Photoshop📸

For our last session of this project, we had a look at photography and using photoshop. This was definitely the one I was most looking forward too as I love taking photographs; I'm always snapping pictures of things wherever I go, so you can imagine I enjoy it!

Keeping our keywords, 'Shape' and 'Variety', in mind, we walked around the campus and took photos of things relating to that. Aswell as this, I looked at the other principles and elements, seeing if I could find them aswell. 

I really enjoyed taking the photos, walking and spotting where these certain elements and principles are. We then went back to digital and started to work on Photoshop. I hadn't used this software before, so I was hesitant about what outcomes I would have. After learning the basic skills, we had a play around. I used things like cropping, blurring, general adjustments like contrast, brightness, saturation, etc, curves, different filters. See my initial testers below. 

I then had a bit more purpose. I started to look at my prompts; one of those was the wood my family own. I had taken a lot of natural images, wood, leaves, trees, stones, etc. The plan was to make a collage, using those geometric shapes I had looked at earlier on in the project. 

This was the final outcome for this idea. I chose to enhance all those colours to show the emotion I feel towards the wood we have, it's my happy place, my safe place and I think this was the best way to show it. I do like it, think it's got a lot of character. However, on a personal level, too much is going on for me to find it visually pleasing so I think if I was to do this idea again, I would tone it down and not use so many shapes, not use so much of a variety. 

I then took a look at this photo I really liked of a tree against the blue sky. I loved the colours originally, so I enhanced these to show this. Then I just played around with different adjustments, etc. The black and white image has a really unsettling feel to it but I think it makes the image that bit more fun. You wonder why the sky is like that, what could it mean, those questions start to come to mind . I love the last one where I have repeated a pattern; it's so visually pleasing and has such a enjoyable atmosphere. That rich orange contrasted with the pale and soft blues, whites. 

This one above is of a plant I found. I loved the texture it has and how each shape amounts to this huge piece. The way I have changed it with the curves, it reminds me of coral! Especially that lilac blue tone on it. Really, really enjoy this photo as a whole. 

I took the images a little further, turning them into quite random things. This is the thing I like about photo editing, you can turn something so mundane and 'normal' into something so crazy and chaotic. 

Looking at all these natural images, I took a look at structure. I went through the images and picked out interesting areas I liked, made adjustments, cropped, curved, etc, to create this collage above. I really love this piece; I think the main thing is the colours. That royal blue is so bright and 'pops' with those more natural and neutral tones of the other sections.

I then chose a few images I had taken previously, ones in my own time, to see what I could do. I played around with selecting areas, see the photo above. I think it looks interesting, especially those geometric lines around the edge of something quite natural but I feel I could have done more with this, added in different images, etc. 

 

I found another photo I love, one again I took in my own time, and decided to have a go at using the digital drawing pad. I cropped and desaturated it; the white flowers were really catching my eye. I thought what about if I highlighted these like I did before in my project with the movement photos? I used the pen tool and created these below. 

These have to be my favourite pieces from today. It was such a last minute idea - these always are the best ones! I drew around each flower in thin white lines, then added black for the second. I just think they look so gorgeous. These natural flowers, just falling where they please, have been been given a 'place', a definite place, with these sharp lines - this definitely links into contrast. With the colours aswell, the image is quite dark so adding that white makes the photo look striking, etc. I definitely would want to try this technique of adding lines to other images and see what I can create. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the digital session today. Little bit frustrating when the computer doesn't work the way you want it too, especially when you're not 100% confident using the software, but by the end of the session I had created some really good pieces I was happy with!