Explanation and Research

Exploration and Discovery

    The aim of this project is to come up with creative links to "exploration and discovery". At first, I had no clue as to how I was going to go about even starting this project, I had no ideas at all.

    The idea came to me as I was cleaning out my hard drive of old pictures. I stumbled upon a folder called "Bonfire night" which contained images that I had taken of me experimenting with shutter speed on fire works, some of these images were brilliant. For example:

this is the sort of thing no one ever pays particular attention to, people normally pay a lot more attention to the pretty pattern made in the sky, but by using a longer shutter speed, I managed to capture the trail left behind when the rocket took off. I also had many more images, for example I had an image of a Catherine wheel on a long shutter speed and you could see sparks flying off the wheel and just a blur in the center of the image.

    The way I decided to link this idea back to "Exploration and Discovery" was by looking at it in the way that I was exploring a world that exists, but cannot be seen without the correct equipment to capture it with. What I want to do in this project is look at all the other "un-explored" worlds which I could discover and present.

It was at this point that I started experimenting with different types of fireworks and the different effects that the camera had on the image. For example, the shutter speed and whether I used flash or not. Here is what I came out with:

The two images above I thought looked really good. This is because the shutter speed is so quick that the camera is only able to pick up small amounts of light. Each spec of light looks like a star, this makes the whole image looks like a galaxy. I thought this was an amazing coincidence whilst I was playing with the shutter speed.

These two images are of roughly the same thing except one of them has the flash on and as you can see, the flash completely ruins the effect of the image.

These three images I really like. They were taken at just the right moment to capture a rocket taking off and the effect it leaves behind is amazing. It was these images that inspired me to look at other light sources and how they impacted the image.

Artist research:

    I looked into a technique called light painting, this is where you leave a camera on with a long shutter speed and basically wave a light around in front of it in a dark place in attempt to make a nice pattern.
Some people who have created some amazing art in my opinion include:

se7en magazine - A magazine about arts, culture, fashion, music and photography run in L.A.

Pablo Picasso also experimented with painting with light, here are some of his images:

Lapp pro create some amazing images with light, some of the images they create seem dream like which makes them very pleasing to look at:

Obviously, these people are very professional, and although I can aspire to create work as amazing as these people, I think I may have to create brilliance from a slightly more simple approach.

    I did some experimenting in Photoshop and decided that the colour replacement tool does a really nice job in making things look unreal and dream like.

This is a before and after shot of this image, I think that taking the colour from outside the lines gives a really nice effect and makes it seem like everything is good and safe inside, but cold and dangerous outside.

I think that these two edited images have a lot in common. I do have to say though that, I prefer this image as less of the picture is taken up with the colour so it is a lot more subtle and the empty space in the image gives a really nice effect.

I also created some images which I didn't want to edit, but instead leave as they were when they were created in order to see the contrast of edited and un-edited images.

One of the most effective techniques I feel with this style of photography is defiantly drawing around objects and the way that it makes them look very clean and almost gives them an energy. I also think it makes it seem like a cartoon has come to life, and one of the main aspects of these images that I like is the fact that the "real world" looks dark, gloomy and boring whereas the "unexplored" world is a much cleaner, exciting and dream like version. This is indefinably a technique that I will be able to make something really cool out of.

The thing that I liked about my earlier images which were edited in Photoshop as well as using light photography was the fact that they looked really dream like, and our dreams are a world of our own which can only be explored by us, so in that sense, they are unexplored as well.

I created some images just using the color replacement tool on Photoshop to see how this would look in compassion to a combination of the two.

I really love this technique as it has a lot of freedom within it, you can put any colour anywhere in the image. Here is how I did it:

Step one was to import the image that you wanted to edit into Photoshop, for this example I chose an image of my house

Step two was to select the "colour replacement" tool

Step three was to chose the colour you first wanted to use, I chose black to eliminate the surrounding colours, this would make anything I added stand out more.

I tool out all the colour from the bricks and the sky, this gave the image a very dull look and allowed me to add very vibrant colours which would stand out on the grey background.

I chose my first colour to add to the windows and filled it in. As you can see, the eye is drawn to this patch of the image immediately as it is the most vibrant. 

I then coloured in the rest of the windows in equally vibrant colours. At this point, the eye doesn't know where to look first, this is because there are so many points which are equally contrasting, this means that we have to look at the whole image for a second before we focus in on certain aspects.

As I was creating these images, one artist came to mind. Mondrian, The use of basic colours on a plain (black and white) background 

Although this seems like a bit of a leap in style of work, I think that there is a real connection here.

Although I do like these images, I think that the combination of the two techniques are a lot more effective. So for this reason, I will base my final piece around mixing the dream world with reality. I think that the images I have created so far look really modern and clean, it also looks like the light painting is electricity flowing around which I really like the idea of. For my final piece, I would like to create some really dream like images, images that look really weird, and to link in with Mondrian, I don't really want them to have much more of a meaning than how modern day technology had allowed us to see the unseen and explore previously undiscovered worlds. I believe that with this in mind, I can create not only an effective image, but an image that is very pleasing to the eye.

For my final image I wanted to create a really complex image, the most complex type of image I can think of within this technique of photography is 3D looking structures. like this:

I think this is not only one of the best looking types of images that are able to be created within this technique, but also the most impressive and surreal which is what I am aiming for with this final piece. I also want my final image to look really clean and as though it is electricity flowing through the air, or in this case it looks like fire.

Another effect I like within this is the use of sparklers as a light source. This is because they give off a really nice light and throw off sparks which the camera picks up and traces, this gives the image a slightly more messy feel and I think makes the image look more surreal and dream like. This also juxtaposes the previous idea of making the image look clean and as though electricity is flowing through the air. I think including both of these ideas in one image will look really effective.

I started off by looking at what the longest shutter speed the camera I was using could go to. This was 30 seconds. I realised that if I wanted to "build" a detailed structure that I would need longer to do this. So instead of trying to do it all in one, I decided to take each layer of the structure in a separate image. These are the images I used:

I tried putting all of these images together in Photoshop, but if I cut the light trails out, it would end up looking like I had painted a white line on the image and it lost all effect. I had to use the eraser tool to rub through the layers and put them all together. This turned out to be quite a challenge, and after hours of struggling with Photoshop, this is what I ended up with.

As you can see, this looks very messy and I was not happy with this. I decided to take a slightly different approach and instead of following the ideas I previously had about my final image, I wanted to combine the ideas I had previously had using the colour replacement tool to make the image look more dream like, but also keep enough of the original light to make it look as though the image was more realistic.

After numerous attempts, I managed to create a shape that resembled a structure and had a three dimensional feel to it. I then put this in Photoshop and played around with the colour replacement tool to erase the colour from the background, and bring in new colour within the object itself. I think this image sums up all of the techniques I have attempted to use throughout the project and for this reason, I wanted to use it as my final piece.

However, before I go there is one last thing I wanted to mention, regarding my grade for this project. I do not intend to influence the marking in any way, but I hope this very final image will aid you in deciding on the final mark for this project! :)

Thank you.