Melissa Morrell

West herts Photography Student

[melissamorrellwhc]

I like this idea to either do self portraits or portraits of friends and family and present them like you would receive photos from a photo booth -  Showing different expressions of your personality. 

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a modern hair study - Photographs and text by Tara Bogart | LensCulture

Portraits of young women photographed from behind force the viewer to imagine the personalities based on peripheral details like hairstyles, tattoos and other visual clues

I searched in to google ‘Portrait series’ and i found this pretty interesting. A photographer called Tara Bogart took Portraits of young women from behind to force the viewer to imagine the personalities based on peripheral details like hairstyles, tattoos and other visual clues.

[melissamorrell]

Children Photography 

- Studio Set-up; white backdrop, flash lights, white umbrellas.

Here are my best final studio photographs of children. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

I would like to develop my skills and work on this genre more because it would be good for my future. However, caring on with this topic could be difficult as to who i can ask to take photos of. Depending on the Childs age it can be tricky as you got to interact with the child more - getting their attention and position them right. This can take some time to get to know what to do, so i would have to do several shoots as photographing a shouldn't be any longer than 1 hour as they can lose interest. 

I like these photographs because of the chills expressions and sharpness of the images - the clarity of their eyes. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Here are my final Still life photographs that i took from each photo shoot. I took images of several products i.e. lipstick, eye liner,mascara, nail varnish, a glass and a watch. 

These product were photographed in a light tent or on a piece of white paper. 

My favourite images are the ones i took of the watch and the lipstick. This is because i like the colour, contrast and compositions. Some of the techniques that i used for these images are; shallow & large depth of field, macro filters, colour and contrast.  

I would like to take this further and develop my skills with still life photography. Maybe changing the background colour instead of keeping it white and adding more props to help advertise the product. However i am not confident enough to choose to do still life photograph for my FMP as i don’t think i am as strong as in other genres. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Still Photography is a matter of lighting and arrange a group of objects in creative way. The still life photographer makes pictures rather than takes them

Inspiration of still life photography from a variety of photographers 

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Mood boards

babies and commercial still life photography. 

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Christmas Project

This christmas project will be purposeful because i will be aiming for ideas for my final major project. 

Over christmas i will hopefully be shooting two of my concepts in not i will be shooting and developing my first concept. My concepts are to 1. photograph children/babies and my 2nd concept is to photograph commercial still life photography. 

Personal brief - children/babies:

Concept: My idea is to photograph children into a studio environment where i can control the lighting and use window lighting when photographing in certain rooms.. this is for me to gain practice working with younger subjects for my future work . 

location: Home studio/ life style. 

lighting: Soft lighting - white umbrellas or soft boxes (x2) and window light (home life style. 

equipment: digital camera, white background, background stand, 2 lights. 

models: my two nephews (7 months & 1 1/2 years old). 

props: Towels, blankets, knitted hats, toys etc. 

influences: Mood boards & photographers i.e. Angela G, Jess Morgan. 

Personal brief - commercial still life:

Concept: appealing commercial still life products that i could use for my portfolio and gain clients in the future. 

location: Home studio

lighting: soft and hard lighting - using spill skills or soft boxes. 

equipment: tripod, camera, reflectors, black and white backdrops, 2 - 3 light sources. 

props: product, i.e. shoes, body care location, make-up, technology.  

influences: mood board and photographer Michael Molloy. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Final Images

Self Portrait/ Self- Destroyed Portrait Finals 

The photoshop techniques that i used throughout my destroyed self portrait were: quick selection - is what you will use to select a specific part of an image and copy and paste it to make a new layer by its self; free transform, warp tool, blending modes, opacity/ fill mode, mask layers, composites, levels and the clone tool - which is were you can copy a part of the image and paste it over another section of the image. 

In my opinion i found these two images are successful and that i am proud of my end result. 

The reason why my self portrait is successful is because of the lighting and the composition. The lighting i used was one flash light with a white umbrella used as a defuser to get an evenly spread of light over my face, which was to the left, placed just above my eye. The reason why i like the composition is because its mainly space other then me. This was my improvement section throughout my test shots that i achieved in my self portrait. 

