Work Record - Eyes

Plans for the shoot

For this shoot I am going to take photos of peoples eyes in the studio.  I am going to take pictures of them from various angles and get the people to move their eyes so that I can get them facing different angles.  I think that this will work really well, especially working in the studio with the lights adding emphasis to the eyes as a whole.  I am excited to do this shoot and get to editing them because I think that there will be a lot that I can do on photoshop to make them look more enhanced and intriguing.  I thought that this would be fairly easy if I used the tutorials that I found (seperate blog post).  

I was really looking forward to this shoot because I knew that even though it was very simple, I'd be able to get a lot of good results out of it, which is one of the reasons I chose to do it.  I'm going to try and take photos of different people all with different coloured eyes to try and get more variation in the shoot rather than just taking photos of people with brown eyes.  I think that this will be hard in a way because there might not be anyone available with blue or green eyes.  This is when I will use photoshop to manipulate the photos I have taken to make it look like they have blue or green eyes. 

What I hope to achieve

I hope that the photos I take will reflect what I am trying to do.  I want the photos to be very simple but somewhat complex so that I can edit them to make them look more intriguing and interesting to look at.  I also hope that from the edits I can make them look quite fantasy like and mystical looking to engage the people looking at them more.  I think that just by taking the pictures of peoples eyes, this will do it enough, but the edits in themselves will help them stand out more to particular people.  I hope that I will be able to achieve this and get really good results out of the pictures I take within the studio.

These types of photos are ones that I tried to follow: 

What I actually achieved

I think that the photos that I ended up taking turned out really well.  I added some different types of shots into the shoot by taking photos of both eyes together rather than just the one which is what I originally intended on doing.  I think this worked in my favour because it made them look more interesting and it made them nicer to edit when it came to working on photoshop.  I thought that the achievement that I got out of this shoot because I thought.

What I plan to do next

Next I am going to take photos of frost as I think that this will look really pretty and represent the formal elements well.  I am going to work on trying to capture the frost on edges of things such as leaves and flowers to make it look even more elegant and natural.

Work Record - Stop Motion

Plans for the shoot 

For this photo shoot I am planning on taking loads of different photographs and putting them together to form a stop motion video.  I know that I can only post this video onto my blog and not have it in my folder which is why I am going to take some normal pictures if I have time at the end of the shoot and also take some outside of studio time in order to have a wide range of photos available to see in my folder.  I am going to put some of the photos that I take for my folder onto my blog as well to show how they coincide with the stop motion video that I am going to make.


Firstly I am going to start with a clapperboard that I have to show the start of the short story.  I’m going to make this fun and have it go from one side to the other like something eating the screen.  I’m going to then add a film roll into the pictures to make a short story that focuses around the film itself.  I’m going to create a mini story and try to make it look believable and interesting. I think that it’ll be interesting and look really good when it all comes together.  The photos that I am going to take on the side is going to represent the final stop motion that I make, which will hopefully work really well.  

What I hope to achieve
I hope that I am going to create an interesting and believable stop motion that’ll work well with the idea behind the shoot.  I want it to be mainly focused on the career that I wish to pursue which is surrounding film editing.  I am going to get this across by using the film roll to make it’s on little story rather than using something else to show it.  I think that the use of the film roll and the clapperboard will be highly effective to get the point behind the stop motion across. 

What I actually achieved
When I started my shoot I realized that my original idea wasn’t going to work.  My plan to use a film reel to create a story however I found it extremely difficult to put the film reel into the positions that I wanted it in because it kept springing back into it’s original shape.  When I was in the studio working on how I was going to overcome this, I ended up using myself to create a stop motion using my feet and hands to create a short story.  I think that this worked well and the final stop motion that I made looked really effective and interesting. I think that I could of thought more about the type of story that I was trying to tell before I went in to take the pictures and thought more about how I was going to do everything, however I am happy with the way that it all turned out so this doesn’t bother me.

What I am going to do next
For my next shoot I am going to look at eyes.  I think this will be interesting to look at because of the multitude of dimensions that eyes have.  I am going to focus more on the editing side of this shoot to try and make the eyes look brighter and more interesting looking.  I am also going to do more complex editing like trying to get light streaks in and around the eye to make it really emphasised.
 I plan on taking photos in the studio and then editing them in photoshop to create the effect that I am hoping to achieve.  I am using many different tutorials that are shown on my blog to try and get the look that I am going for.  I think that this shoot will work out quite well and I hope that the photos look effective when I’m done. 

