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.