Markus Andersson Photography

Workblog for Digital Project.

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Evaluation

I've really enjoyed working on this project. It was one of the projects I've really been looking forward to this year, as I really enjoy working in photoshop and I think I might want to work more with manipulations and composites in the future. 

For this project I chose to work on the idea of daydreaming, the state between the real and unreal, the waking world and the dream world. It took me quite a long time to come up with the idea though, and since we had already missed the first week of the project I didn't get around to do the shoot before the end of the fourth week, which only gave me one week to put it together in photoshop. This wasn't optimal of course, as it didn't give me any time to reshoot or get it properly finished. I had to compromise a bit, and the end result wasn't entirely how I had imagined it, but with the time I had to work on it I think I did a fairly good job out of it. 

If I was to do the project again I would probably have started shooting as soon as I got the idea, just putting something together fast and then reshoot it later if something did go wrong. The actual shoot only took me about a half hour, so I could probably have put together a shoot earlier when I came up with the idea and then spent some time working on it in photoshop and reshooting bits and pieces that didn't turn out the way I wanted it instead. I also got a few ideas at the end of the project which I didn't have the time to realize; like paint dripping down from the model, like if she was freshly painted and the paint was running off her as she was coming out of the frame. I think that would have been a really good idea, and something I would have done if I had gotten started on the project earlier. 

Working on this project and looking more closely at other photographers work in this area has sparked my imagination and has given me a bigger understanding of the time and consideration spent on creating art like this. I really want to work further with this kind of photography and gain more knowledge and skills to create realistic manipulations/composites.

Making my workbook on tumblr has been a really helpful. It made it easier for me to do all of my research, and it made my tutorials with the teacher easier as I didn't really have to tell him about all my idea and what I had done so far, because he already knew and we could cut right to the good parts of actually getting feedback, ideas and the help I needed. I hope this will become standard for every project in the future.

All in all I think I did a fair job on the project. I think my idea was a strong one, and if I had had more time to work on it I know I could have created a really fantastic image. The idea of daydreaming is something I want to explore and continue working on more in the future. 

Now I'm just anxious to see my image printed up big, hopefully it will look alright. 

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Here is my final image for this project. 

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Photographer reference #6: Erik Almås

So far I've always managed to include one norwegian photographer into my references, so here's the art of Erik Almås, renowned as the new whizz kid in american advertising photography. 

Almås is one of those photographers who doesn't really take a single boring photo. Every single image he makes is a work of art, and yes I used the word make intentionally instead of take since there is at least some photoshop work behind his images, some more than others. If he's just taking a photograph of a fisherman he still has to make it into this outstanding piece of art, he would probably spend as much time working on a portrait of a fisher as he would do when shooting a fashion series or something for an ad campaign. 

Here's a few of my favourites: 

Check out the rest of his work on his webpage: http://www.erikalmas.com

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Added a bit of paint splatters on the floor and did a bit of overall creative color adjustments. Think I'm starting to get there. 

Any input would be much appreciated :D

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In our third lecture we started out masking out a girl from a background and putting her onto a different background. We then opened up another image and after color correcting it we placed her into the image and started playing around with the colours on the background layer to make her fit in.

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In our second lecture we played around with the layer masks to create horrible monsters using a picture of the girl and guy shown below. Above is my monster. I've used photoshop a lot before and I'm used to using layer masks so this wasn't new to me. 

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Color correction

We stared out in the first lecture learning how to colour correct images. I found the process of doing this quite useful, I've already adopted it into my usual retouching methods. Before I just started out with a levels adjustment to get a black and a white point. But the control you get by using the curves layer to set the black and white, and at the same time neutralizing the two makes for a much better and controlled end result I find. 

So here is the original image. 

We then used a threshold adjustment layer to find the darkest and lightest part of our image. 

We then used the color sampler tool to sample the darkest and lightest part and then discarded the threshold layer before putting up a curves layer and went in to all the different channels and by keeping an eye on our info panel where the values of the samples we made earlier showed the values of the different channels at those point we could neutralize the images by getting the values even. And because we don't want anything to be completely black or white in our image, to the point where it chops off in the histogram, we put those values at least 5 points inside of the boundaries. 

We then went on to the tricky part, neutralizing the midtones. This was also done with the curves layer, but here we had to use our eyes more and try and look for the point where the image looked neutral to us, which was quite a challenge. 

Here is what I ended up with: 

We also put up an S-curve layer for contrast and then I played around a bit with layer mask and chaning colours. I eventually ended up with this gold nugget. 

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Still a long way to go, but I feel its slowly coming together now. After my chat with Steven on monday I started working on expanding the canvas/painting and making the girl a bit bigger, but now as big as I made her in the beginning. I feel it works a lot better now, it's got a bit more impact than before when she was a bit too tiny. Right now I' working on creating a sort of dreamy/unreal landscape on the right side to accentuate the idea of daydreaming and the border between the real world and the dream world. 

