Assessment 2.

When this assignment was first set I read the brief and immediately had many ideas about what I wanted to do. I had many ideas that would have been very difficult to do with my basic video editing skills and the time and cost involved. I had many ideas that would have been better with a larger time limit as ten seconds is a very short amount of time for any sort of story to evolve. This meant that I had to focus in my ideas on shorter events or situations.

Some of my discarded ideas included a split screen video of a band where each player is the same individual. This could be achieved using one camera with four shots, one of each player. These four would then be put together to make one shot where all four were playing along to the same song together. This sounded like a fun idea, but with more thought I decided that ten seconds was not enough time to play a song or a chorus and so the idea was scrapped.

One of my other ideas was to do some time lapse video of either a sky (i.e. clouds or sunset etc.) or a street scene. I had seen many of these before on television and the internet and a few fellow students I spoke to had already decided upon this. I decided that maybe this was an area I could explore further and could bring my own element to.

I decided that the passing of time could be represented by a clock. I put this together with the time lapse and decided to film a clock for some time and then speed this up to show a large passing of time. I gathered the materials I needed for this which included a clock and the camera. I sat and recorded myself holding the actual clock for a long period of time and let the clock just rotate whilst I tried to sit still. This is all that was required for this filming. I also decided that as a back up plan I would record a clock by itself turning for large amount of time. This idea however, I found to be less interesting and so did not continue any further with.

I took my recorded material to the computer lab at the university. Here I found the instructions for uploading my material. I had many problems with this until I used windows movie marker to upload the file and then saved it as an .AVI file. This then meant I could use it on Adobe premier to edit. The editing process was not too tricky. I had to isolate the part of my material I wanted using the cutting tool to leave me with only the main part of the time lapse footage. I then use the ‘speed’ and ‘duration’ controls on what I had to speed it up and crop it down to ten seconds worth of film. At first I cut too much and spread it over too short amount of time. I then corrected both these values and was left with the main part of the film. To add extra effect I added a sequence of colour filters over the footage to give it a psychedelic feel.

I then added an intro and title to my work and the credits at the end. I made sure to acknowledge what was done and the music I used behind the film. The music I used was topical and also fitted in with the psychedelic theme I added. Time by Pink Floyd is from the 1973 album dark side of the moon. I edited the track down from its 7 minute length to a track long enough to fit the film and credit length and faded it towards the end.

These are the final four images that I submitted to big stock photo. They have all been processed in photoshop to enhance the overall look. These pictures I feel are a lot better and of a much higher standard both aesthetically and technically.

In this first picture, I visited the Bailgate and Cathedral area of Lincoln. I tried to show the great height and size of the building by standing fairly close and angling upwards to create a sense of grandeur.

The main focal point of this photo is the two towers. I placed them centrally in the composition. This draws the attention of the viewer and also adds to the size of the towers pointing towards the sky. The towers lie in the center third of the image. This is also where the large arch lies, making the center section even stronger as a focal point. when looking at it eyes are always drawn back in to the center and up. This is the desired effect with regard to making the height of the building seem bigger. The rest of the building stretches totally from the left to right side of the photo. This adds to the grandeur with a sence of width. There is no backgroud in this photo apart from the sky. I cropped the image a little on the right to cut out a tree. I did this to avaoid an unnecessary dark area in what is a very bright image. I used an image of the sky that was very blue. In photoshop I merged a darker image of the Cathedral with this sky, with a brighter picture of the Cathedral with a whiter sky. This produced the finished image with a well exposed overall view. I altered the saturation of the picture of the Cathedral to give it a slight orange tinge to complement the blue colour of the sky.

In this image I used three images of the same tree. This proved difficult as the there was a slight breeze and the leaves and branches moved a little for each photo. I got around this problem in photoshop by using the masking tool to leave only the one layer from one image that fitted that area the most.

I put the tree in the center and left of the photo. I cropped the top of the image down to the tip of the tree to lose excess sky.

