Assignment 5

These are the photographs and narrative that I have submitted for Assignment 5:

Assignment five.   Personal Project

Due to demanding work commitments it has taken me considerably longer than anticipated to get to this stage of the DPP course.  I have had to complete assignments four and five in short order so as to make the two year cut off period.  I had anticipated that I would have to complete the final two assignments during June and July so I had read and forward and pre-planned most of the work I would need to conduct.  To that end I had a good idea as to the topic that I would undertake sometime before commencing the assignment.

I had considered several topics for the assignment; one was landscapes in general, as I had a few opportunities to take a variety of interesting landscapes with a trips to Scotland and the Peak district.  The second option that I considered was a human interest story based on my father’s 70^th birthday celebrations.  The third idea was to use the city of Lincoln (where I live) as the theme.

After some deliberations and attempts at all three themes I decided to go with ‘the city of Lincoln’.  There were several reasons for my choice; firstly I considered that there was quite a lot of interesting subject matter to be utilised in a theme of Lincoln with plenty of different aspects of the town that could be used to demonstrate the various techniques that I have learnt about on the course.  Secondly using Lincoln meant that I was easily able to reshoot scenes that had not come out as well as I had wanted first time, I was also well aware of where to go to get the best shots.  With Lincoln being on my door step I was also able to take scenes in different light and weather conditions.

The best part about using Lincoln was the fact that being a local I could already picture in my head many of the shots that I wanted to take.  I was pretty much able to stick to my brief throughout the shoot.  I wanted to capture the iconic aspects of Lincoln, in particular the Cathedral, Steep Street and the quayside.  Although I tried I was unable to get the shots of the town centre that I had envisaged, this was due to a variety of reasons but ultimately I found that the shots that I had taken were not particularly interesting or out of focus.  There were also a few opportunities that I had not pre-planned that presented themselves whilst I was out on the various shoots; in particular the flower shots were not pre-planned.

I am reasonably pleased with my final collection of pictures; I did conduct some minor post processing, mostly cropping images for a more pleasing composition and some alterations of the exposure with the curves tool.  I had tried not to make too many other alterations.  I would have liked to make some of the shots a little more interesting but I am not sure as how I could have best done that.  My main goal was to sell Lincoln in the best possible I light and I am fairly content that I have managed to do that.   

Attempting Assignment 5

I ended up completing assignment 5 in a short period of time due to a variety of reasons.

I chose the city of Lincoln as my theme after considering a general landscape theme and my father's 70th birthday.

I had attempted shots of all three potential themes and although the landscape theme would have been OK I did not think that it would be interesting enough or provide a wide enough portfolio of pictures.

These are some of the better shots that I attempted.

The photos that I took at my father's 70th birthday were disappointing, it was a busy event so in hindsight it probably was not the best idea for a theme.
The picture below is typical of the type of poor photo that I ended up with:

The Lincoln shoot that I decided to go with provided a lot of material and it was difficult deciding on the final set of images.  I would have liked to use some photographs of people in the town.  Unfortunately I did not think that they were good enough quality and they ended up being discarded.  I also discarded photos that did not represent enough of Lincoln.  A couple of examples are below:

Exercise 25. Website Gallery

For the final exercise on the course we have been asked to consider setting up a web gallery. Over the years I have viewed a good many web galleries and I already have a good idea of what I like and how I like them to be presented.  I then had a good look at several more galleries that are available on the internet.  I particular enjoy the galleries that are presented by national newspapers, the quality of the photographs is always very good and that helps to make them instantly more attractive.   Although the advertising can be a distraction.
The Daily Telegraph is an example

:Daily Telegraph picture of the day

I like simple layouts and I like the photograph to be the centre of attention.  

During this piece of work I have looked at as many galleries as possible and have even tried a few free ones myself, however the one I have had for a few years, in my FLICKR account, seems to tick all the boxes for me.

I like the easy navigation which allows the photograph to be moved forward or back by the arrow and also by clicking on the photo.  I particularly like the black background that allows the photograph to stand out.  The thumbnail icons are useful for swifter navigation and there is a clear option to go to full screen.

My photostream is at the link below

My FLICKR photostream

Exercise 24. Sharpening for print

For this exercise I used a photograph of my youngest son as it contained the detail I required to demonstrate the sharpening process and the effect.

