composite imagery

photographer studied: Steve Irwin

Steve Irwin is a Film maker and photographer, based in Cardiff, South Wales. "Steve's work looks at the tension and coexistence of nature and the man made." his photography is often described as surreal, dream like and contemplative. his work references early 17th century compositions that consist of decaying objects. He takes iconic buildings and skylines and creates abstract scenes. his work explores how climate change affects large cities. He layers rust and other forms of decay over the city scape images and this could be to show that even brick and metal wont last forever. 

He uses both digital techniques and analogue when creating his artwork. he uses things such as scratched negatives and chemical staining and also digital layering and blending.

Health and safety practices in ICT:

chair: adjust your chair to a position that allows your arm to be parallel with the floor when you type. adjust the angle and height of your backrest to support your lower back. adjust the tilt so that your body in inclined slightly forward this encourages you to sit upright and keep your back straight.

Keyboard: adjust your keyboard so that your desk supports your wrist and forearms and the angle feels comfortable during use. position your keyboard so that you don't have to over reach to use it. don't place documents between you and the keyboard.

Screen: adjust your screen so that you eyes look down on it slightly. adjust the viewing angle to minimise reflections and glare.

trailing wires, electricity and lighting: watch for wires that could potentially cause a trip hazard or cause your equipment to be pulled off the desk. keep food and drink away from computers. 

Breaks: a 5-10 minute break every hour should be taken away from the computer. after a prolonged period of typing you should stretch to air blood flow and help breakup the effect of static posture.

My personal response to Steve Irwin:

To begin, i opened a new document in adobe word. i then opened my landscape document and scaled in correctly. 

I duplicated the image that i had placed to create a new layer i then hid the original photo and turned the duplicated one to black and white and adjusted the colour settings and levels this was to adjust the tonal qualities in my image.

I then duplicated the black and white layer to create another new layer, with this layer i then inverted the image.

- ADD INVERTED IMAGE

Once i created the inverted image i applied a layer mode, this is used to blend layer information together. this one below is called 'hard light and has left the sky from the black and white layer, i turned my colour layer back on and this has caused it to bring parts of the colour through the image.i tried a few differed layer modes before i found the one i liked best.

This (below) is the filter i decided to use for my recreation. i really like how it kept the clouds dark and only brought some of the colour through on the buildings.

i then used the magic wand tool to trace around the sky and make it lighter. this is so that it isn't the most dominant part of the image. 

I then opened a textured layer (rust) and copied it to my composite.

once i copied this layer over i added a layer mode to it.

i then adjusted the brightness and contrast levels and the opacity just to bring the image below out a little more. i then duplicated the textured layer and flipped it horizontally and vertically so that the two layers join.

after adding the duplicated layer and flipping.

i then opened another textured layer and used the colour range tool to select the dark brown tone. i then copied and pasted this onto my image.

finally i added a layer mask to add a circle to the textured later and the coloured buildings, i deleted 2 of the layers from the circle so only 2 layers are left. and this is my final outcome.



Comparison:




I personally think i have developed a good understanding of composite imagery and created a good image. i have noticed that Steven makes the textured layers the most prominent part of the image and makes them quite harsh and dominant in the image, whereas with mine it is more dominant on one side rather than across the whole image. i have however created a good effect with the textures over my image and used darker and lighter textures. i also left some texture inside the circle i created whereas Steven has completely got rid of all texture and just left the original image with a layer mode.

strengths and weaknesses:
i personally think that a strength in my image is that it is visually effective, overall it turned out really well, i think i got the textures right and also the layer modes on the textures, however next time i may experiment more with the inverted layer and more of the modes on that. i also would play about more where my circle was placed as i didn't really do that.

Image trace - illustrator

Image Trace - Illustrator technical notes

to create an image traced photo on illustrator you first have to open your image file, you have to then select the image using the selection tool. 

to open the image trace palate you go (window-image trace) this will then open a drop down menu which allows you to view different versions or combinations of image trace such as the tracing result, the outlines of the tracing result or the source image, the one i used was 'tracing result' you can then change the tracing modes which changes the colours of your image trace you can choose colour, black and white or greyscale, i selected 'colour'. The next step is where you select the palette you can choose from automatic, limited or full range of tones; i used 'full tone'. You can then choose how many colours you want the image to trace, the higher the slider the more blocks of colour that will be traced, when i did this i used around 10-15 colours as i wanted it to be quite blocky. 

You can then choose to use the advance settings such as 'paths' - this determines how many anchor points are used to create more detailed shapes, to create my image trace i used much lower paths.

another tool i used in advanced settings was corners i used a low setting for corners because it makes the outlines on the trace much smoother. You then have to turn the noise higher as this makes the trace shapes a lot more simple, change the method to overlap rather than abutting because we want the shapes to overlap as abutted shapes can leave gaps between them. the final thing that needs to be done is de-select snap curves to lines this will stop the image trace from trying to find and follow straight lines which is better for text not image. you then click the trace button and then click expand in the control bar at the top of the window.

once you have got to this stage and have a traced image you have a group of vector shapes which you can see behind the blue lines, i selected the image with the selection tool, you can then use the live paint bucket tool to drop fill areas with blocks of colour.  like the image below.

this is the result once the image trace was de-selected and you are just left with the blocks of colour in the different vector shapes.

i then filled in to some of the darker areas with a darker shade of pink to add tone to the image to make it clear that it was still a face.

i also did it with this image, i used different tones of blues to create a live paint bucket image that still kept the different tones that were left from the image trace.

this is another way to use use the image trace, rather than fill the image using the live paint bucket tool i have instead used a background behind the image and then deleted sections of the image to show the background through.

Another image trace tool you can use is clipping masks, this is how you create them:

i selected the image trace result then ungrouped the selection then i selected the multiple shapes i wanted to use and turned the multiple shapes into a compound path to make my clipping mask and inserted the image behind. 

 i then select both the compound path and the image and create the clipping mask, i had to do this multiple times because i wanted lots of specific parts of the image to contain the pattern.
this is how you create the clipping mask (object)>(clipping mask)>(make)

This is what my image for the clipping mask looks like, i used a pattern behind the image as i think this looks more interesting and relates better to Stefan Sagmeisters work.

studio lighting - portraiture

when working in the studio you need to use a specific set of equipment to guarantee the best quality photos.

the equipment is you need to have is:
x2 flash heads
x2 reflective heads
x2 power leads
x1 reflective umbrella
x2 defusive umbrella
x2 protective caps
x2 light stands
ring flash bulb
modeling lamp
light adjustment dials
trigger receiver
light metre

each of these items do different things to help you get the best out of your shoot:
snoot: highlights the back of the hair.
reflective hood: bounces light off
umbrellas: black reflective
barn doors: letter box style lighting - direct light
reflectors: gold/silver/warm light
soft box: passes light through diffuses the light/shadows - not harsh

shutter speed should be set at around 1/60

Health and Safety:
make sure all leads are covered so that there are no tripping hazards when walking around the studio area.
make sure the protective cap is removed from the lights before they are turned on to prevent melting and smoke.
make sure the lighting stand is at an appropriate level is stable and not to high to make sure it doesn't fall over.
if you change the soft box or snoot, be very careful as the lights get hot and can burn.