Harry Clarke

Portfolio

Digital Media artsThe Still ImageStudent Number: 3016142November 2011

Self Portrait

Use of self timer

Low Light image – 1.6 secs, F5

Shallow depth of field

Fast shutter speed – 1/200, F5.6

Light

Colour

Texture

Line

Balance

Movement

Brief 3

Mine Original

Bill Brandt - Hands on the beach (1959) interpretation

Brief 4 Edited Unedited

Brief 5

ReflectionFor my photographic portfolio a range of briefs had to be met and many photos produced. When our first assignment was due the self portrait I found this to be a very easy task. When I showed it to the class I felt a bit embarrassed because the others work was far better than mine and I felt quite restricted to what I could do with a compact camera. On the second brief I put a lot more effort into it but only using a compact camera I couldn’t do certain things so I did my best which was shocking apart from a couple of my images to everyone else’s work. I then decided to get myself a DSLR and reshoot all of my shots except for my self timer shot in brief two I found the light streaks that was left really good and really liked that image.

Brief one I decided to do a close up of my tattoo as it is totally unique and means something to me, as we was restricted to only using the camera on this photograph it was more difficult than expected because I wanted the tattoo to stand out and to have no background. I had to take the picture in a dark room with a self timer and had to manually focus correctly its took about 10-15 attempts to get it right.

Brief two was the most demanding out of all the briefs; I thought this because I wasn’t really used to my camera and the photos 5-10 was really open and couldn’t decide on what to do and also no use of photoshop was allowed. The images in this brief I am most proud of are the line and texture. The line image was very hard to produce; I took many shots mostly of staircases and stuff and then I come across this lampshade I took a picture of it up close and it shows the lines on the outside being well lit from the light and giving it a crisp orange glow. The texture image I found was a huge success. For texture straight away I felt that it had to be a close up image, my original close up was of some fake crystals which I thought looked good but it didn’t really match texture as an image. As I was taking photos for my low light image I took some close ups of grass and when I looked back on them I found that one of the images was perfect for texture the colours go so well together and the wet grass looks really glossy and very aesthetically pleasing. All the other images in this brief only took a few shots but I was definitely pleased with the results, especially the fast shutter speed because the focus is just right on the droplet of water and the shallow depth of field image. This brief I definitely enjoyed the most and it really helped me to get grips with my camera. Brief 3 I had to do a lot of research for and I like the idea of an old image because we could use some photoshop elements and I found I could achieve that look with the tools given. After looking though a lot of photographers I found Bill Brandt. Looking at his work I found the images very natural and the shadows and light in the images were perfect. I chose to reinterpret the image “Hands on the beach” the photo was taken in 1959 so it was a very old image but I found it to be very good and gave it my best to make mine look like the original. I had to collect various stones and assemble them to make it look like a beach and for like the set you would say I place a black box behind the stones and a white box beneath it.The reason I did this was because I wanted good shadows and backgrounds for this image. I had too use a self timer for this image because I used my own hands for the image it took quite a few attempts to get my hands in the right position but I found it quite easy to achieve. Finally I used photoshop to make the image black and white and to make the shadows darker I used the burn tool. This image was also taken on my first camera so I am quite pleased on how it came out.

Brief 4 I was really comfortable with because I am particularly interested in retouching and took to the brief quite well. In this photograph I considered going for a theme, I took this image in a park and the original image you can see the darkness under the trees showing mystery so I decided to take this further. To do this I decided too add to it. First of all I used the lasso tool and cut out the bushes and repeated them, I left out the middle though because that’s where the mystery of the photo is. I decided too add a tunnel because it would fit the mood of the photograph. I cut it out and placed it over the top of the darkness and overlapped bushes on the tunnel. I thought that adding a tunnel added to the mystery of the photo because you cant see where it ends or leads too. This image took up most of my time because I had to deal with a lot of layers and repetition and colour correction. Adding the tunnel was the hardest part of the photograph I'm still not 100 percent about it but I do think its really good and a lot of change has occurred in the photo I found that in the original mystery was there but it wasn’t the main attraction of the photo in the edited version I feel you are lured to it straight away.

Brief 5 I found to be a very hard subject to produce I photo for but I went for the link between us and technology, Particularly my own opinion of that and how I my link is like so its my identity. I took a picture of my arm and phone in my hand. In the image you can see I would say ghosts off my phone leaving my hand this I found worked so well it showed that a part of me was leaving my body and the batteries in my arm represent the idea of does it make us less human that we share our life’s on the internet and all communicate on that rather than in person the image represents I can be anyone and everyone and that the link between us and technology changes how we interact and see people. This image I used a tripod and a long shutter speed and I used the cameras flash and flashed it in many different positions to get the ghostly effect. In photoshop I used the burn tool and layers to make the batteries look embedded in my arm.

Overall I found this portfolio quite difficult but quite rewarding I am now quite comfortable with my camera and very pleased with the images produced. I think I met all the briefs and especially brief two I am very happy with.