Blog 8

My final Design

Today I finished my final 3D project. I had to do it out of school hours like most people, because this last week we are only really working on the sketchbooks, and i didn't finish my final design last week. It was very hard putting together the photos on the sculpture (which in my case was a cube mounted on a pole). This was because of several reasons...

An image from google I used for inspiration

Firstly I wasn't sure on what my final design was going to be. I had in my head that it would be my photos mounted onto some 3D shape (probably a cube or rectangle). I also thought about making this idea more abstract by putting different 3d shapes together to make a more interesting object to stick my photos to.  After thinking about it a bit more I thought I could make a design like the image above only with only three or four cubes. Even with this amount of cubes I would not have enough space to fill up all the faces with photos. I thought to combat this I could have some of the faces either pure white or with shiny silver paper stuck onto the sides. I thought by doing this it might make the sculpture more interesting and different. But in the end I decided against this idea because I thought it was too complex and that a plain cube would work better.


For this though I had to make the all of my six final images exactly square. This would off been very difficult if I hadn't of had the adobe photoshop 30 day trial on my mac at home. Some of them were easy to make square. I just used the set the box selection tool to fixed ratio and then cropped the images to a square. But some off them were harder than this because they were already quite close in so if I cropped them any more I would lose parts of the photo I needed. This is were photoshop can in useful. I used the clone tool to digitally make up more of the image on the side I need to make the image square.

Original Image

All the area on the left (in red) is cloned from parts of the real image (blue)

 I also used photoshop to move the basketball down so that it looks like its actually spinning on my finger tip, instead of me throwing it up about an inch above my finger which is what the actual photo is of (because I can't actually spin a basket ball on my finger) I also added some motion blur to the basketball so it looks its spinning more. I think these adjustments really improve the photo and make it more obvious that it is about me controlling the ball on one finger. I don't feel guilty that I used photoshop to make it look like I can do something that I actually can't because a lot of fine art photography is heavily edited and can be misleading.

So with all the photos now squares I needed to print them again. This proved to be difficult though because when I tried in a shop they could not print in squares. So I decided to buy some printing paper but this failed two because it kept getting jammed in the printed. In the end I decided to just print them on normal card. This way I could make them exactly the right size on a word document. Although I couldn't print them on glossy photographic paper I made sure the colour print cartridge was full and that the settings were set to maximum quality.

After I printed them out I had to make A box to present them on. I thought about three different ideas for this. First I though about simply drawing a net on a large piece of card. But this would be fairly hard to do and more importantly the box would be quite flimsy and probably wouldn't survive the bumpy taxi ride to Coleridge. To get a more secure box I thought about sticking the photos onto a rubik's cube but then decided against this because it was too small.

My final idea, and the one that I stuck with, was to use an existing box and modify it to make a cube. This was difficult though because in order to make it a perfect cube I would have to cut it in two twice. But I thought it was still the best idea.

This is the box I used. As you can see the height width and length
are all different sizes. This mean't I had to cut it in half then put one half of the boxes in side the other so I can shorten the length of the box.

sellotaping the box back together  

Measuring the box to make sure it is a close to a regular cube as possible

The box with paper hinges in it 

After making the box I thought I would put on some paper hinges on the sides and corners so that if the photos tough on the sides there is white there instead of red and grey with writing on it. This was very time consuming but I thing it was worth it.

After this I was ready to stick the photos onto the six sides. This was very fiddly because at the start I tried doing it using only a tiny amount of sellotape so it didn't look to shabby. But it then started  peeling off and I realised it wouldn't be strong enough. I then put some more stronger sellotape on so it held better, but still tried to do it as carefully as possible. Because of this just sticking the photos on to the sides took two and a half hours.

I was fairly happy with the cube. It might of been better if I could of glued them on so you couldn't see any sellotape  but at least with my cube it wouldn't of stuck on properly.

I then thought of a way to massively improve my project. My idea was to put some sort of a pole or stick through the bottom corner so it would be appear to be balancing on a stick. This would not only make by project more interesting and make it possible to see the bottom picture (that would have be facing the ground) but it would also represent control because the cube would controlled on the pole.

I was very pleased with this idea but it would be hard to make it. I the end I used a skewer to hold it up. I put it through one of the corners
and the the other side I stabbed into a potato. Its seems like a stupid idea it we needed something at the bottom that would be heavy, so that it would stay upright, and also some thing we could put a skewer into. I cut the bottom of the potato off to create a steady base. Finally I put it inside a a white box, I made out of white card, so the potato was hidden.

I am quite proud of my final project because i think it represents control and is interesting and different.

