work record 1

·         Research influences

My influences for this shoot are Ansel Adams and Fukase Masahisa. These are both artist who work using black and white, which is something i am going to carry on through my final responses. They both produce highly contrasted images which may have been done using burning and dodging. This is also a technique that i will use for my responses.

For this shoot, i used a Nikon D7100 and a zoom lens. This meant i could take wide shots of the landscape and capture more of the trees as well as more close up shots of the trees.

·         Contact sheet




·         Straight images (as many as you wish to post)




AO1: I chose these images as they will be very useful for creating composite images. The trees and church should be interesting to use as together they may loom quite eerie and strange, which is similar to the style of Fukase Masahisa. His work is quite macabre and dark which is what i want to portray through my final images. The clouds in the photo directly above look quite interesting and are something i would like to try and place in one of my final responses. 

      Although i am going to use these photos, i am also going to use some from my preparatory shoots as they have different elements such as different churches that i would like to include in my final responses. 

AO2:  (including Computer experiments (if carried out during the exam)

This image is an example of how i have edited my photos, before using them to superimpose into another image. The one above is the main background that i am going to use for my composite image. I have converted it to black and white, then increased the contrast to bring out the lines in the trees. After this, i am going to use the burn tool to darken the sky and give the clouds more depth.

After creating the background, i have started to add in the different pieces that i am going to include in my final response. These are the gravestone in the foreground, the church, the stack of hay and any extra trees. I did this using Photoshop.

Firstly, i converted the individual images to black and white. Then i used the magic wand tool to select the pieces i wanted and pasted them into the background. I then free transformed them and positioned them where they would blend in. A problem i found with this was i couldn't copy and paste the pieces into the background successfully. I found that this was because i had to flatten the image to get rid of the other layers. Then i could move them to another image.  I then used the eraser and the dodge and burn tool to blend them in.

This is a screenshot of the final image before i used the dodge and burn tool. You can see the individual layers that each have a different part of the image. For example, layer 3 has the church and layer 4 has the hay stack behind it. I then flattened the image and highlighted the different areas to create more of a contrast between the light and dark areas.

AO4: emphasise how the work has developed and how it has been influenced by prior research

During my research into Fukase Masahisa and Ansel Adams, i found that using black and white photos instead of colour not only creates a darker and more old fashioned feel but also allow you to create more contrasted and detailed images as there is no risk of making the colours too bright and unrealistic. Similar to the solitude of ravens, i am going to be taking more photos of birds and other wildlife that i find when I'm on a shoot. A bird that i would look for as an example are crows. These birds are jet black and are associated with  death. By including these in my final responses, i am going to try and create an eerie atmosphere in the photo. 




Final Pieces







Final evaluation

Overall, i am please with my first outcome. The different elements like the church and hay stack blend nicely into the background and the photo does have an eerie feel to it. Some of the things i would change however are the horizon line that is visible through the church and the slightly off angle of the church itself. If i were to do it again, i would make sure the photo i took of the church was straight at the bottom so that it sat nicely in the photo. I was however able to adjust it with a combination of rotating the image and using the eraser with a low opacity to correct it slightly. I would've also liked to have included the birds in this piece.  Overall though, i am happy with the work i have produced for this shoot.