Photo Shoot for Final Piece (unedited)

I took these photos using a Canon 1100d with an 18-55mm lens. In order to get the right lighting, I used an umbrella light kit and switched between gold and silver sheets held up to experiment slightly with the warmth and tint of the photos. To take the photos of myself, I used a tripod and put the camera on a 10 second timer.

 

Ideas for presenting final piece

I think I'm probably going to present my work using the top right idea because it allows me to present the original pictures as well as a brief write up and sketch so that people understand what the photograph actually is. I'd like to frame the main photo as well as the board with the two original photos and sketch so that they look complete and then mount it on hooks on a piece of wood so that they stay together and look finished. If I choose not to do this, I'm still definitely going to include both of the original photos in the final piece some how.

To make it link to my final piece I could always work with the wood so that one side of it looks newer than the other side, but I'm not sure if I want to do this because I don't think it will look very tidy but it could just be a case of making the wood on one side sanded and smooth where as the other one a little rougher with some chips and things.

Ideas and intentions- drawings and my own ideas for final piece

 This idea is my favourite one that I've come up with. It's based on the photo's in my previous ideas and intentions but I've adapted them to make them my own. For example, instead of showing that they're two separate pictures put together, I want to merge them so they appear as one whole. I'd definitely have to use Photoshop to do this but I'd also like to experiment with the grittiness, hue and warmth of the final photo to see how it comes out.





This idea requires drawing which is good because it incorporates more devices, but I don't like the idea as much as the previous one. It would be a girl in a fur hood which transitions into a drawing of a wolf, rather than the top of the hood.

I don't really like this idea at all. It's simply the portrait and side portrait of a person merged together. It could look quite cool if it was done right but I don't think it represents transform very well.







Drawings and ideas based on my first idea:

I drew these sketches to get some ideas of the sort of thing I'd be doing. I looked at eyes, mouths and whole faces to see what combination of people would work the best together.

Ulric Collette

 Ulric Collette is a French-Canadian photographer who does a variety of photography including genetic merges which is what I'm going to focus on for my final piece. I think his work is really cool because the merging is seamless and looks really polished and cool.
 I like how he's done male and female merging as well as the same gender because that shows that it's not impossible. After seeing his work I've decided to use my face and my dad's face to merge despite his lack of hair which could cause some difficulties. As much as I like the actual technique of his photos, I think they're a little bit bland, I think I'll add some colour to mine by altering the settings and siders and stuff.

Ideas and intentions- Based on work of others

One of the ideas I have for my final piece is to show the transformation between two people, older and younger. 

 These two photos are the sort of thing I want, the exception being the line in the centre. I want it to be more of a blend to give the impression that one face is becoming the other. This would be difficult to do with two people who don't have similar facial features, as they wouldn't match, so in order to produce a clean image I will try and take photos of people who look similar despite their age. A mother and daughter, or father and son for example. It'll probably be easier to do with people of the same        gender but I might give alternate genders a try as well to see how it looks.


Another idea is to somehow incorporate drawings into the photographs I take. I'll probably draw using photoshop because that way they can be drawn straight on and printed whole, plus I generally prefer drawing digitally due to how easy it is to press 'ctrl+z' when something goes wrong. Although, there are lots of things I could do with drawings, I was thinking of maybe replacing part of the photograph with drawing, so having half of a face drawn and the other half real. I could also just replace certain features or draw the head and leave the body or vice versa, I could even just draw a completely different head/body to replace the existing one. I don't even have to use a person, so I could photograph a landscape and simply draw on trees or make it more complex and take a beautiful field and make it post-apocalyptic or steam punk etc. The possibilities are endless but I was inspired by the work of Annica Klingspor, Robert Nilsson and Anna Klein. They worked together to on a project which in my opinion produced some really beautiful results.

I think these pictures are very effective, the use of black and white helps to almost blur the lines between reality and fantasy so I'm going to experiment with b+w and different hues, saturations, clarities etc.

Ideas mindmap