Blog 7

One of Rankin's images

Today I mainly did my research report. I research into Louise Bourgeois and did also did a lot of research into Rankin. I did a page on him and what he did. I found out he does a lot of fashion photography and portraits of famous people. But he also does a lot of fine art photography and has a lot of quite disturbing images which provoke responses of shock and confusion.

I then did a page on my responses. Out of the ones I looked at I found them all quite unsettling and slightly disturbing.

I also had a chat with my teacher on where I was with my final project. I told him I was planning to stick the printed out photos on a cube or rectangle. I thought i might make it more abstract by making the shapes irregular and by adding smaller cubes coming out from the sides.

I brought in some shiny silver paper as well to make a mirror type effect on some off the faces. I think this could work quite well because it will go with the minimalistic theme which I doing and will make my piece or art more interesting and different.

I got my Photos printed out but I didn't start making my final piece today because I was hoping at least five off the seven photos I've got could be printed on A4 but unfortunately only one could because the school didn't have enough ink. So the rest of them were six to a sheet which is too small for my current idea.

At home I will either have to adjust my idea or crop and resize them and then print them myself at a shop.

Blog 6

Today I finished taking the photos for my final project, edited them or most of them and thought about how I'm going to present them in a 3D sculpture. 

Fairly early on I had a chat with my teacher at where I was at with my sketchbook and my project. We agreed that I need to do more on my research report and print it out into my book. After he saw my photos he suggested that my 3D sculpture could be minimilistic like the brand Apple. I thought this was a good idea because my photos are already fairy simple and have white backgrounds. I thought I could just present my photos on white cubes of difference size and possibly stuck to one another at interesting angles and levels.

After break I  went out to take some photos. I did this around the school and with sam because the photos were going to be of me so I needed someone to take the photos. I had brought in a football and I also used Harry's juggling balls and Sam's basketball. The reason why I needed all these different types of balls was because was going to get a photo of my body to controlling them because the theme of the project is control. 

I already had some photos of someone playing basketball but the the person was not me and this week I decided that it would be better if all the were of photos of me so that it looked more like I hadn't just used random photos. I also wore the same clothes as last week so that the colour theme carried on in the photos as well.  

Shooting the photos wasn't to hard but there were still some challenges we had to overcome. One off these was not getting the shadow in the background. We overcame this by moving further  away from the wall and by changing the angle we took the photos from. Another problem was that I couldn't juggle. We other came this though by throwing the three balls up in the air and mimicking the hand position of someone who could actually juggle and then taking photos until it looked convincing.

When I got back into the classroom I edited the photos I had just took in the same ways as last week cropping and changing the brightness contrast and exposure. These were the results or three of them. 

I am pleased with these photos. As you can see I have made the
backgrounds very bright but not completely white. The one
on the left of the basket ball is a bit brighter than the others.
 I think next week I will slightly darken it so it matches.

After lunch I took photos of the faces of about 8 or 9 people for my second idea which was to stitch (on photoshop) together different parts of different peoples faces to make one face made up of lots of different peoples faces. I had a go at this but because i'm not very good at photoshop it didn't look very finalised. 

Blog 5

Today I started off by carrying on from last week by brainstorming and thinking about my ideas
from last week and working out how best to do them. I thought of a new idea because my other ideas weren't really about control. My idea was to take photos of people doing things that show them controlling their bodies.

My ideas for this were someone...

• Doing a handstand
• Doing a somersault
• juggling 
• doing parkour or jumping 
• balancing 
• playing the drums
• dancing 
• playing football or basketball

I wasn't sure how to present these images in a 3d sculpture but I was told to leave that till next week and get on with taking the photos this week.

I wasn't very pleased with this photo

So I went out with my camera. I had to wait for Harry because some of the photos were going to be of me and I couldn't take photos of myself. First I asked Harry to take some photos of me doing a front flip because  

it showed me controlling my body. I wasn't very pleased with the outcome of these photos though. Most of them looked funny and it wasn't clear what the photo was of. They were also quite blurry and on some, the exposure was wrong. Also because I couldn't take the photos myself, they weren't very artistically taken.

I then went found place where you lock up your bicycle. I thought I could ask someone to take a picture of me jumping of it, in front of the white wall. This represents control because you have to balance on the metal and then control your movement so you land safely.