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People keep telling me I look like Marcus Mumford (from the band Mumford & Sons), so I decided to put my photoshop skills to good use and make this scary side by side comparison of me and Marcus Mumford. Damn!

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Started to work on the images a bit at home. I first had to find the images of the girl that I thought would work before I started masking her out. I then found an image of a forest that I had taken ages ago and applied an oil paint filter as well as turning on a bevel and emboss to make it fit more naturally on the canvas. Finally I made another version with the girl smaller to see what looked best. I also choose to clean up the walls and floor a bit. 

Now comes the fun part, making this look really awesome! I have a pretty good idea of what I want it too look like in my head, but I'm struggling a bit trying to realize my idea in Photoshop. 

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Contactsheet from my shoot on friday. Was a bit stressed out on the day of the shoot and managed to forget a couple of things to bring for the shoot, like softbox for my flash (all the proper flashkits in the loan store was already booked), reflector and a external flash cable. Because of this I only had one flash, without soft box, so the light is a bit harsher than I wanted it to be. But I think all in all the shoot went okay and I think I got what I needed. Now I just need to bring it together in photoshop. 

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Photographer reference #5: Dean Bradshaw

Dean Bradshaw is a master of compositing images to create stunning action-packed scenes that would be impossible to make without photoshop. You can tell instantly that his images has been through photoshop and are absolutely not real, he doesn't try to hide it, but he does his photoshop work with extreme care. He has got an eye for details and all of his composite work are masterfully executed. You can tell they've been photoshopped, but it's done perfectly so it's hard to put your finger on what is really there in the shoot originally and what has been placed there in post-process. 

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Photographer reference #4: Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylors approach to creating stunning photo manipulations is a bit different than her husband Jerry Uelsmann. She works in photoshop and creates surrealistic manipulations by scanning objects with a flatbed scanner, an unusual approach but so is the end result. There's a really interesting video about Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor on lynda.com where Russell Brown, Senior Creative Director at Adobe, says: I clearly recall the first phone call I got from Maggie. "I've got a goldfish on my scanner flatbed." I go "What? What? Put the goldfish back in the bowl.". I think that shows how much effort is put into creating these surrealistic artpieces. It's not just snapping loads of photos of objects. She actually goes to the extreme of scanning objects, and not just dead objects.. 

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Photographer reference #3: Jerry Uelsmann

I was really amazed when I saw Jerry Uelsmann's images for the first time. So many people think that photoshop is such a big breakthrough for photographers and makes it possible to create all these crazy photo manipulated images we see all over on the internet. But in fact its just a tool to do all the stuff you can do in the darkroom on your computer instead. It sure makes the process a whole lot easier I think but you can still do a lot of interesting stuff in the darkroom, and Uelsmann's work is a living proof of this.

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Photographer reference #2: Jeremy Cowart

While searching for inspirational photographers for this project I came across an interesting image by american artist Jeremy Cowart. I'm saying artist instead of photography because Cowart started out painting before he went on to study graphic design. He only started doing photography to help out in his graphic design work, but he soon realized this was his true passion and started doing it full time. But some of his work really shows his diverse background in the arts and it bring his work to another level. This was the image that caught my eye:

And here's a bit more of his work:

He does a lot of different types of photography. It revolves around people for the most part. Celebrities and music groups. These vibrant photographs I'm showing here is just a small part of his work, but I really like the style and the feel of these images, and it might be something I want to copy for when I'm putting the final touches on my own image for this project.

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Proposal / Idea

For this project we have been asked to produce one set of work on the theme dreams & reality. We are allowed to use photoshop in any way we want to achieve our final goal. The final image must be made big enough to be printed in more or less A1-size.

I was looking forward to this project a lot. I'm a huge fan of photoshop and I really want to learn to use the program to its fullest. There is just so many possibilities and ways to go with photoshop. I knew from the start of the project that I wanted to do some compositing but I didn't really know what I would do or how I would approach it. 

After I had thought about it for awhile I finally ended up with the idea to do something about daydreaming. I was inspired by Erik Johanssons photos of the lady holding up the painting of a few ships in the harbor and the water is just flushing out of the painting. He has done another very good manipulation like that which I already included in my reference post on him. 

 I was also inspired by this photo, also by Erik Johansson. 

So my idea is to composite a photograph of an artist painting/drawing a portrait of a girl in a field and he is dosing of and having a daydream where the girl in his painting/drawing is coming out of the frame, she is gradually turning from being a painting/drawing to a photorealistic person and she is stretching out her hands towards him, inviting him into the world he himself is creating on his canvas. I haven't yet decided if I want to do painting or drawing. I'll probably start by drawing and then add a more painterly feel to it as I go along. I will add more to the idea as I go along. 

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Here is my test portraits using a 50mm lens with a Canon 5D MK2 on respectively F1.4, F8 and F22. I ended up doing Karolina's and Charlie's portrait as well as my original buddy for this portrait project, Lennie.