WR6

Plans for Shoot

For this shoot, I plan to be progressing from my previous shoot inspired by the photographer Victoria Siemer, who uses intense editing processes and gels with artificial light to create vibrant and emotional images. In my previous shoot, I didn't have the materials to recreate her work and was reduced to little flexibility. In this shoot, I will now have the necessary materials and plan to recreate Siemer's style of work by taking photos in my garden and using gels to create colourful landscape-esc photos.

Research

Victoria Siemer

Victoria Siemer is a Brooklyn-based American graphic artist who focuses mainly on photo manipulation using Photoshop. She goes by the moniker "Witchoria" because "digital manipulation has given me the ability to create my own alternate realities where anything is possible. Sometimes it feels like magic." Her personal portfolio 'Hue Don't Own Me' is an exploration of 'emotion + light + colour'. She used gelled lights to create the landscapes and added the text in Photoshop. I did further analysis into Siemer's work on the blog post 'Photographer Research - Victoria Siemer'.

Furthermore, I plan to use more complex editing processes in my photos, and to recreate Siemer's work I have to insert glowing text to create more surreal appearances. I found a video that presents a way to make text glow in the photo. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q41vifReiMk]

Image bank

These are a few photos from Siemer's portfolio 'Hue Don't Own Me'.

Contact sheet
These are all the photos taken for this shoot.

Best Photos
These are the best-selected photos from the shoot.

Photos that require improvement

These two photos require improvement; this is mainly due to their over-exposure. Working with gels and a flashgun for the first time made me have to be very aware of my exposure settings as the flashgun is very vibrant and powerful. For the first photo, I used a magenta thin gel over a flashgun attached to my camera, the flashgun was set to mode M on its third to lowest intensity. The exposure settings were aperture F5, shutter speed 1/250sec and exposure at ISO12800. Now, these were the exposure settings for almost every photo, what was varied the most was the flashgun intensity. It appears that the third to lowest setting was too intense for the exposure to be moderate. This photo was later improved by lowering the flash intensity to the lowest setting. The second photo, I used a thin yellow gel over the flashgun attached to my camera, with the flashgun settings on mode M and one the second to last intensity setting. Since the yellow gel was thin and wasn't a deep enough yellow to diffuse the flashes intensity, the intensity setting was too intense for the exposure settings (which were the same to the previous photo). This was later improved by having the flashgun set to the lowest intensity level.

AO3: Record ideas, observations, and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

My Ideas

My intention for this shoot was to progress my skills using gels and artificial light to create more vibrant and lifeful photos, with then a mysterious twist by using heavy editing processes to create forlorn messages. My inspiration for this was influenced by the photographer Victoria Siemer, who created colourful and emotional images using gels and editing processes. I feel with the limitation of being in lockdown and so resorting to my garden for landscapes and the use of new materials, I was successful in meeting my intentions for this shoot, but the work was not outstanding.

Reference to best photos

I selected this photo because of its calming and simplistic environment. The teal gel tone over the flashgun created an ocean-like hue over the grass and fencing, almost as if someone is going through a memory or flashback and everything is distorted in an unnatural but calming hue.

I selected this photo because of its simple composition and satisfying hue. By using a magenta gel over the flashgun I was able to create a subtle purple-pink hue around the landscape like Siemer was able to. The subtlety and almost random location reminds me of lights that would be set at a home party in someone's garden, symbolising a wild and social atmosphere. 

I selected this photo because it is similar to one of Siemer's pieces and there appears to be an urban feeling to the photo. One of Siemer's pieces captures dehydrated and shrivelled plants with an orange hue surrounding it, this is similar to my photo. The orange hue combined with the dead nature appears urban and intended to have a symbolic aesthetic.  

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

Shoot Process/Use of Camera

For this shoot, I used a DF-400 flashgun attached to my Nikon D3400 camera; no tripod was needed as I was only capturing areas of my garden on a short shutter speed so there was no risk of blur. The flashgun was set to mode M, which means that the flash will flash in synchrony with the camera capturing the photo, and the flash intensity was typically at its lowest possible setting due to it being a very intense flash. The camera's exposure settings were aperture set to F5, the shutter speed setting varied from 1/200-250sec (if the shutter speed was set any shorter than there would be a distortion where light would not be captured at the bottom line of the photo), and the exposure was set to ISO12800 due to the photos being taken at a very dark setting. 

Experimenting

Siemer's work presents vibrant colouring over landscapes and glowing surreal text within those landscapes. I used photoshop and tutorials to recreate this with my own photos.

Firstly, I created a copy layer so I can go back to the origin photo if needed by pressing CTRL+J.

Then, using the 'horizontal type tool', I added a text layer onto the photo and typed a message that felt appropriate to the colouring and composition. I adjusted the font and size to what appeared best.

I copied this text layer (CTRL+J), I right-clicked on this layer and chose 'rasterize type', this made the text layer a whole image layer. Finally, I added a filter called 'gaussian blur'.

For this layer, I made the blur only subtle, for this photo, it was set to 14.1 pixels.

I then copied the original text layer again (CTRL+J) and brought this to the top of the layers to be seen, and rasterized this layer too. Using the 'paint bucket tool' and having the colour similar to landscapes colour, I filled the text with this colour.

Once again, using the filter gaussian blur I blurred the coloured text outward, this time with 55 pixels to go out further.

Once this is done, I brought this layer down below the original text layer.

Finally, I altered the colour of the original text to a pale tone of the magenta colour, this was to make the text appear even more vibrant. This is all the layers once done.

An extra step I added was adding an adjustment layer of 'levels' to the landscape, to create a better-contrasted photo.

Here is the phot before and after.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

Through my research, I was able to practice the use of flashgun lighting and the use of gels to create colourful photos artificially. I was also able to learn and practice a new photoshop technique where it presents glowing text in the photo. Siemer has inspired me to create vibrant and meaningful photos by presenting colourful photos with expressions of conflicted thoughts and feelings.

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements. 

These are my final pieces.

Progression

Overall, I would say this shoot was somewhat successful. I was able to experiment successfully with my new flashgun and gels to create colourful photos artificially, and I was able to successfully learn a new photoshop technique so I can create more surreal photo presentation. The only issue was the limitation I had with available landscapes; due to lockdown, I was limited to capturing landscapes only in my garden, if I was able to I would've captured larger and more intricate landscapes. I feel very inspired by Siemer's work and plan to continue my work with influence from Siemer, by this I will be continuing with colourful artificial photos and possibly the heavy editing process also. Moving forward, I plan to once again incorporate portraiture into these photos and feel I can take this influence from Phillip Lorca Dicorcia, who I previously researched into; I will also continue with heavy editing to create more enticing photos.