The reason why my self destroyed portrait is successful is because i achieve what i set to aim for. I set out to achieve if my dad and i look a like. I chose this with my dad because we have similar personalities and people always said i looked more like my dad. So therefore, with my destroyed portrait i wanted to see if see have similarities in our faces. As this was successful, i found out that we have the same shape when we smile, same nose and the same face shape. In the photo, you can notice that there are two faces around our nose area. Even though we have the same nose, my dad is older and bigger, so his noses is wider. This is also successful because though there are two faces, the face doesn't seem unrealistic in the image and it has a natural out line that connects well with my hair. Also, because of the use of techniques the face doesn't seem to come out slightly orange because there two layers of faces. This shows that i can use and understand uses of techniques in photoshop. 

I could improve these images by:

With my portrait i could have improved it my changing my position and pose, so that i could have taken my self portrait without the edge of the chair in it. 

With my self destroyed portrait, peers said that i could have developed image more by destroying it more. I do find this a good idea, however i won’t take up this advice. This is because if i destroyed it more, it would take away the purpose of what i achieve with this end result. 

My final images are related to my mood board research and images from my improvement area by Alma Haser’s for ‘cosmic surgery’ inspired me. 

looking forward, i want to work more with portraits, to help me develop my skill so i can work in the field of portraiture in my future.

[melissamorrellwhc]

Final Images

Portrait/ Destroyed Portrait Finals Photographed of my Older sister Kirsty, taken by myself. 

The photoshop techniques that i used throughout the destroyed portrait were: composite layers - which are too use more than one image to create one final image; blending modes, opacity/fill modes, quick selection, mask layers, colour, black and white, levels, brightness&contrast, eraser tool, burn tool, polygonal lasso tool - which is another way to make a selection but more accurate; free transform, warp tool and the smudge tool.   

I am proud of my final two portraits because i think they were successful because i achieved what i set out to aim. 

With my final portrait it was successful because of the lighting, focus and because of how i directed her to shape her face. the lighting was successful because i was one flash light with a white umbrella and placed to the right of her face from a high position - just above her eyes. I used a white umbrella because i wanted my light to become soft and the colour white defuses the light. This made the light spread evenly across her face, which was good. The focus of this image is good because the main focus that draws you in are her eye. I am happy with this because i think the main focus of portrait are the persons eyes and thats what i achieved. What i mean by saying ‘i directed her to shape her face’ is that i told her how to sit in what direction and told her to move or tilt her head a certain way and even to move you chin/ face forward - these movements where to give her a nice jaw line and not a double chin. 

With my final destroyed portrait it was successful because of i achieved what i aim for for my mood and atmosphere, which was to be dramatic, strong and emotional. Having these type of aims made use of colour successful because they were dark, contrasty - which made my image strong and slightly bright. It was also successful because i achieved the emotional full and view in my opinion. I think this was done by my choices of images to composite and her facial expression as she seems calm but then with the fire and a rough textured face she seems to have a crazy inner emotions. All of this was successful because of all the photoshop techniques i used, which shows me that i do have an understanding of how to use photoshop.   

I could improve these images by:

With my portrait image i could improve this image by adding space/ background around her. To zoom out slightly and not make the scale of her face big. 

With my destroyed portrait i could improve this image by add more fire sparks around the frame of the image to make it more dramatic and also to lighten up two layers, which are the tree bark texture and her face. This is to make her face appear more - this is to make the view think for about her and not that its just some random face. 

My research did help me with my practical work for my idea generations and my experimental work. With my mood boards, i saw photographs or over-layed textures, surrealism and fire - all of which i wanted to use and experiment together. looking at these sort of photos influenced my in my experimental decisions and my final outcome. 

looking forward, i want to work more with portraits, to help me develop my skill so i can work in the field of portraiture in my future. however, i also want to experiment and develop my skills and creative ideas in the photography world of surrealism. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Personal briefs

With both of my destroyed portrait i want them to meaning full either to the viewer or of the person whose portrait it is. 

1.  Destroyed Self-Portrait

concept: I want to have a destroyed portrait that proves something about me. I want to use composites - images of family to see if we look alike as we share the same personalities. 

lighting: I want to use soft light from a white umbrella. 

Equipment:  flash light, white umbrella, sync lead, a white wall, digital camera, a reflector.

