Scott Jackson / Photography

HND Year 2 Student 2018/19

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Displacement

Using a pattern to mould to another image. A flat pattern being added to an image in order to make it realistic.The example I used was a pattern being added to a plain white dress.

The three files required, the left image being the original, the middle image being the displacement that I have created in photoshop and the pattern on the left to be applied to the image via a mask.

A bit of a bulletpoint list of steps that I used for the displacement on PS.

Coming to this final 

he cut is a little noticeable but thew pattern has taken the shape of the dress well and makes it look semi-realistic, a bit more of a finesse around the mask would make this neater but the general process has helped me understand how to complete this going forward.

Would be ideal for logo on objects or e-commerce!

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Documentary

I decided to change my documentary, was not overly happy about changing it but there was more work required than I first thought. So I decided to do this on the fitness industry, and in particular some high end shots of a professional PT which I have worked with before. I went to his studio and documented a workout and several different excercies in which he uses for his clients. 

This book can then be used for him as an information tool as well as some PR. These were more profile portraits, but still in a documentary style, a mixture of black and whites to show a more serious side of his work as well as majority colour.

Traditionally documentary is simple and black and white but I really like the idea of mixing both aspects of colour and black and white and there is on rule to state how a documentary should be shot.

Here are the contacts form the shots that I have submitted in my book.

The book has also been ordered so hopefully be here by Friday!

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Something Old

For this brief I wanted to shoot something a little different. We have a really old tool box in the house with the traditional ‘sweetie tin’ that was pretty common back in the day. This now keeps nails in it.

For this I was looking at painting with light on a long exposure as I wanted to bring out specific details and textures of the object and what it is placed on, I like a lot of the old rustic shots I see online.

So I liked this sort of look. Below is my final submission for the brief:

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Brand Narrative

For this brief I always had a clear idea of what I wanted to shoot. I spend a lot of time outdoors and really wanted to express this through this shoot. The North Face was the brand and there is not really a better place to test there wind and waterproof jackets than Scotland.

We went to Glen Etive to shoot in a beautiful location, we got the rain and we also got the light, the perfect conditions for the shoot. Very happy about how this turned out and I will pop a few below that are favourites. 10 individuls will be uploaded for submission and the prints will possibly be from the following images.

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Something New / Final

Below is my final submission for Something New. Working with reflective metal is something that really came as a challenge to me, both in lighting and keeping it clean. I managed to keep it relatively clean and the rest required some retouching for some areas of the blade. Overall, I am happy with the outcome, but I made this harder for myself then it may have needed to be.

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Archetype Portrait

For this I have decided to go down the golf/mental health approach. As mental health is something close to home for me, epically in men, I wanted to drive and create something in that field. 

The archetype that I believe this represents is swaying towards Innocence and the Regular!

With sport it can often be highlighted that its a ‘Mans’ sport and its the same sort of attitude like that which can lead to young men keeping in their emotions. This is why I have chosen golf, as this is a sport which I believe is predominantly male, and also has this attitude. 

With my subject, I have used a young male in order to represent an age group of young men who very much are victim to suicide in my community. Ages between 18-28 have been seen in the last couple of years to be struggling with mental health.

For my portrait it has been simply lit in order to help represent the area in which the sun is coming from with my locations shots. The location shots I have chosen to use is a peaceful loch in spring sunshine, as this helps with the brand that it is okay to talk and portrays a more postive approach to fighting mental health that what usual advertisement may use. The location shot is below;

With my main image I have flipped this in oder to have the light coming from  the other side, this was more personal preference to my final image.

I have optimised this image in LR but not really adjusted too much apart from some of the colour balance.

The studio of Iain is below and will represent a face on approach, talking on the matter hands on.

Due to the brief requiring a cut out, I shot this with a clean white back ground in order to make this process a lot easier when it came to cutting the image. I used select subject as well as the pen tool to cut out my subject and created this as a mask.

I then refined the edges and copies this mask on to the background image.

Obviously this was not complete here, as you can see from the layers I used various tools in PS in order to colour match and fit the image with the back ground as best as I could. I think created this into a smart object in order to work on the image as one.

I added some text to the image in order to add some  ore content about mental health and what this represents.

The final image once colour matched and text added is below, this may be jigged slightly but this is currently what I am most happy with as a submission.

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Brand Archetypes

I have had a read around with regards to my brand advertisement shot and think I want to do something that incorporates a sport. I want to make it a little surreal and possibly put a sport in a different situation. 

I have researched different types of archetypes and what they may represent in the link below;

https://www.thehartford.com/business-playbook/in-depth/choosing-brand-archetype

I took inspiration from an advertisement piece that David Bony had shown us from the talk last month.

Source/ www.davidboni.com 

This is similar to the sort of image I will be looking to work at for this brief. I will need to use the lighting to recreate the sunset in the studio on my subject.

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Something New / Research.

For my ‘something new’ I am looking to shoot a Swiss army knife that I received from a company that I had worked for. 

With this I have been looking at these sort of shots.

The top knife being the same knife as the one I am shooting! I have done a few test shots, anomaly colour corrected these and not retouched as of yet, may need to reshoot due to fingerprint of the blade.

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16 Personalities / results.

I agree with most of the results of the test but now all of them. 

Would say I am highly emotional nor am I practically unable.

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Italian Vogue

For my Italian Vogue style shoot I looked to use something kind of wedding themed. I had a look on Italian Vogue and found some shots which help represent wedding dresses but also fashion photography. This was not about the actual wedding but more about the model and clothing. 

