Intrim Evaluation

Interim Evaluation:
My initial ideas for juxtaposition were to contrast life with death, this is because we are taught to fear death as a final destination and were taught to fear our final judgement by whichever God you believe in. I used skulls to represent our mortality at the end of every work record. 

For each work record I completed a shoot that was relevant to the photographer I'd researched and then at the end of each work record I placed another contact sheet of images that merged the shoot I'd just completed with skulls. I did this so that I'd be able to evolve  and better my style of photography twice with each photographer. The first shoot would be focused on using the techniques and the compositions of the photographer and then the second shoot would be using the new skills I'd learnt and applying them to the theme of Juxtaposition. This second shoot can be found under the title of Juxtaposition at the end of every work record, apart from the last because Cheech Sanchez's work related directly to the theme of juxtaposition and my recurring theme of skulls. 

Cheech Sanchez was the most influential in my work as it was through her work that I began focusing on composition. Another prominent photographer that influenced my work is Beth Galton as her work helped highlight the importance of lighting in my work.
Here are some examples of my work that was improved by their influence. 

Photographers Research Six Cheech Sanchez

Photographers Research Six: Cheech Sanchez

Image Bank:

In this image there is a skull submerged in a pile of McDonald's wrappers.I like this image because it looks as though the skull was a past lover of McDonalds and has succumb to their love of fast food. 


The debry around the skull in this image implies that the person it belonged to lived a very unhealthy life of cigarettes and drugs, which is how they arrived at their death. 



The fact you can barely see the skull under the litter suggests that this person's life was overwhelming and so they sought solace in junk food and only ended  up dead. 



The composition of this image implies that the person who's head is on the tray was killed by the same person who's meal it is. The significance of the skull being next to someone's meal could mean they fell foul of a cannibal and that's how they died. 



This image has stereotypically girly toys with a morbid skull in the centre. This could imply that girls are being taught to act according to their gender stereotypes from a young age (hence the baby) and this confinement to social roles shall result in death. 

Influence and Summary:

For this photographer I paid attention to how she composed her images. She subtly places the skull in otherwise normal situations, this may mean that she is trying to highlight the toxic errors of society. I have used her theme of junk food for my images and have noted how she uses lights and composition to add a macabre undertone to otherwise unsuspicious items. 

My work:

Work Record Six (Cheech Sanchez)

Work Record Six (Cheech Sanchez)

Plans For Shoot:
For this shoot I am going to take photographs of a McDonald's Big Mac Meal with a skulls to show how excessively eating junk food will lead to health problems and then death.
Research Influence:

She was a photographer that operated in Melbourne,Australia and has since moved into another industry. She has completed a photo series of skulls positioned with different objects. 

Image Bank:









Contact Sheet:

Images that need improvement:
DS7_3433.JPG:
I this image the light was in the wrong place and so the shadow of the box blots out some of the details at the bottom of the skull. This was an experiment into the composition of my images and I learnt from this and changed the lighting for different images later in this series.
DS7_3438.JPG:
I dislike the lighting in this image as I wanted deeper shadows and this image doesn't have any, this results in a change of tone. The lighter/blander the images the less severe the warning about junk food is. 

My Best Images:

A03:
MY favorite image is the one of the skull taking a bite out of the burger as it implies that the former person died due to their love of McDonald's. My second favorite would be the last couple of images as it looks as though the person has been buried by the wrappers of junk food. The consumer has been consumed. I don't like the crumbs that have fallen off of the chips that are scattered around the bottom of the image as it distracts from the skull that is in the wreckage. On the other hand it does infer that the chaos was caused by an accident and not constructed by me. 
A02:
For this shoot I used my Nikon DSLR with an 18-200mm lens and a tripod to keep the camera steady. When I went to take a shot, my pressing the shutter would move the camera and so blur the image. To remedy this I used a remote release which meant I wasn't moving the camera anymore and the images were coming out correctly. I was considering using a lower F-stop but that would've narrowed the field of focus and distracted from the whole image. 