Techniques:  The techniques i want to use are  composites, layers, lasso tools, changing the opacity/fill/blending modes, warp tool and more. 

location: Home studio based

Influence: Mood board research - A portrait image of 4 different parts of 4 different peoples faces that made one portrait. From there i refined that idea to fit me. 

2. Destroyed portrait

concept: I want the destroyed portrait to have a touch or surrealism and to shows emotion to the viewer through a strong image. I want to my image to have overlays of texture and i also wanted to go something with fire as i have always wanted to experiment with and fire itself shows a strong emotional pull to viewer. 

lighting: With the original image i was to use soft lighting using either a soft box or a white umbrella. 

Equipment: flash light, white umbrella, sync lead, a white wall, digital camera, a reflector. 

Techniques: The techniques i want to use are composites, layers, lasso tools, burn tool, free transform, mask layers, blending mode and more. 

model: I model i want to use for this destroyed portrait is my older sister because my vision of my final image connects better with her as she can relate to bottled all her emotions away. 

location: home studio based.

mood/atmosphere: I want to have a dark, strong surrealism feel to my final that makes the viewer think about her emotions. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Destroyed Portrait - experimentation 2

I will be showing some screen shots of how i developed my final outcome, where the photoshop techniques helped change my image. 

Firstly i opened my image that i wanted and used the polygonal lasso tool to select around her face. I then copied the selection into a new layer by (ctrl+c) then (ctrl+v). 

I then created a new layer and filled the background black. I placed this layer underneath the layer i just created of her face. 

On ‘layer 1′ ( her face) i used the free transform to flip the image over to have her face in the opposite direction. 

With ‘later 1′ i changed it into black and white. then I the used a soft eraser tool and a lower opacity to fade away the hard edges. 

Then i opened up another images of texture that i was going to use and moved textured image onto the image i’m destroying. i put this layer at the top above all and used the blending mode of ‘overlay’ to merge the texture with her face. 

From here i adjusted the levels, contrast and colour on both the texture and face layers. 

I opened up another image of fire. From there i used the quick selection tool to select a part of the fire and make a new layer and move it to the other image. I then used the free transform to resize, more and warp the fire over her eye. 

I then opened the last image, which is of fire sparks and put that behind her face to make the fire sparks are coming out of her head. i also used the quick selection tool again to select certain parts of the sparks and duplicate them a copy time and place them around her face and the edges of the image. 

This experimentation was successful because i destroyed her portrait using photoshop techniques and a couple more images to make it look a little like surrealism and i like the emotional feel and pull i get from this image. This is because her facial expression looks calm but then you got the rough texture over face, an eye of fire, fire sparks from her head, which gives you a different feeling altogether - which suggests her inner emotions. 

The photoshop techniques used here are composites, layer masks, polygonal lasso tool, black and white, free transform, warp, blending modes - overlay, opacity, fill, brush tool, smudge tool, eraser, levels, contrast; however while using these techniques if could have done them another, for example - instead of using the eraser tool i could have used the burn tool and also changed the opacity and flow of the brush. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Destroyed self-Portrait Experimentation 2

For my second destroyed portrait i was inspired by an image i saw while doing my mood board research; it was a face that was made up of 4 different people. I then got an idea of doing a self-destroyed portrait with my family faces as well. Then i refined that idea even more: I just chose one family member which was my dad. I chose my dad because we have similar personalities and i wanted to see how much we looked alike. So therefore, i will be doing a self-destroyed portrait entwining my dads face with mine. 

1. I opened up both images. A self portrait and a portrait of my dad. 

2. Duplicated my self-portrait layer.

3. I used the ‘polygonal lasso tool’ to select his face only. 

4. With the selection i pressed (ctrl+c) then (ctrl+v). This is a quicker way to move the selected part into a new layer by itself. 

5. Then i dragged the face across to my self portrait image. 

Its copied over now.

6. On this layer i slightly adjusted the opacity so that i can move my dads face while seeing my self-portrait. 

7. i used the ‘free transform’ (ctrl+T) to resize the face so its near enough the same size as my face. 

8. I used the ‘warp’ tool. To use this tool i went to Edit>transform>Warp. I used this tool to fit is his more actually over mine.  