I had an opportunity to assist Stew Bryden at SWD editorial and it was the perfect opportunity to catch some kind of off guard BTS style Italian Vogue shots. I have added a few image below of some inspiration in what I was looking to achieve. (All image from Italian Vogue).

As italian vogue is a little out there in comparison to other vogue magazines, its a little younger from what I found and also seems anything goes!

Here are a few of those images:

I really liked how this is not ‘Wedding’ photography as such.

So I had the chance to go to Manderston house with Stew and the team in order to not only assist him but to build a small Italian vogue editorial.

Although B&W features in IT vogue regularly it is not something i wanted to do, the tones and colours of the house matched with the model just worked better in colour in my opinion. Contact sheet below of the individual selects that I will be going with.

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Fashion Story.

With my fashion story I used the collaboration with the GCU students in order to help with this brief. Teaming up with the fashion students, was really something that helped the brief as well as the images that were produced. This was mostly due to having models at the shoot as well as being able to control what I was doing in line with what they were needed. First of all we used some of the brief working that the students had and work with that, we then included some mood boards and also example images. Below are a couple of examples from 2 of the shoots which took place.

These were in depth and organised, the shoot was left to do - full creative reign and allowing me to shoot whatever and however I wanted to. 

As you can see, with both shoots we arranged locations, both hotels, one with a room and the other in the bar area. In terms of the fashion story, I think the brief with the hotel room may have worked better as a story.

As I have previously said, I love shot from both shoots but the stroy seems to fit better with the hotel room shoot. 

Here are my selects from this and the images which I will be moving forward with.

A favourite Diptych of the shoot below:

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Composition work.

We were challenged today to produce some work in practice to one of our briefs in advertisement. The brief is with regards to creating an image in the studio in order to composite this on to a back ground or scene.

As practice I created something a little different just to play around with it and see what I could do. 

These were the starting images:

This was my chosen background, I wanted something large that could be edited on with as little quality dip as possible. I then looked to put the following subjects into the image to create the mood and then colour match and blend this on PS in order to make the images fit.

This was an image that I went with:

I am not majorly excited about this image but it allowed me to play around with photoshop. I added Fog, and used the curve layer in order to match the light across the final image, it helped with the feel and to make things look a little more realistic, but still not entirely convincing!

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Enviromental Portrait.

For my enviromental portrait I have decided to approach my barber. He owns his own space and it is very quirky and creative. When it opened a year or so ago, I done some work fro him at this point so was very aware of the set up and lighting.

When going into the portrait, I wanted to keep the rustic look but also show a side of him that is a little serious as well as the outgoing character that he is. Here is a shot that was a little more fun, although the scene was a bit messy for my liking.

The final shot was looking more serious and i little less messy with equipment and what not.

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Tabloid /Broadcast Sheet

We were each given a newspaper and asked to discuss the photography information which is included in the paper.

https://spark.adobe.com/page/c194hCaB4AD2P/

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Group shot/Posing.

For the brief of group shout we were asked to produce a photograph of a group. This shot has to be of 2 or more people and the lighting had to be controlled.

with my research I liked up seem group shouts that perhaps are not as appealing and maybe not what to do.

This pose is just very awkward and looks forced. The guy on the right is not even smiling and the guy on the left looks like his eyes are closed. This is the challenges of a group shot, keeping everyone engaged with the shooter for a short space of time to get the image.

Group shots can be quite tricky and usually the more people present the harder it can be to make sure everything goes to plan.

This is a more high end group shot - potentially for a TV show or advertisement. Still a questionable shot, but you can tell that there has been a lot of execution and though went into this shot in terms of posing, colour and expressions.

With my shot, I was working at a wedding. My shot consists of the bride and groom with their best man and bridesmaid. It was shot on a low light winters evening and therefore the light was not very stormy. I sued an off camera flash to bounce some of the light off the church wall and back to my subject and had a little reflected down the left side off camera. 

The skins tones and the tones of the church all benefited from the light control as well as the overall image.

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Fashion Front Cover.

For this brief we were to create a fashion front cover in the form of Dazed and Confused Magazine.

I got straight on the research of this magazine as well as speaking with James in contextual. This magazine is aimed a slightly younger market, and the images are a lot less serious than perhaps Vogue or GQ.

With this research I had also kind of decided in what I wanted to shoot and through the influence of a film director - Kieslowski. It wasn't necessarily his actual characters in the films that I drew inspiration from, but more the colour pallet of one of bis films, this is really something I liked and something I wanted to use. 

The colour was from “the double life of Veronique”.

There was an orange and green tone through his film, a little similar to some of the shots by Annie Leibovitz. Not quite as green as some of hers, but a very distinctive tone to the shots.

We also were needing to build our own set for this shoot and build the final image. I wanted some orange tone to my back drop as well as some worn materials in order to create an authentic backdrop. 

I used a male model in order to go by the theme of Dazed and Confused and their market. 

The main light was a october which was used above and to the left of my model, also using a slight fill light at the opposite direction with a slight orange gel on this light to create the tones. The slightest green would be added in post production.

Below is my final image from the shoot as well as the image which has been created into a fashion front cover.

I am pretty happy about how it has turned out, I believe the orange and green tones have pulled through how I wanted it to look, with use of the colour palette and correction in lightroom I was able to enhance these images. As well as retouch his skin to a high level...he still has textures and the skin is authentic. Using frequency separation I was able to control both the texture and smoothness of my models skin.

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Photography Competitions.

We spoke in regards to photography competitions with the pros and cons and politics that may go on with these.

We then were given a competition to look and in greater depth. I was looking at the Wellcome Photography award.

https://spark.adobe.com/page/4XcDhcUmV0PJY/