Revisiting The Past

As i am still looking at memories, i decided to do a photo shoot that was again, based on memories. I had looked at the photographer Angie Buckley who gave me the inspiration for this photo shoot. She collected old photographs of her family and for the people who had died, she had cut out their place on the picture and this represented time passing and people fading. I collected old photographs of members of my family and i got some old looking paper from a craft shop and i scanned all the old images onto the computer and printed them out onto some of the old paper. I felt that this made them look more like old images rather than printing them out onto plain white paper, it wouldn't have the same effect. I then got a crafts knife and cut out a person from the image and placed them in flowers and places which were colourful and bright so that it stood out well and contrasted with it. I also then looked at a similar photographer called Greg Sand who specialises in montages but he did a similar photo shoot but placed a map behind the photo so the cut out parts were not blank it had a pattern behind it. I decided to do this for a few of the photographs as it added colour to it and added some detail from the different roads and colours. This was a photo shoot that i enjoyed doing and it is really simple to do as well it didn't take a lot of time to cut them out but i had to make sure i didn't have a blunt crafts knife and had a cutting mat underneath to protect the surface. If you want to look at anymore of the photographs if you leave a comment i can upload some more for people to see. 

Tutorial On Turning Simple Images To Exciting Images

 I thought i would do a quick tutorial with everyone today to show that even the most plain and simple images that you take can be changed into a more interesting and vibrant image which can catch the viewers eyes. I recently did a photo shoot on a train as i wanted to catch the movement from the train in my images and to create that slight blur to them. I used the image below to work with and edit as i found the colours in the image quite bland and it's quite a dull image on a whole. I wanted to add more to the blur in the image and create a more softer but bolder colour scheme. For this all you need is Photoshop… and a creative mind! 

After you open this image in Photoshop, you need to go into 'Image' and then into the drop down menu and click 'Adjustments' and then click 'Hue/Saturation'. It will then open a box which displays different sliders for colours and saturation so you can control the colour and saturation of the image. 

 

I wanted my image to have a pink tint to it and even though it looks quite bold and grainy, it will fit a lot better with the next step. You can change the slider to any colour you want to have but i felt pink stood out a lot more than the other colours (saying that the dark blue is also very bold). 

After you have changed the colour. click 'OK' and then drag the same image that you started off with over the top of the hue effected image. 

Then go into 'Image' then click 'Adjustments' in the drop down menu and then turn the image into monochrome by clicking 'Black & White'. 

The image should have then changed into monochrome and you shouldn't be able to see the hue image at all. We want to see it though and bring those bold colours through and to do this you need to change the opacity of the MONOCHROME (TOP LAYER) image!! Not the hue image which should be titled as 'background' on your layers menu. I changed my opacity down to 50% as i felt this worked fine for me and i got a mixture of the colour and the monochrome through. 

From this image you can see that there is the monochrome image and the hue image and that you can see a mixture of both images and now you need to resize the images to make it look as if the image is really blurred. 

From this image you can see i resized the top image (the monochrome one) and i made sure that it was bigger than the bottom image itself so i went over my canvas size but, from looking at the image before you can see it stretches out bigger but you can't see the difference. It just adds a soft blur to it. 

If you right click on the black and white image layer so the top one, you can duplicate the layer and from here you get duplicates of the same layer and mess around with the opacity on different layers and you can also add different colours to different layers so you can have multiple hues and you can also mess with the sizing of the images. If you make some smaller than the set image size you will get lines from where the image cuts off so you can have interesting lines in there too. There are a lot of effects you can use from here to create an interesting image and i feel that this was a way for me to turn my simple images into something more bright and powerful.

This was my final image from this tutorial, i had added a couple more layers in there and resized them to add emphasis on the blur but i also ended up using the same photograph but adding about 8 layers in there with a blue and pink hue so i got a really powerful image that stands out a lot more compared to the image i started off with. It also turns an image that isn't exactly sharp and magazine material imagery into something a lot more powerful to look at and more magazine material or for a crazy album cover!

Here is my before and after shot just so you can visually see the difference and compare the two images.

I would love to hear feedback from this tutorial and if any of you have tried it and how it's succeeded for you or even any tips to try for next time. 

Adding Old To The New

We all enjoy looking through old photographs from our past family members and especially for me, i enjoy seeing what the photography was like back then and what cameras or equipment they used to take their images. I decided to do a photo shoot about the old vs the new. I love mixing the two together and seeing the interesting effects at the end. I first scanned a bunch of old photographs that would be useful for the shoot and i also took images of my family now. I used Photoshop to create the final images by editing the new images into black and white to still get that old tone to the images and so it related to the shoot and i also used Photoshop to add the old images over the top of the new. The images that include the old image being placed over the top is easy to create as all you do is cut the image up into sections that you want (e.g. if you want to paste an old image of someones eyes, then crop the eyes only) and then add it over the top of the new image. I think the colour of some of the old images contrast so well because it's really washed out and has a yellow tint to them so you still get the impression that they are old and it contrasts with the monochrome images well. The images where it looks like the old images have been projected over the new, was done by using the 'multiply' blending mode in Photoshop and no editing needs to be done apart from that and you get a double exposure effect which also looks like a projection. I find these images work the best because it also has a creepy element to them with the out of focus and overexposed effect, it makes the images look ghostly. 

Double Exposure (Inspiration From Christoffer Relander)

I decided that i wanted to really try something different for a change and really push myself to deliver some different and detailed images. I had looked at Christoffer Relanders work who focuses on double exposure images and his were fantastic so i thought 'yes! This is something i need to try!'. It took me absolutely ages to try and figure out how to achieve the look in Photoshop and it literally took me i'd say about 5 attempts of trying out different effects and blending options in Photoshop. After about 2 hours i had finally figured out how to do it and i was over the moon. I then applied the same effect to most of my studio images. I used images i had taken of a few models in the studio with some images of trees to overlap the image with as trees have different shapes and structures to them (especially with different styled leaves) and i then attempted to make a full range of different images with this double exposure effect. I made sure the images of the trees had a white background as the images of the models had a white background so when overlapping them the background stays white. I then changed the blending mode on the tree image to 'Overlay' or 'Multiple' or even 'Screen' (depends on what you prefer and what you want the final outcome to be) and i then turned the opacity down just a little to get both images showing and not getting one coming through stronger than the other. I then changed a few of the images into monochrome as i felt the colour from the trees clashed a little with the skin colour from the models, but i was really pleased with the results and i was really happy with the final results and happy that i had successfully achieved this style of photography. I would definitely recommend having a go at this effect because it's so much fun and you get a result that makes you happy and it's quite simple once you have cracked it!