Digital Photography and Imaging - Week 9

23.11.2023 (Week 9)

Teh Ming En/0364908

Digital Photography and Imaging-Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media--Taylors University

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LECTURES

Realism vs Surrealism:

Realism: Takes subject matters of the ordinary and common world which we call "reality." It almost always takes a non-exotic and non-extraordinary subject matter and theme. There is no need to think outside of the box, as that is not "real."

Surrealism: A twist on Realism. It explores the subconscious mind, with subject matters concentrating on dream-images and often aims to distort the ordinary and what we call reality.

The key to start creating Surrealism artworks: 

1. Dream-like scenes and symbolic images

2.Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions

3.Bizarre assemblages of ordinary objects

4.Primitive or child-like designs

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Tutorial

DEMO: 

How to create loop animation for I.G Stories

Fig 1.1 Tutorial Video

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Exercise

Conceptual Product Photoshoot

In the exercise, we need to:

1. Create a conceptual product photoshoot using various lighting techniques.

2. Find an interesting subject and shoot it using suitable lighting techniques.

3. Create a photo manipulation of the subject using Photoshop to make it interesting.

4. Explain the concept and the process of the development.

Research

I have do some research online before starting the exercise. 

Fig 2.1 Reference 1

Fig 2.2 Reference 2

Fig 2.3 Reference 3

Sketches

After that, I started thinking about the items that I owned could be combined. Below is my idea sketches:

Fig 3.1 Sketch #1

Fig 3.2 Sketch #2

Fig 3.3 Sketch #3

Fig 3.4 Sketch #4

#1: Carrot and knife - Use a carrot instead the blade, make it into a carrot knife

#2: Lipstick and finger - Lipstick paste turn into finger, it will be scary when open it.

#3: Garlic and earphone - The earpieces shaped like a clove of garlic, it is a earphones for garlic lovers. 

#4: Banana and pencil - The end of the banana turn into a pencil tip, it will be interesting.

I decided to go with idea sketch #2, it means I have to take a photo of the lipstick and finger. Mr Fauzi provided us studio for photo shooting.

Fig 4.1 Lipstick 

Fig 4.2 My Own Finger

After taking the photos, I started doing the exercise.

Fig 5.1 Progress of selecting object

First, I use Quick Selection tool to select the object and click select and mask. Then, output to new layer with layer mask.

Fig 5.2 Progress of combining two objects

After that, select the part of finger that I need and paste it onto lipstick, add white solid colour as the background.

Fig 5.3 Progress of adding shadow

Next step is add a shadow for the finger lipstick. I create a new layer, use brush tool to draw the shadow and apply the filter→ blur → gaussian blur effect.

Fig 5.4 Progress of adjusting the brightness

The finger at the time looked not real, so I decided to add brightness and contrast to the finger. (create a clipping mask to finger's layer)

Fig 5.5 Progress of the whole image

Last, I changed a suitable background colour for the finger lipstick. Then adjusted the levels of the whole image.

Final Artwork

Fig 5.6 Final Artwork - Finger Lipstick