Derek Blanks, digital artist

Derek Blanks, digital artist

The student presentation this week (by Emily) was on Derek Planks, a commercial and fine art photographer from Atlanta, USA. He exhibits portraits, does magazine shoots and has become famous for his ‘alter ego’ portraits.  He developed the ‘alter ego’ genre. They include one or more poses of the subject (as themselves and as someone very different) which are blended seamlessly in Photoshop.  It must take a lot of skill to make sure that the light is coming from the same direction for each pose.

Kim Porter twins by Derek Blanks

Derek Blanks is a talented artist in his own right and paints, illustrates, designs and edits as well as photography.  He trained at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Chase Jarvis vs Annie Leibovitz

In last week’s class Amy presented some work by American, Chase Jarvis. He is best known for his lifestyle and sports pictures. He uses strong saturated colours with strong contrast and a fast shutter speed. Photos are digitally altered to  enhance their mood.

In contrast, David presented work by Annie Leibovitz. She is a photojournalist and portrait photographer.  She has become famous for her portrayal of celebrities e.g. ‘Rolling Stone’ covers.  Digital photography has transformed the way she works and allows her to do subjects like ‘fairytale photography’.

Jill Greenberg style

 

This week’s exercise was to alter a photo of a crying toddler to look similar to the photos of crying children portrayed in Jill Greenberg’s series ‘End times’.

The magic wand tool was used to select the background. The edge between the child and the background was adjusted by smoothing, adding contrast and feathering. Inverting selection selected the child with no background – a new layer.  On another new layer the gradient tool was used to create the effect of light coming from behind the head. Luminosity was added in an adjustment layer then the image mode was changed to lab colour and the layers were merged.

The contrast and colour saturation were increased and yellow and green levels were increased to give colouring like Jill Greenberg’s work.  Then the  burn and dodge tool was used to emphasise the highlights and shadows.

Jill Greenberg’s version (below)

My version (above)

More lessons in Photoshop

Week 4 of the Digital Photography class saw us learning how to convert photos to black and white in Photoshop. We then used filters to expand the range of grays.

Then we were shown how to use lens correction (under Filter) to correct for distortion caused by the lens.  The following photos of tombs were not in perspective and altering the vertical and horizontal perspectives helped to stop the images  look like they were falling towards the viewer! I tried to highlight the colour of the sky and flowers  and adjusted brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation.

Martin Jaeger, digital photographer

Martin Jaeger, digital photographer

Saw some great photos at Mt Barker show today.

Digital artist: Martin Jaeger

While at the Mt Barker Show I came across a display of work by local digital photographer, Martin Jaeger.  His photos are taken in the Adelaide Hills and surrounds and feature landscapes, buildings and animals.  He accentuates the contrasts of light and colour found in nature and highlights the difference between manmade and natural objects.  He says that a lot of people can relate to, and appreciate, his work because it is local. His gallery can be seen at  http://www.martinjaeger.com/.

Digital Photography Week 3 Exercises

This week we were shown how to open photos in camera raw and make changes before opening them in Photoshop. Changes included contrast, brightness, colour, and spot removal.

 

Our second task was to ‘push pixels’ and modify the image of the farmer and his dog.  Colour was removed and the adjustment brush was used to increase exposure on the path of the man and dog and darken the non path areas.  This version has more green and the path is more lit up than the example we were given.

All photos used in these exercises were taken by CJ Taylor.

Exercises in Photoshop

The aim of this exercise was to write my name on the (blank) card held in my hands.  I opened the photo in Photoshop and used the horizontal type tool ‘T’ to write my name in white.

To make the letters look more like they were stuck on I applied blending options (inner shadow, bevel and emboss) and moved the light source so the shadow from the letters fell the same was as my shadow in the photo.

 

In this exercise using layers I cut out the windows in the building to reveal the layer behind.  I used the marquee tool to cut out the whole of one window but cutting out individual panes using the marquee tool and then the polygonal lasso tool looked more convincing. I cut out the graffiti in the front and put in apples instead.

 

 

Cute Gecko

This photo was taken on a family holiday to Lake Eyre in 2009.  We found this gecko at night near our campsite. I wanted to make a screen print design from the photo so I tried several artistic filters in Photoshop to highlight the outlines. The neon filter looked great and suited the fact that the photo was taken at night.

Mucking around with photoshop

Took this photo of my niece and nephews jeans and boots a couple of years ago.  They were at the ram sale on their farm.  This is one of my first attempts to change a photo in Photoshop