Frost Edit

This was my favourite photo from the shoot I did on frost.  I think that this is because the lighting isn't too high or too low and the angle that the photo is taken at highlights the frost that's on the leaf.  I really like the way it turned out and I wanted to added something a little different to the image to try and make it look better.  

In my previous shoot looking at eyes, I came across a photoshop tutorial that taught you how to add light streaks to a photo and I wasn't able to put it on the photos of the eyes because it just didn't look right.  I kept experimenting with different pictures to try and make it look effective but it just didn't work so I though that it would work better on the frost pictures.  I tried the edit on my favourite picture and it turned out really well.  I am extremely happy with the overall outcome of the edit.  

This is the edit: 

I am extremely happy with how it turned out and I think it looks quite mystical and like a fantasy photo.  I just think that the overall outcome of this image is really interesting. 

Frost

For my next developmental shoot I am going to take pictures of the frost outside.  It is perfect frost weather as it is cold but not freezing so I thought it would be a key time to take photos for my shoot.  I looked at many different examples of frost and how they can be edited to look more effective and I definitely want to focus on this in more detail.  

I think that the reason I wanted to focus on this in particular is because most photos that you take of frost look so elegant because it's soft and shows the transition between the seasons.  I like the transition between autumn and winter because of the frost that forms and the coldness that creates it. 

I have looked at many different photos of how photographers represent frost and the pictures that I liked the most were the ones of flowers and leaves and nature in general.  This is what I want to focus on the most when I am taking pictures of frost.  I think that this shoot is going to be interesting to shoot, however I may get a bit cold when shooting, especially if I find it hard to find things to take pictures of. 

These are some of the photos that I really liked:

I wanted to try and replicate the types of things that these photographers had shot because I thought they looked really effective. 

Light Streaks - Eyes

I attempted making light streaks over my eye and I think that it worked alright.  I didn't have any plan when creating this because it was just an experiment so that I could grasp the technique before I tried making the real thing.  I am going to use the same picture, or a different one, i'm not too sure yet, and I am going to put the light streak around the eye so that it frames it.  Before I do this I am going to practice drawing paths with the pen on photoshop to make sure that I can draw an accurate path when it comes to actually drawing over the picture.  

I think that the overall light effect with the glow on the outside and on the inside works really well.  I like the way the brush fades out at the ends to blur into the rest of the picture.  The middle areas where there is the most glow work really well over the eye, making the whites of the eye look whiter than they actually are.  

I'm going to work on this image to make the light streaks a more prominent feature in the image and to frame the eyes to make them stand out more. 

Teared Photo Edit

Final Edits






These are the more complex edits that I attempted.  I started of by just attempting the one eye tear, however I didn't think it looked right so I added the other one so that it might look better.  I'm still not 100% which photo I prefer, however I think they are both good.  Although if I had to choose I would personally say the photo with just the one tear is better because you can see the other eye and how the person originally looks.  I do like the second image although I think that it just looks a little too much when compared to the other one. 

I am going to try and use other techniques to make more complex edits that don't involve this type of technique to show the variety of different edits I can make using photoshop.  

I really like the way these two photos turned out and I think that if I have the time then I will go back and re do the edits to make them look better or focus on particular parts of the picture as a whole.

Favourite Edits

Eery/Vibrant Eye Effect

I edited this photo on photoshop trying to creating an eery looking eye.  I really like the way that it has turned out and I think it definitely worked the way that I intended it to.  I used the tools dodge and burn the most when editing it to make some areas darker and others lighter, without making it look artificial.  I think that this worked nicely and it does look somewhat natural despite it obviously being edited to look this way.

Tutorials for Developmental Eye Shoot

I wanted to try and find some tutorials before I took my photos so that I knew how I was going to edit them beforehand.  I found some interesting tutorials on photoshopessentials.com that showed me how to edit an eye to make it look more vibrant, make it pop and just make it look better.  These are all of the different tutorials that I am going to attempt.

http://www.416studios.co.uk/journal/2012/eye-sharpening-photoshop-tutorial

http://www.photoshopstar.com/photo-effects/eery-eye-photo-manipulation/

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/glamour-eyes/

http://www.worth1000.com/tutorials/161299/tutorial

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/radial-zoom-eyes/

The next effects use faces rather than eyes but I can still do this effect on an image of an eye, still making it look effective. 