9. Then i moved the layer (of my dad) below my duplicated layer. 

This is my last screen shot. 

10. Here i played around with the opacity and fill of my ‘duplicated’ layer, so i can see some of my fathers features. 

11. On my dads layer i used the ‘clone’ tool to add some minor details around the forehead. This was to get the edge of the forehead the same colour and the rest.  

The idea that i was achieving for was successful which means that my final result for this experimentation was successful too. The techniques that i used went well as they helped me achieve my end result and they were: free transform, warp tool, clone tool, polygonal lasso tool, opacity/fill, composite, layers and duplicate layers.   

I can improve this image by destroying more of the image; add another family member or make it more exciting by playing with colours. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

3 portraits from the LRC

The inspiration from these photos are the composition in the images and the space in the frame around the subject. 

Some photoshop techniques used in these images are: the dodge tool, burn tool, skin re-touch, liquify, adjustments of highlights and shadows, hue & saturation, contrast, composites, layer masks and a clone tool. these techniques and adjustments are in my opinion of how that photographers might have manipulated these images. 

British Journal of Photography August 2015 volume 162 issue no. 7838

Amateur Photographer lighting secrets Nov 2014 - mar 2015 (box folder)

[melissamorrellwhc]

Re-shoot of portraits and self-portraits

In this re-shoot it was to mainly re-shoot my self-portrait, however i wanted to take a few my images experimenting with space within the photographs, so that the face isn't a to big of a scale within the image. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Improvement research

Alma Haser's "Cosmic Surgery"

The meaning of looking at these photos below is to think about space and composition for my re-shoot of images. 

Photoshop Techniques used or could have been used in these images below are composites, shapes, reflections, lasso tool, clone tool, stamp tool, layers, mask layers and more. 

This image above is most effective to my experimentation and how to improve my experimentation in the next step. However, i would add more shapes to the face or make the shapes bigger as i would want to make that the focal point as being a destroyed portrait. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Destroyed Self-Portrait experiments

Firstly, i opened up a couple of self portraits into photoshop. 

Here i used the ‘lasso tool’ to create shapes i.e. triangles, to select different parts of my face. Then right clicked ‘ layer via copy’. this was to copy the selected area into a new layer by itself. 

With the new layer i wanted to copy the image over to another image. To do this i ‘right’ clicked the layer to ‘duplicate’. When the pop up came up i went to ‘destination’ and clicked on image name that i had opened already and wanted to use that layer as my background. 

Here it shows the selected shape onto another image. From here i used the ‘free transform’ technique, so i can resize the shapes and move it to where i want. 

I did the same method a few more times with the rest of the images and with different shapes and parts of my face. 

Finally, i duplicated the original image and placed it at the top of all the layers and changed the ‘fill’ down to 25%, so that you can still see the full face beneath all the shapes. 

The important part for me was to get good lighting, so it was equally spread across my face. This is because if i get good lighting i can choose the photos i want to use to create a destroyed portrait, which i’m proud of. So therefore, i think this experimentation from the beginning (of taking the photos) to the end (of destroying the photos) was successful. 

The photoshop techniques i used were shapes, lasso tool, layers, duplication tool, free transform, composites and opacity/ fill. With my self-destroyed portrait experimentation i kept my techniques simple as i didn't want to go over the top. I wanted the experiment simple but effective as it was of me - because i wanted to give the viewer time to think about what emotions they feel from see the image and to think more deeply about it. 

The things i can improve the experimentation is with the shapes. To either make the edges either line up with each  other properly of to make them all overlap each other and to also to take a away one of the shapes ( the nose image) and redo it. This is because this shapes a has more sides to the other shapes and it sometimes it just looks weird and out of place. 

[melissamorrellwhc]

Contact Sheet - Portraits

Here are contact sheets of portraits that i have taken of my family and myself that i will be using for my final images and will be using to create a destroyed self-portrait and a destroyed portrait of someone else. 

These portraits were taken against a white wall and i was using one source of soft light form my flash light with a white umbrella to the right.  

From this photoshoot i have produced some good photographs of my 3 family members and have used my self-portraits to create my destroyed self-portrait. However, i will be reshooting my self portraits to get a better compositions for a head shot - for my final self-portrait.