There is more background in this image than the first. A large percentage is the sky. The sky is very light in colour which helps to make the tree look brighter in contrast. The bottom of the picture is very dark especially around the fence area on the left. This was difficult to rectify as all images that I took of the tree included this dark part. I used the brightest of the images and masked this part on to the finished work.

I altered the hue and stauration of the images a little attempting to make the greens of the actual tree more vibrant .

In this image I have tried to create a sense of perspective with the wall leading away. I took the image close to the wall and looking down hill.

The main focal point of the picture is the splif between the bricks on the wall, the ivy above it, and the lamp post. I have tried to bring out and keep all three of these parts in focus, especially on the left hand side as this is where the eye is drawn to first. From here your eye follows the wall and the ivy down through the image and along towards the lamp post. This has been placed directly in the last third of the photo and almost marks the end of the wall and is almost a visual stopping point before the end and the background.

I tried to get most detail on the bricks so took several images at different exposures to get all parts of the bricks both close to the camera and further away. I then used the masking effect again and the eraser tool to expose or cover over or under exposed parts.

This effected the exposure of some of the background in the distance as this part of the photo is a little overexposed still. The street lamp is pieced together from two photos as the top part was totally over exposed as could barely be seen. I masked the bottom half of one of the photos as the post was under exposed and no details or light could be seen on it.

This is a second view of a different part of Lincoln Cathedral. Here I have used the central tower. I paced this directly in the center of the photo. The two wings of the church stretch out below and off the either side, bringing attention in to the botom of the image.

I masked areas of the tower and the rest of the lower building to show it exposed correctly. This means that none of the areas are dark or in harsh shadows or too light and in direct sunlight.

I altered the Hue and sauration of this image to convert it to black and white. I believe that this brings out the lighter and darker tones on the structure. The windows are almost completely black, and the brickwork. This makes the picture seem very dramatic in that it has harsh contrasts of tone along side one another.

The sky in this picture was bright blue but in changing the hue and saturation it is now black and white. Because of the positioning of the sun at the time the photo was taken there is a slights glow appearing from behind the Cathedral. This adds to the dramatic effect of this photo.

These four images are a first attempt at taking my own images around my house and photoshopping them in preparation for submission to big stock photo. I have used some of the various techniques learnt in the workshops such as, masking, balncing of colours etc... I am not entirely happy with the outcome of these images because of the subjecs and harsh shadows for instance.

In this image i have tried to distort the mug by using some of the artistic tools under the filter tag on photoshop. The actual image is still a little dull and could benefit from an alteration to the hue or saturation.

In this image I have blanked out the background around the post-it notes. I did this by cutting away the background then refilling it with plain white colour. I dont feel that this picture has turned out the way i had wished. It is too dull and it coudl be hard to figure out exactly what it is.

In this image I have taken a section of the top image and zoomed in on this particular flower. Again, the image is pretty poor and the large black shadow needs to be removed completely. The image is also slightly blurry as the two images I merged together were slightly different.

Overall from this first attempt I have decided that I will go out and take some more images and spend longer on the processing of them before submission.

More photoshop work in the workshop this week. We were given several photos of the same thing with some over, and some under exposed. Using tools on photoshop we took the best bits form each photo, (e.g. the sky from an underexposed shot) and merged them on top of each other.

This created the image I have posted here, which includes the different parts together producing a higher quality image.

I have started to think about ideas for photos I could take for submission to Bigstockphoto. I am going to photograph a mix of objects close range, with a few larger shots of scenes, and pick the best for entry.

Two new firsts today, 1, this blog, 2, doing something with photoshop. At the top i have made the two characters at the front stand out by bluring any background. I wasn't 100% sure that the way i did it using the "smudge" tool was best but i like it. The photo just above was a black and white photo which i have coloured in. I took inspiration from 1960's pop artists and gave the woman and the flag bright vibrant colours.