Photoshop practice......

Colour correcting.....


This is a really useful tool to learn. With it you are able to correct small parts of the image not just the whole thing.


looking at this image you can tell that it has a definite blue/pink colour cast so.. here is my attempt at correcting it .........


To start i added a layer mask to the image so i could easily chose the sections of the picture i needed to correct. I coloured in black the areas i has chosen. i could then use the curves tool to change the levels of colour in the picture, i can also do the same with the hue and saturation tool.

Vingetting 

This is a really clever tool and can be used to create nice effects on your images.

I again began with a layer mask, i then chose a custom shape and coloured black onto the mask to cut out the shape. i then used a fill colour for the back ground and used the opacity slider to change the transparency of the colour.

Layers.

I really like his technique, its also quite easy to create. Its made by beginning with a background of text that is copies in layers on top of each other i you then use the opacity slider to change the transparency of the text

Modern Photomontage...

Karen Knorr

Peter Kennard

Peter Kennard (born 17 February 1949^[1]) is a London born and based photomontage artist and senior tutor in photography at the Royal College of Art.^[2] Seeking to reflect his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he turned from painting to photomontage to better address his political views. He is best known for the images he created for theCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1970s-80s.

'Kennard and Picton-Phillips have taken the shot of the last Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair taking a photo of himself with a mobile phone camera - originally in front of a group of students - and set his smiling pose against a fiery backdrop of a burning oil field. 

The result is an arresting piece of art, a visual representation of anti-war sentiment taking the original innocence of a moment and ruthlessly subjugating it to question the reliability of media information and the portrayal of politicians and their celebrity amidst such incredible devastation. '

www.artrepublic.com

The impetus for this photomontage was the proposal to hone US nuclear cruise missiles in the East Anglian countryside. It was also a response to a Ministry of Defence leaflet, which portrayed the missiles in delicate watercolours as a harmonious part of the landscape. Here Peter Kennard combines two existing images to create a critical new meaning. He takes John Constable's painting The Hay Wain (1821), an idyllic depiction of the East Anglian countryside, and superimposes thrree nuclear warheads on the hay wagon. The subversion of a familiar icon of pastoral England achieves a chilling effect.

David Hockney

The "joiners"

David Hockney has also worked with photography, or, more precisely, photocollage. Using varying numbers of small Polaroid snaps or photolab-prints of a single subject Hockney arranged a patchwork to make a composite image. One of his first photomontages was of his mother. Because these photographs are taken from different perspectives and at slightly different times, the result is work that has an affinity with Cubism, which was one of Hockney's major aims—discussing the way human vision works. Some of these pieces are landscapes such as Pearblossom Highway #2,^[2][3] others being portraits, e.g. Kasmin 1982,^[4] and My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.^[5]

Hockney created these photomontage works mostly between 1970 and 1986. He referred to them as "joiners".^[6] He began this style of art by taking Polaroid photographs of one subject and arranging them into a grid layout. The subject would actually move while being photographed so that the piece would show the movements of the subject seen from the photographer's perspective. In later works Hockney changed his technique and moved the camera around the subject instead.

Hockney's creation of the "joiners" occurred accidentally. He noticed in the late sixties that photographers were using cameras with wide-angle lenses to take pictures. He did not like such photographs because they always came out somewhat distorted. He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. Upon looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative, as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to work more and more with photography after this discovery and even stopped painting for a period of time to exclusively pursue this new style of photography. Frustrated with the limitations of photography and its 'one eyed' approach,^[7] he later returned to painting.

Photoshop practice - "the pen tool "

This week we learnt about the 'pen tool'. This is a really useful tool to have. It makes it easy to create perfectly shaped curves and lines. I found the beginning few exercises quite easy and fun to do....then i got to the heart shape, this exercise very tricky i'm still working out how to do it.




I have been looing at some tutorials to help me perfect this technique...

Research :Photomontage.. (please begin at the bottom of the page and work up )

Mari Mahr

Mari Mahr, mid 1970s onwards

''Living in London after her family escaped from Budapest in 1972, Mahr seems to have begun making photomontages from the the mid 1970s onward (?). Her work contains themes of personal childhood identity and loss, and her personal experience of anti semitism in communist Hungary."

http://www.d-log.info/timeline/index.html

I think Mahr's work it really interesting and quite influential, the choice and composition of her images are very interesting and look almost like they could be used for a fairytale story or play.

John Heathfield

''John Heartfield was a German artist whose politically charged photomontages were banned in his home country during the Nazi regime.

