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Experimental Photography

Jonah Adshead

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Evaluate: ideas eg analysis, results; I feel as though I have realised my ideas well with this particular photomontage and that it works well. The strong structural lines throughout such as the metal girders and concrete pillars that do not quite line up as they should work well making the smaller images look mismatched as a montage- an effect I was trying to achieve. I tried to include my arm in the photograph, featuring parts of himself was something that Hockney, the artist to come up with this technique and a large influence of mine did often, but I don’t believe you can see it well enough. I would change this if to do it again and make the arm more of a feature of the image in some way.

Qualities:I think that overall my image is aesthetically pleasing and I am happy with the way it has turned out. The montage is made of a very large amount of photos and I believe this works well in this photograph and adds to the complex feel that all the different structural elements of the image give it. Without all the different mismatched alignments of the different photos this is a very busy scene and the addition of the montage effect works really well.Photographs I have looked at from the photographer Mon Quixote all have this very busy and interesting appearance. Quixote takes many images of the scene in front of him and often includes himself in the images, in his photograph titled “I Sometimes Pretend to be The Captain of the Starship” he is sat on the toilet and you can see his arms and legs. He employs a very interesting technique where he takes images for the right side of the photograph including his left hand and then swaps hands to take the photographs for the other side including his right arm. This is a very interesting effect and makes it look as though there is no camera and we are just seeing through the eyes of Quixote. I really like how much he gets his body in the photographs and I think that I would like to try and re-create this two handed technique in my own photographs.The choice to add a black and white effect came from me not wanting to overcomplicate the image with a very severe or surreal effect but the black and white helped to contrast between the different elements of the photograph and make them stand out. I think the weakest aesthetic element of my work is the arm not being fully in. It is there, but I couldn’t work out a way of rearranging the photos in a way that made it one of the main elements. I think if I could’ve done this the image would have been much better.

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When shooting the photographs for my photomontage I put the camera in full auto mode. This way the camera made slight variations in its settings from photo to photo and things such as the exposure would be different. I believe this made the images look better when put together as there would be slight mismatches in colour etc.When I put the images into Photoshop I used the automate feature and used the collage setting to get near the effect I wanted. I then resized and relocated some images to get the look I wanted.

I think that I could of improved my work by taking a few different selection of photographs of the same scene to use for different photomontages. I could've taken photos from different angles or moved around more when shooting to introduce more interesting juxtapositions of angles and vantage points in my photomontage.

I believe this image fits the theme of the urban environment well and displays an area I explored in my mind map that being the inside of buildings. The image is also experimental as the technique of photomontage is what I have used and is one I have developed and experimented with as I have gone along.

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Evaluate: ideas eg analysis, results; I think that I have produced a photograph that represents my initial idea for this piece well. I wanted to try a photomontage that was much simpler and included far less images than the one I took previously in college. This gives the finished photograph a more clean and refined look that I think works equally well. I like the way the arches in the photograph line up but because of the different angles and sizes of the images in a strange warped manner. I think this adds a surreal quality to the image that I really like.

Qualities:Overall I am pleased with the way this photograph looks. I think the surreal warped appearance I mentioned before is interesting and adds a quality to the image drawing the viewer in for a second glance. The photograph has quite nice warm tones of colour and I think this works well with the image and the setting of it, a park bench on a summers day has connotations of warmness and sun and so the colours compliment this. The repetition of the park benches at different angles and sizes is also interesting and adds to the surreal and strange appearance. This repetition is a feature found in many photomontages and is a technique that I really like. One artist; Kulka, uses it a lot in a series of images she took exploring the relationship between her and her mother. This repetition in her portraits is very striking and strange and one that I decided to try with my urban environment photographs.

Again I used full auto mode when taking the photographs as the small automatic changes the camera makes in settings from photo to photo make small variations between the different photos of the montage. In post-production I didn’t do much to the photographs other than put them together in the montage using the automate feature on Photoshop and then re-sizing, deleting or moving some of the photos where I saw appropriate until I was pleased with the appearance of the montage. I then changed the saturation of the photographs turning it up to give the photo a warm feel. I particularly like where the trees through the arch have gone very bright green and the warm pink colour some of the flagstones have gone.

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I think that by taking more than one set of photographs and having more than one set of images of one scene would have allowed me to compile multiple photomontages and choose the best one. I really like the one I have got but the clear space at the top right I wish I’d have had a photograph to fill with. If I had of I think the montage would have had more balance and been better.

I think that the image I have taken does reflect the theme of “urban environment” as the park I have taken photos of is in the town. The benches and arches are architectural elements I have explored to photograph and I believe they work well to suggest and remind the viewer of the theme I have chosen.

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Evaluate: ideas eg analysis, results; I think that I have represented my initial idea through this photograph well. With this photomontage I wanted to experiment with the different settings I could use and effects I could put on the image to try and gain a different, more surreal effect. I think the way I have played around with the threshold of the image has given it an interesting contrast with interesting shapes and lines created by different objects being highlighted more strongly. The harsh black and white colours are very interesting in this photograph.

Qualities:I am quite pleased with how this image looks. I think the more heavy manipulation in Photoshop post production has worked well with this image and given it a surreal and more striking appearance. The threshold works very well with this image I think as it has made the lines very definite and so things like the shadows stand out very well.I chose to again use full auto mode when taking these photographs because the camera automatically makes small changes to adapt to the scene from photo to photo and this makes for a more interesting effect when I compile these photos together in the final montage. In post production I put the photos together using Photoshop’s automate feature and then manually moved some photos, deleted some I didn’t feel needed to be there or changed the order of them so some sat above others. I then put the threshold effect on the image and played around with the setting there until I was satisfied with the outcome.The photomontages I looked at that I liked the most were the ones where the artist had included a part of themselves in the photograph. I think this addition gave a very interesting perspective to the photo and linked to the think Hockney said about his joiners “creating a narrative, as if the viewer moved through the room”. Because people including their own body parts in photographs had been done I tried to think of a different way I could include myself and so I decided to get my shadow in the photograph in order to capture a slightly different but still “Hockniesk”. I think that this worked very well and was an interesting angle on photomontages that I really liked.

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I also liked the panoramic style of this photograph. I have always liked panoramas and I think the sheer amount that they include within the frames makes for breath-taking photographs. I looked at a number of different artists that took panorama style photographs as photomontages and attempted to do the same type of thing with the long landscape photomontage I took. Although I did not take it from far away as panoramas usually are taken I think that I still included a lot in the photograph and there is a lot to take in. The threshold effect adds to the interesting appearance and I believe makes it look more interesting that the other panoramic photomontages I looked at by Reiven and other photographers.

As in the other photomontages I am pleased with the final image I got, but taking a few different shoots of the same scene, making a number of different montages and choosing the best one would have been good. Having different options is never a bad thing.

I also think if I would have taken the photographs from further down the road to the right the centre piece of my image would have been more interesting; there is a barn there and this could have been my photographs central focus rather than just the hedge and wall in front of me.

I think that my image does reflect the urban environment because although it does have a lot of nature in it there are many things that make you think of the city etc. such as the wall in front, the graffiti on the corrugated metal and I think the threshold effect itself has a very dark, dingy feel that reminds you of the city and the urban environment.