A01:
My initial idea was to recreate the images from my photographers research and then form some of my own ideas from that point. How I developed my ideas was to centre my images more around the skull than Sanchez does. This is because I feel the large amounts of wrappers and food waste distracts from the message I feel the images convey. This message is if you eat a large quantity of junk food it will cause you considerable harm.


Improving my best images:
Firstly I opened all the RAW files of my best images and edited them as soon as they opened in photoshop. 

I raised the exposure to keep the image balanced as I lowered the Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. This maintained the finer details of the image. I then lowered the Vibrance and saturation so the image would looked drained of life and would consequently reflect my subject matter. I was considering converting the images to black and white, but I wanted the red packaging to retain some of it's colour so that the image would keep some of the depth of tone. 

to further edit my images I wanted to apply a vignette to create an intense focus on the skull and the food. 

To do this I used a Google filter, a free filter that has been downloaded off the Internet. 

Once I clicked on the above dropdown menu I chose the filter I wanted to apply.

Here are my final images:

A04:

I feel I have created an appropriate response to the theme of Juxtaposition. I feel this because the skulls represent the consequences of eating unhealthy foods excessively. This is juxtaposition as skeletons are unable to eat, they have no digestive system. 

Next time I'd like to further my theme of skulls and incorporate them into landscapes as I feel this would challenge my creativity and photoshop skills. 

Work Record Five (Beth Galton)

Work Record Five (Beth Galton):

Plans For Shoot:
My main idea is to take photographs of strange and unusual foods that I could find in my local supermarket. I will use my father's small studio setup which consists of a few lamps, card and heavy water bottles to lean the card against. I would also like to record the process of making something as I find culinary photography interesting. Once I have completed this shoot I will leave the vegetables outside long enough so they rot. Then I will take more photographs of them outside, once I'm finished I will put them in the compost. 

Research Influence:
I've investigated the work of Beth Galton. She is a professional photographer works mainly with food and has been commissioned by large companies such as Burt's Bees, Starbucks etc. She has a strong sense of light and composition which has to lead to her rise in the professional advertising business. 
Image Bank:

Contact Sheet:

Images that need improvement:

DSC_3144.JPG:
I dislike the framing of this image as the bowl isn't at the centre of the shot and so the biscuits aren't the main focus as I'd like them to be. I won't reshoot as I took a large number of photographs on the shoot and I think I have a good shot amongst those I took. 
DSC_3231.JPG:
I also dislike this framing as the vegetables aren't in the centre of the image and the lighting isn't quite in the centre and so the main focus of the image isn't highlighting the vegetables as I'd like it to. 

DSC_3310.JPG:
There is too much foreground in this image, as I was using a tripod with a macro lens it was difficult to keep the framing how I'd have liked it and still avoid camera shake. To fix this I switched the camera to live view so I'd be able to see the image on a larger view and began using a remote to stop camera shake.

My Best Images:
DSC_3172.JPG:

I wouldn't have thought to use a macro lens to take motion shots but I was experimenting with the style of shots I was taking and I like how this shot turned out. The fact that the crumbs are falling off of the spoon it implies that the person is in constant motion while cooking this cheesecake. 

DSC_3189.JPG:

AS I said before I was using a Macro lens to take these shots and this action shot of the biscuits being put into a tin is much better than I thought it would be. 

DSC_3210.JPG:

 I like this shot because of how close I was to the vegetables and so your focus is completely on them. However, this framing would have removed the depth because of how close it was so I lowered the F-stop so that the depth of field was shallower. 

DSC_3262.JPG:

I took this shot on a wooden chopping board and used a brown bowl for the nuts because it would follow along with the same colour pallet. This is something that Galton does in her photographs as it marries the different components of her images together expertly. 

DSC_3264.JPG:

 For this particular image, I wanted it to look like someone had spilt their granola breakfast onto the table, so I sprinkled oats and dried fruits on the board as well. 

