Research - Hannah Höch

     Hannah Höch was a German artist (November 1, 1889 - May 31, 1978) who was best known for her work in the Weimar period where she was one of the originators of photomontage.
     Many of Höchs works from 1926 to 1973 critique the mass culture beauty industry and gained significant momentum in mass media through her fashion and advertising photograph. Höch liked to make strong statements against racial discrimination and this can be seen in 'Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser DADA durch die letzte weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands' .

I like Höchs work because it has meaning and portrays a certain industry through her eyes and what she sees however I don't think i'll use her techniques in my work as they stand out from the background too much for the subtle look that I wanted. The images are just block pictures layered one on top of another in a collage style whereas I would prefer the layers to fade together and appear to be one image whereas it is clear that these images are separate and put together. 

     

Research - Catherine McIntyre.

     Catherine McIntyre is currently working as a computer based illustrator and graphic designer in the north-east of Scotland after training as an illustrator at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and coming out with a Bachelor of Design in 1993 and then went on further to gain a Master of Design in 1994.
     McIntyre works with both still life and portrait photography before going on to layer images on top of one another with different colour and textures and fading them so as all of the layers are visible in the image. Her work is usually fairly abstract, especially the commissioned work that uses faded parts of a portrait photograph as well as other still life objects faded and blended in to the image so are all composed very differently.
     The images are shown on a website at a fairly small size so you can't see much of the finer detail but it allows you to look at the picture in layers rather than trying to pick out fine details like you would if the image size was larger and less fine.
     The images all have titles that relate to the digitally manipulated image as well as saying who the commissioned work is for.

Business Brains

for Nursing Times.

Lust

for .net magazine

Feng Shui

for 'Feng Shui for You and Your Cat' by Alison Daniels.

     I like this work because of all the layers used by McIntyre as it adds depth to the image and there will always be parts of the photograph that people won't immediately see and will require the audience to look deeper in to the photograph rather than just glancing at it. I would used some of the techniques such as layering portraits and textures together to give effects on the background and skin which I really like however I would use darker colours as I think those look better then the brighter colours as the effects are more subtle when darker.

   

Image Manipulation Part 2.

     For this assignment we have been asked to produce at least one final image that has been digitally manipulated in Adobe Photoshop. We have a free choice of theme for our final digital image so we can use ideas and inspiration from other photographers that we will research throughout the assignment to help us get stronger ideas by looking at the history of digital manipulation to gain a greater knowledge to use in our final image(s). Throughout the six weeks, we will have to complete three Photoshop workshops and evidence them on our blogs to show what we have learned as well as evaluating our final image at the end of the assignment.

John Goto Photography.

John Goto's Photography.

Eadweard Muybridge Photography.

Eadweard Muybridge's Photography.

Evaluation.

For this assignment we had to make a Fantasy Landscape thats consisted of multiple pictures taken on a digital camera (Canon EOS 550D) which would then be digitally manipulated on a computer using Adobe Photoshop to layer sections of each image on to a background photo.
     We had to go and take landscape photos and subjective photos around Burton that we would use to layer on one another by using a digital SLR camera and a tripod to prevent camera shake. This was fairly easy as you could get the landscape photographs from round the back of the college and the subjective ones from around the town. I am please with how both sets of photographs came out as they were clear and had no camera shake on them so I had good photos to work with.
     Editing the photos on to layers also went well as the shapes I wanted out of the subjective images were fairly easy to separate from the rest and could be placed where I wanted them on the main background image. However, I didn't like the bench that I placed in to my image towards the back as to me it looked as though it had clearly been photoshopped and didn't look realistic enough personally. My favourite part of the image was the balloons that were located close to the front of the image as they looked realistic and the edges were soft enough to help the realistic look whereas the bench has sharp edges where it hasn't been blurred or smudged so the bench looked edited on.
     If I were to do this again, I would change the subjective photos so as there was a wider variety of things in the photograph as well as using objects that would look more realistic in the image. I would also take more care to blur the images in to the background so as the edges were softer and it blended in to the image better than it does now.
    I would keep the balloons the same in the image as I liked that element the most and I personally think that was what turned out best. I would also use the same lasso techniques as I did before as it did well to remove the subject from the background.
     The final outcome of my image was better than I expected because I didn't really have any ideas until I researched other artists such as John Goto who gave me inspiration for my final photo with his images and from there they developed as I went out to take my photographs where my ideas started to come together and I had a clearer idea of what I wanted to do. Although Goto's work was inspirational to me, there were elements of his work that I didn't like as much such as the sharpness of his pasted images which made me decide that I wanted to blur edges to make them look more natural than Goto's work.
     Overall I am happy with my final Fantasy Landscape images as it is better than I imagined it to look and I am also happy that I decided to blur the edge of the subject as it gives the photo a more natural feel and they blend in to the image well. Although there were certain elements of the photo that I would change given the chance, I am happy with the outcome and would have a clearer idea of what to do if I ever had to do this sort of task again.

Artist Research - John Goto

     John Goto was born in Stockport, England in 1949 and is best known for his photo-digital artworks. He now works as a professor of Fine Art at the University of Derby after his successful career that started in the late 1960's when he studied Fine Art at St. Martins School of Art, London where an interest in the narrative forms of European cinema lead him to the medium of Photography. From there, he produced a series of photographs in 1977 of culturally significant portraits of young people in Lewisham that was entitled 'Lovers Rock', however, the photo was not published or exhibited until 2011.
     I have looked at Goto's work and you can see that he has taken many photographs of different subjects and digitally manipulated them so as they all become one image. To do this he would have to use at least 2 images and cut our the focus point that you want and paste it on to the other image and may have used techniques such as blurring and smudging to make the pasted objects seem more realistic.
     I like Goto's work because it is creative in the fact that it is fairly obviously digitally manipulated and it gives the quality of child-like and fun to the photo. This work is also similar to our task of producing a fantasy landscape as his work is a creative fantasy as him images are very unrealistic.