This is the original picture:

I then played around with the unsharp settings in Photoshop and started with 84% this resulted in this shot:

When I printed this version out it was hard to see significant differences in the detail.  There is definitely some sharpening though when you compare it to the original and the sharpening has probably improved the picture.

The next image was the 149% version there are now signs that the picture has been tampered with on the print out there is some over sharpening evident in the eyes and the corner of the mouth.

The final version was an exaggerated unsharp at 294% mask:

This time it is clear that the picture has been altered, the edge of the face has a halo around it and the hair has detail missing.  When you go to a close view of the eyes some detail has been cut and the edges made too clear.  This version looks worse in print than it does on the computer screen.  In particular the part under the right cheek looks poor.

My preferred version is the one that makes subtle changes and ones that are not too dramatic.  Once the edges of the features become too sharp I think that the shot has become spoilt.

Project 5. The Final Image

I have had some time at home and my intent is to work through this part of the course over the next week.   I have already read into the content of the project and I will hope to complete it over the next week.

Assignment 4

Assignment 4:  REAL OR FAKE

Before commencing this part of the course I read the recommended texts on the ethics and principles of altering and enhancing photographs.  I believe that I already had my own views and have tried to remain within my principles for the piece of work required for the Assignment.

For this Assignment I decided to use I shot that I had taken on a holiday in Scotland, on the day that we climbed Ben Nevis.  The weather was good I wanted to create an image that could be used for a magazine cover.  There was snow on the ground near the summit and I thought that it would create a good contrast to the clear blue sky.  The purpose of a magazine photograph is to make the magazine appealing and make the reader want to look at the articles inside. 

I took the original photographs and used many of the techniques that I had learnt during this module to alter the picture to make it more attractive and appropriate for a fictional magazine.  In the original picture the contrast between sky and snow was not as dramatic as I had remembered it.

Firstly I removed the shadow of the person in the foreground using the clone stamp and healing brush, I had decided that this would be where the content text would be best placed.  I then smoothed the snow slightly so that the text could sit clearer on the top

 I then removed the sky from the original photograph and replaced it with a clearer blue sky that I had taken on another day.  I then decided that the sky I had replaced looked more appropriate so I decided to alter the original sky instead.  I cut the sky into a layer and in isolation I adjusted the brightness and the saturation of the skyline, I then made a smoother blue background for the title of the magazine and feathered the edges so that it was not an obvious change of colour or texture.

For the next step I cut out the figure of the walker and then saturated it with little more colour and added brightness and reduced contrast.

Finally I added a few more walkers in the distance, towards the op of Ben Nevis, using the clone stamp, I tried to be careful with shadows and snow patterns.

My views on the ethics of changing photographs in processing have remained fairly similar during the module.  I believe that if you don’t deliberately deceive the viewer with content that is dramatically altered small changes are acceptable.  I think that photographs of the outdoors very rarely capture the full lighting and exposure conditions that you see with the naked eye. 

I am ethically content with my final result as I have attempted to make the changes to the photograph for this assignment as subtle as possible, trying not dramatically change the content of the picture, or make the changes overly obvious.  The original picture was of a walker in snow on a beautiful spring day and hopefully my final picture is still the same.  I have exaggerated some aspects by changing saturation and brightness, this is in an attempt to bring more interest to the viewer and not to significantly change the content of the picture.

Part 4

I have commenced this part of the course after having read the course notes and had a good look through the recommended websites in the bibliography and various resources that are in the resources link.  I am starting this module with an open mind to the rights or wrongs of photographic alterations and corrections.   My first thoughts are that overly altering photographs is not ethically acceptable, however it is clearer not as straightforward as never changing a shot.  In my mind there is never anything wrong with altering the exposure or brightness on an underexposed photograph for example.  It is also possible to alter photographs for art such as the example below.


Copyright MickStephenson

To my mind this type of changed photograph is perfectly acceptable within context, noone really believes that money can be squeezed form a sponge.

However if you are using a photograph for historical record and you are effectively changing the facts that could be considered unethical.

Public domain no copyright

Alterations of photographs have been going on since photography started, the example above demonstrates an early example of an alteration.

Exercise 23: Alteration

For this exercise I needed to choose a photograph where I could remove a subject from the shot in photoshop.

I chose a photograph that I had taken on the beach, of two of my children, the picture had my daughter in the fore ground and my son in the middle ground, they are not interacting with each other so I thought that it would work well for this exercise.  I chose to remove my daughter from the picture as she was the one that was least in focus and dominated the fore ground.