DSC_3269.JPG:

I wanted to re-arrange the camera so that the angle allowed me to see the different dried fruits I'd placed on the board. I followed the same colour pallet with the dried fruits as I had with the oats and nuts to keep the viewer's attention on the whole image. If I'd have used dried apricot then they would have distracted from the other items because of their naturally bright colour. 

DSC_3288.JPG:

I like the soft lighting in this image as it highlights the rich colours of the fruit and vegetable. I wanted to take some ideas from Beth Galton so I experimented with my lighting techniques, and I like how this image came out.



Contact Sheet Two:

Images That Need Improvement:

DS7_3381.JPG:

This image is too dark as I had the F-stop relatively high as I wanted to make sure all of the vegetables were in focus.  DS7_3419.JPG:
For this image I had the F-stop too high and so the aperture wasn't high enough for the low light conditions I was in. 

My Best Images:

DS7_3355.JPG:

DS7_3365.JPG:

 DS7_3373.JPG:

 DS7_3376.JPG:

 DS7_3387.JPG:

 DS7_3415.JPG:

A03:

My favorite image of the fresh vegetables is DS7_3269.JPG as all the vegetables have been cut in half and you can see the rich colours of the different foods.My favourite image out of the rotten vegetables is DS7_3415.JPG as I had the F-stop at F/16 and so the aperture was taking in enough light as it should have for this image but I like how dark it has turned out. I would have liked to shoot this again a studio so that I'd be able to control the lighting, where I couldn't in this shoot because it was outside. 

A02:

I used my Nikon DSLR with a 18-200mm lens. In hindsight I should have used a Macro Lens and a tripod inside with the studio, with lights so that I'd be able to control the lighting and the exposure. This would mean I'd capture more light and consequently more details. I was unable to do this because of the subject I was taking photographs of; the vegetables were rotten and they smelt bad. If I was to bring them into the house to shoot them the lights I have for the studio would hot and subsequently heat up the vegetables, spreading the bad smell. I like the camera settings I used for the rotten vegetables because the lighting reflects the subject of my images, something dark and disgusting. 

A01:

My initial ideas for work record was to simply take photographs of the fresh vegetables and complete another shoot on unhealthy food. I changed my ideas to shooting fresh vegetables and rotten vegetables as this would create less waste and a deeper contrast. The two shoots highlight how we are all bound by time and how we will all eventually decay. I also like the camera settings I used for each of the shoots. The bright studio lights brought out the gorgeous colours of the fresh vegetables and granola and the camera settings I used for my later shoot are dark and miserable, much like the food that has passed it's best. 

Improving My Best Images:
I used photoshop to improve my best images.I wanted to use light to my advantage and so I used curves to change the exposure:

Then I wanted to use black and white to highlight the contrast between the two images, and then layer them over each other as double exposures:

I didn't like how the image turned out as it is difficult to distinguish the two different images apart. I then decided to use a different method of presenting my images.
I created another image with width: 6000, height: 4000 and a resolution of 300 pixels/inch. 

I then copied my other images into the new image and rearranged them using CTRL+T, which allowed me to change the size of the images. 

Here is the end result:

I like this much more as it still shows a contrast between the images, and still allows each individual image to be seen. I continued to experiment with this arrangement with my other images. 

Here are my final images:

A04:
I believe that I have logically and critically developed my ideas to meet my desired intentions. I think this because I have developed my ideas to best suit the outcome I was looking for. I wanted to show the contrast in the fresh and the mouldy. I wanted to find a visual representation of how food loses its appeal the closer it gets to being returned to the soil. 

Juxtaposition:
I used different fruit and vegetables with a fake human skull to investigate what the composition would look like with the different colours. 

I dislike the way these images have come out as the composition is too simplistic. However, I do like the plumb as the black and purple are complementary colours, meaning they look good next to each other. 

For my next shoot I would like to further investigate another food photographer and how food can be presented with skulls. I like presenting food with skulls and they're bone and no longer need the sustenance.