seen below.

Kazuhiko kawahara

Image Bank

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

My idea for composite image editing was to play with a rotated, reflected or kaleidoscope effect; in what is in similar to the stylings and ideas of MC Esher, Alvin Coburn and Kazuhiko.

This counts as a composite image because, theres multiple images pasted ( rotated and inverted ) onto one project in photoshop.

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

This process is as follows;

- Edit the initial image ( B+W while playing with bright, contrast and curves).
- create a new project
- Then use Command+R to bring up measurements add drag a measurement line into halfway in between the vertical and horizon points.
- After that, paste 4 copies of your original edit into the new project, then by right clicking rotate, transform, flip and invert the image into the 4 quadrants, as so it is all symmetrical.
- then remove the measurement lines and shift each quadrants layer until the image is completely symmetrical and there are no gaps.
 - Finally crop the edges and save.

Therefore, the images came out looking very hectic bur controlled, and refined as to not show any white parts.

For all the images i used a 3300D camera with a high contrast setting.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

Example Try;

Results;