I was very pleased with the result after I had edited them. My favourite is probably the one on the right. I like it because it shows a lot of movement and control. I also like how my hood is up so I like more menacing.  I think it is a good picture because I am roughly on the third line both horizontally and vertically. To edit this photo first I upped the brightness to make the background more white. I then changed the contrast to make the colours more vibrant. I then cropped it a bit to remove unnecessary objects and make me on the third lines. Finally I made the whole background black and white apart from me in the photo. I think the effect of this is quite subtle because the background was greyish colours anyway but I think it does draw attention to the person in the photo an make he look like he is jumping from the ground instead of the metal bicycle stand. This makes
the photo look  a bit unreal and a bit like a computer game. I don't think this is bad though since a lot of fine art photography is heavily edited and does' quite make sense.

This is another photo similar to the one above. I don't like it as much because the background and action is less interesting. Editing this photo was similar to the first one apart from I use the brush tool to get rid of the shadow behind me and made the brightness so high it look like there is no wall behind me.  I like how the photo is quite long and thin. It makes it different and unique.

The Steps I went through to edit this photo

1) Original image                                  2) Changing brightness and contrast

3) Cropping                                                                 4) Adding effects such as black and white.

This one (left) is another photo I edited. It is the shadow against a white wall, of someone holding two drumsticks. It represents contorl because you need to conrol your hands well to play the drums well. I like it because having it a shadow is more interesting than just taking a photo of someone plainly. To edit it a changed the curves and made it brighter and more contrasting  

 This is another image I edited.



Blog 4

Today I finished off editing the photos I took last week.  The first photo I edited was a close up of a chain. I changed the constant bar to get the green and red effect. I think this makes the picture look interesting but maybe a bit to much like I was messing around with the colours (which I was).
I think black and white may of suited the chain and control theme rather than red and green.

On another photo I made the curves go steeply up and then steeply down several times. This made the colours on the photo go crazy. The sky looked like a tie die t-shirt. This looked very wacky but wasn't  helping me get across the message I wanted in the photo so I changed it back and instead just made it a bit more contrasting.

See the effect of changing the contrast.

I added changed the colours on this photo so its like a sepia effect.

After lunch we brainstormed some ideas for our final project. I came up with lots of single ideas quite easily but then found it hard to put them together into three finalised ideas. In the end I only came up with two, some thing to do with sticking different photos of different parts of the human body together so a face would be made up of different people with different hair eyes and coloured skin.  I also thought you could do the same in the background so one half of a tree is different to the second half. 

My second idea was to do a series of close up back and white photos of objects such as dice, chess pieces, knifes skulls bones and chains. I thought you could hang them up on a mobile or wheel. Both these ideas don't particularly link to control so I may have to change them so they do.

blog 3

One of Louise Bourgeois's most famous sculptures outside
the Guggenheim in Bilbao

Today I wrote about two fine art artists, one who does sculptures and one does fine art photography. For the sculpture artist I choose Louise Bourgeois because I had seen one of her sculptures in Bilbao. I found out that she had made a series of giant cast iron spiders the tallest being over 9 metres tall. I also found out that her sculptures were inspired by her childhood.

For my photography artist I choose Rankin. I found out that he had done a lot of  celebrity and famous people portraits. He also had helped with music videos by artists such as Kelis, and had also done a lot of advertising with big brands such as Coca Cola.

After lunch we went outside of Parkside to take some photos that, again represented control. I took quite a few photos of road marking because the control where and what cars do. I took most of these from a low angle and used the lines as leading lines into the centre of the picture. I think quite a lot of these photos could of been improved having someone or some object to have the lines leading into because at the moment your eyes follow the lines towards the centre of the photo but there is nothing in the centre of the photo to focus on.

I then took some photos of a traffic light because this again controls where the cars go and what they do. Most of the photos where close ups of the three lights at different angles. I also took some with the sun just coming through to one side of the traffic light.

Quite a few police cars and vans went by which I took a few photos of, but they weren't very good because I didn't have much time to set up a good photo. I took photos of them because they try to keep areas under control.


These are the raw unedited photos I took 



 I also took photos of road signs, warning signs, cables going other train tracks bollards and chains.  The techniques I used were the rule of thirds, leading lines, depth and having the fore ground in focus and the background not and different angles and heights.

Blog 2

Today I started by carrying on editing the photos I shot last week.  These were the two main ones I took 

I then put them on to a office document and wrote about why I took them and how they represent control. I also wrote how I edited them on photoshop and the techniques. 

After I had finished editing the photo I shot last week I went out again to to take some more photos. This time we took more photos of body control as a posed to controlling someone. We took photos of people doing a handstand, and playing football. When we were taking photos of the football we tried to do skills so it was like we were controlling the ball as instead of smacking it out of control. I as so did a flip so Harry could take a picture of me controlling my body. I also took some photos of the fence to represent control in the way I did last week.