Heartfield was born in 1891 as Helmut Herzfeld. He changed his name in part as a way to protest World War I; he even feigned madness to avoid returning to the service. During the Weimar period he became a member of the Berlin DADA group. He used his collage work as a political medium, incorporating images from the political journals of the day. He edited "Der DADA" and organized the First International DADA Fair in Berlin in 1920.

Sharply critical of the Weimar Republic, Heartfield’s work was banned during the Third Reich, then rediscovered in the Democratic Republic in the late 1950s. Since then, his art has influenced generations of artists and graphic designers.''

www.towson.edu/heartfield

El  Lissitzky

El Lissitzky ' The constructor' 1924 (above)

''El  Lissitzky was a designer, typographer, artist, photographer, architect, and teacher (among other jobs). He had a great influence on the design work from the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements, and on modern commercial art and design.''
www.ibiblio.org

The image above is a self protrait of the artist. As they were going in to the modernist age he wanted to show himself off as a builder and designer. We can see that he uses overlayed geometric shapes, this was a technique that was often used by russian artists at the time.

''Photomontage is the process (and result) of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print''.

http://artsytime.com/the-beginnings-of-photomontage/

         Martha Rosler

 (Above )                               
Cleaning the drapes
Bringing the War Home: House 
Beautiful, 1967-72, 


''she produced Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful (1967-72), a series of photomontages assembled from the pages of Life magazine, where news stories featuring images of the dead and wounded shared column inches with glossy adverts for consumer products.''


www.tate.org.uk
ome.earthlink.net


(above)
Red stripe kitchen: Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, 1967-72,

1917-1920: the "Cottingley fairies"

We have all heard of the classic fairy tails, and this image captures our imagineation perfectly. Its a great example of early D.I.Y photo manipualtion. These particular images caused such controversy when first shown as many people belived them to be real . They were in fact cleverly constructed using paper cut outs and wire.

Photomontage

Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not use film, is realized today through image-editing software. This latter technique is referred to by professionals as "compositing", and in casual usage is often called "photoshopping".^[1]

Early manufactured images..

In 1858 Henry Peach Robinson exhibited Fading Away. This tragic family scene picture was skillfully printed from five different negatives. This work depicted the peaceful death of a young girl surrounded by her grieving family.

This is one of the first good examples of early photo manipulation, and at first glance you wouldn't notice that the image is not a true scene. But on closer examination you can see that the man in the window is slightly too big to be in perspective. also the lighting on the right hand side is brighter

 than on the left.

The lady of shallott (1861)

Man Ray

Man ray was another Early discoverer of image manipulation techniques. Similarly to H.P Robinson he used double negatives and solarisation to create haunting images.

Man Ray

He produced these Rayographs by arranging translucent and opaque objects on photosensitive materials. He intentionally used objects that were three dimensional in order to create unusual shadows of the objects on the two dimensional photosensitive surface. His techniques included immersing the object in the developer during exposure, and using stationary and moving light sources.

http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/tunbridge-wells-h-p-robinson

www.memoryprints.com

http://www.photograms.org/chapter03.htmlw.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/.../Henry-Peach-Robinson

google images

Project Brief...

The module has two assessment elements.  Both are designed as an ongoing process of production and development leading on to a final presentation of a portfolio submission and a (digital) workbook.  
The portfolio assignment requires you create a body of work making informed and extensive use of image manipulation and graphic software packages (Photoshop in particular). technology,  question the effect of genetic sciences and medicine in human life, raise environmental concerns or any other idea that is of interest to you.   Research your idea well, looking into the issues seriously and recording your findings and the plans for your portfolio i/ blog.

Assignments

The module has two assessment elements.  Both are designed as an ongoing process of production and development leading on to a final presentation of a portfolio submission and a (digital) workbook.  The portfolio assignment requires you create a body of work making informed and extensive use of image manipulation and graphic software packages (Photoshop in particular).
The portfolio could be a single elaborate composite image or a manipulated portfolio made up of a series of images.  The aesthetic can be similar to graphic design or photographic or painterly, which ever visual style you choose to use, make sure your concept informs your creative decision making.
The work needs to be conceptually informed and to communicate to the audience about something.  You may, for instance, choose to comment or critique society's reliance on technology,  question the effect of genetic sciences and medicine in human life, raise environmental concerns or any other idea that is of interest to you.   Research your idea well, looking into the issues seriously and recording your findings and the plans for your portfolio images in your digital workbook / blog.