This is the original photograph:

I then worked in photoshop to carefully remove the image of my daughter and replace it with appropriate background.  I used both the clone stamp and the healing brush.  I tried to be careful in where I sampled the relevant areas from to ensure that the lighting and exposure/contrast were roughly similar.

This is the final result:

Exercise 22. Additon

For the first part of this exercise I choose to use 3 photographs with different exposures and to merge them with the Photomatix trial software.

I used a shot that had a good range of tones in the sky and one that different exposures would clearly define the sky and the landscape differently.

This is the shot with the best sky definition.

This shot has the best landscape but the sky is a little washed out:

When the photographs are combined this is the result:

The final picture captures both the landscape and sky with excellent detail and definition.

For the second part of this exercise I choose two photographs that I had taken on separate occasions.  The first in Scotland when the skies were clear and there was a good deal of reflection on the water, this was my landscape photograph.  The second had been taken with a wide angle lens in Devon when there was a more dramatic skyline.

This is the original photograph which has a good landscape but fairly ordinary sky.

This is the dramatic skyline shot taken with a wide angle lens to give a sense of movement to the clouds.

The Combined version is below:

I have had to saturate the sky slightly in order to bring a degree of brightness that matches that in the reflection.  

Exercise 21. Enhancement

For this exercise I used a picture of my oldest son in the conditions that were suggested in the text.  I used natural light and concentrated on photographing the face and eyes.

This is the original shot:

I then used the selection tool to select the face area before brightening and changing the contrast:

This certainly brings more attention to the face than the original shot.  I do not consider that I have tampered too far with reality with this shot as I have simply changed the lighting conditions that the shot was taken in, on another day with different lighting conditions  the original may well have been this version.

In this photo I have altered the eyes by changing saturation and brightness of the eye.  This version is, in my opinion, definitely not as legitimate as the other two.  In this version I have physically altered the appearance of my son beyond that that can be reasonably expected due to natural conditions.  However I believe that this kind of photograph, with alterations, may be acceptable within the correct context.  For example if the picture was supposed to be surreal or have some kind of fantasy element to it changing the properties of the person in the shot could be perfectly acceptable as the whole purpose of the photograph is to deceive.

Exercise 20. Improvement

For this exercise I used a photo of my youngest son and utilised Lightroom to concentrate on his face to give it slightly less exposure and some more detail to bring it out from the surroundings a little.  I also utilised the healing brush to cover over a couple of skin marks.

This is the original:

 And this is the altered version:

The limits of how far this could be taken to remain a legitimate photograph are difficult to answer.  I believe that if you are not fundamentally altering the representation of the person that the picture is taken of it is ok to make small corrections.  It might be ok to make more corrections if that is the intent of the photograph, for example a comedy shot extending a particular feature for a desired effect might be perfectly acceptable to all.

Exercise 19 Correction

For this exercise I used the two images in the resource area of the OCA website, the first one was the image with dust on it.

This is my corrected image, I have used the healing brush and also increased the luminance slightly so as not expose where I have made the changes.  I am reasonably pleased with the image, I have tried not to over correct the detail

The second image is the one that needed some flare correction:

For the edited version I used the healing brush and it was pretty straightforward to blend the lens flare out of the shot:

I am happy to make these adjustments and have no issues having done it.  I think it is OK to repair images that have blemishes created by the camera not the composition.   However I can see where it might be inappropriate, particularly in someone else's work or if the blemish was part of the picture.

Assignment 3

Assignment 3 notes

For this assignment I spent several weeks attempting different types of black and white photography shots before I decided on a theme.  In previous course work I had attempted to be too elaborate with the locations of my shoots to the detriment of the photographs so for this Assignment I attempted to pick a simple theme.

Whilst undertaking the work for this the black and white section of this module I found that I really enjoyed using the exaggeration of colour that you can alter in Lightroom to create various tones and contrasts.  I found that for me that this was particularly effective when photographing a varied sky.  I also enjoyed the effect that it had when shooting water, with colour water is often pretty dull, in black and white you can use this to your advantage to create more drama and make the previous unnoticeable more noticeable.

I took the photographs whilst visiting my father in Devon at a beach on a sunny bright winter day.  There was a lot of good and tone ranges in the sky and the surrounding cliffs.  I have attempted to bring out all the lessons I have learnt in Black and White photography concentrating on form, tone and contrast.  The day was helped by the changing weather conditions that continually altered a dramatic skyline.