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/blur-streaks/

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/tear-photo/

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/light-streaks/

http://luxa.org/tutorial_electrifying_energy_beams.php

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tutorials-effects/creating-a-vector-composite-effect-from-a-photo/

I am hopefully going to achieve a good outcome after trying all of these different effects although they might not all go to plan due to some of them being much more complex than others. 

My Own Stop Motion

After taking all of my photographs that I needed to make my stop motion in the studio, I started editing out all of the minor glitches on each photo to make sure that all of the photos were spotless.  To do this I used photoshop with the patch tool and removed the specs that must've been on the lens when I was shooting.  This didn't take too long so it wasn't much hassle.

After I did this I started working in iMovie, piecing together all of the images that I took to make it look like I wanted.  It isn't a very long stop motion and it is very basic but I my aim for this shoot wasn't to make it look extremely professional because that would just take up too much time which I don't have.  I wanted to just experiment with the idea of stop motion but making a stop motion that would still look enjoyable and interesting.  I think I did quite a good job in creating my stop motion, although I think that if I have spare time, I could make it better or add to the amount of stop motions that I do by doing another shoot but focusing more on a certain story and how I'm going to portray that in each individual photo. 

This is the end result of all my work.  I think it looks quite interesting, although I think I could've told an in depth story. I just didn't have the time. 

Main Stop Motion Inspiration

Behind my idea to choose stop motion as a topic of interest I was looking at many different youtube videos which is mainly what inspired me to give it a go.  I came across many different video highlighted in the previous post.  These videos were some of the most intricate so I thought that they would show what I was trying to achieve quite well.  However, I came across a youtube channel called 'hottomolly1' - http://www.youtube.com/user/hottomolly1?feature=watch

I found her videos especially inspirational and I loved the many different messages that she could put across through her stop motion videos.  She has a particular group of videos called chalkboard imagination  These videos in particular I found more interesting to watch.  I loved the way she'd put all of the separate images together, spending hours on end to make it perfect.  All of her time and effort paid off and I think she should get a lot more credit than she does.  She is probably the main reason I wanted to experiment with stop motion.  Whether stop motion interests you or not, her videos can relate to individual people because of the variation of messages she conveys. 

One of my favourite videos by her is 'What If?' 

This is definitely one of the best videos she's made, not only is it complex and hard to make, she manages to put a very strong point across, which makes you think.. The way that she makes her audience feel this way is powerful but her editing skills and the way she puts all of the different images together really make the video.

I was extremely intrigued as to how she made it, which was when I saw a link to 'The making of chalkboard imagination.' I watched the video and truly appreciated the amount of time and effort that she puts into making each and every one of her videos.  The link to the making of video is below if you're curious. 

Some of the other videos that she has made have also inspired me a lot and I appreciate every single video she has made because all of them have a message in which are translated through the use of photography and film.

These are some of the other videos that she has created :

She has definitely been a big inspiration to me which is why I wanted to focus an entire blog post on her and her work.  If you want to see more of her videos then check out her youtube channel I mentioned at the beginning (Y)

Stop Motion Developmental Shoot Inspiration

Inspirational examples of stop motion for my developmental shoot.

I looked on youtube to try and find some inspiration for my developmental photo shoot.  I knew what I wanted to do and I came across some really interesting examples that I could use well when doing mine.  I also like looking behind the scenes of some of the videos (if they have them), to try and work out if I can use similar techniques to do my own stop motion.

Videos like the ones I have shown below are really interesting and show a short story through taking lots of pictures and putting them all together to make a stop motion.  I would really like to re-create something similar to this to try and make my own stop motion just as good.  

Certain stop motions, like the post-it-note one above take a lot more work than the others and are much more digitally edited that the others.  they use specific software that can help them achieve the perfect result hat they are looking for without making it look fake or un-real when compared to other stop motions that might look more believable. 

I really like looking at different types of stop motion to try and work out how spaced apart I want each photo to be to try and make the stop motion flow more but I don't want to add to many images because it might become complicated when re-constructing the final images to make the stop motion.