Techniques- Healing tool

To try and get the best results, I am going to try out a variety of different techniques in removing the eyes of the subjects that I’m shooting.

I am going to work with the same subject when trying out different techniques to try and keep it as a control image.

The first technique I tried was using the healing brush tool. With this tool, you press alt to select an area that you would like to take the colour and texture from.

 < Where the healing tool can be found

I started by selecting the area just under the girls actual eye, and using the healing tool to cover her eye up with the selected colour and texture which is her skin.

I carried on using this technique to complete each eye. However when I zoomed out I felt that the eye on the right hand side looked slightly too dark, and not quite as good as it could be. Therefore, I used the dodge tool to lighten the area over the eyes that I had already edited. I then retouched some of the areas that didn’t look very convincing and came with the result on the right below.

 

Personally, I think that I could find a better technique for what I’m, aiming for, I’m not sure I like this tool for the purpose of my work. I may use aspects of this tool with other techniques, as it can be quite useful.

Developing Ideas

I think the idea of removing the sense of seeing from people in photographs interests me a lot more. The previous post with an example image was just done quite quickly to try and see if the idea would work. I would have to research different ways in which i could remove the eyes effectively and make it look realistic at the same time. I would probably do a series of images of around four or more for this project to really stand out, and hopefully make the aim of it more clear.

Toying with Ideas

The idea that these office workers all have the same tie. A tie almost represents a bit of individuality in the business world, yet this idea of giving them all the same one tries to suggest that they are all part of a conforming group of robots.

This idea is similar to the ‘Dystopia’ collection in the way that they have had their eyes removed. However if i were to do this it would suggest more of a deeper meaning.

By taking away their eyes I’m trying to highlight the fact that one of their senses has been removed. When people travel, they often visit places that they are told to see. This particular images, is one of my own from Charles Bridge in Prague. It is a popular tourist area attracting hundreds of people each day. When people come to places like this, they are often more interested in capturing it on camera for their family album, rather than actually taking the place in with their eyes there and then. Much the same as an aura in artwork, you cannot get the full extent of the scenery from a photograph afterwards. As it is often said, they are ‘looking but not really seeing’.

So my idea to remove the eyes from these people is to really try and coincide with the phrase ‘looking but not seeing’.

Ideas

• Idea of City life.
• Office workers are all merged into one, no identity, all part of a massive group of conforming robots
• Places:
• Millenium Bridge
• Canary Wharf
• Liverpool St Station at rush hour
• Idea of each person not having any features
• or…. Each person has the same of something. (eg. same tie, same face)
• Something quite unnoticeable, you have to really look to see it.

Alternatively

Tourism,

Mass tourism is common in this day and age. Certain parts of places attract more people to the area, for example in London Big Ben attracts masses.

To try and incorporate my most recent trip to Prague.

Whilst away as a tourist, you turn into a statistic of people that visit that place. Same sort of idea of everybody being a block of people with no identity, as opposed to being a group of individual people all with different ideas and opinions.

Ljubodrag Andric

Yugoslavian Practitioner, Andric, is an award winning photographer who’s work has been seen world wide. He was self-taught and had his first paid gig at the age of 21. He has been working in advertising since 1988 and has changed the face of advertising ever since.

He was worked with huge companies and brands such as Amex, AT&T, Campbell’s Soup, Capital One, Chick-Fil-A, Corona, Guinness, Hitachi, M&M’s, Magnum, Pirelli, Samsung, SYFY, Vespa and many other well respected names.

His highly manipulated images have clear vision, they capture the viewer in some cases by asking ‘What is this about?’. The images are so far out, that they almost look like a cartoon, when in fact each component of the image is made up pictures of real things.

 

Aziz and Cucher

Anthony Aziz (American) and Sammy Cucher (Peruvian) are both photographers who have been working together since 1991. They base themselves in Brooklyn and are both members of the Faculty at Parsons, The New School for Design, New York. (azizcucher.net)

The selection of works that interest me most that they have done is a series of images called ‘Dystopia’. A dystopia is the opposite of utopia. It is a community or society that is ‘undesirable or frightening’.  This description explains the title of this work well, as the images that the pair have taken are indeed, undesirable as well as quite chilling.

The works are portraits of various different people who have had their features erased.

The images were described by art critic Adrian W.B. Randolph: ‘Dystopia, seems to document a pathology. It seems clear that
at some level this pathology is not only dermatological, but cultural, commenting, perhaps, on the gradual but waxing loss of identity and the means of communication in a technological environment that promotes anonymity and conformity’.

 

Digital Manipulation Photographer Research

Erik Johansson

Erik Johansson is a Swedish photographer based in Berlin, Germany. His images don’t depict something that is actually there, but something that he has thought up in his head. His aim is to make the images look as real as he can achieve, even though there is no possible way that these things could actually exist.

The final product often consisted of around a hundred different images. He uses Adobe Photoshop CC to combine them together to create his amazing works of art. He has said that his works are ‘limited only by his imagination’.

This image is called ‘Cut and Fold’. The actual post production of this photo took around 15 hours. It uses 130 different layers all of which play their part in making stunning and mind boggling image. The attention to detail that this practitioner has whilst creating this image is fascinating. From small things that are barely visible such as the roots coming up the other side of the grass to the scissors on the middle of the road.

Below is a link to the post production and how this image was made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiCLMePjK-Y