Portrait Final images

Here are the final images from the portraits. I wanted to bring out the persnality and mood of the characters by different eyecontact. This brought out different sides to the character. I have blurd the background for all the images so the attention goes to the character only. 

The first image is very negative as it looks like the girl is about to cry and lack of eyecontact show isolation.

Here, it is clear that the character has a positive attitude as he is loking to something with a smile on his face.
 

Here again is a positive image as she is loking at something with a smile on her face as if she is thinking about something.

Final Landscape Images

My favourite landscape image of the royal Albert hall was this one:

I liked this one because there is a contrast with the rusty red colour of the building and the greenery of the trees. Also because it was as close as i could get it to the painting where you could only see half of the building.

My next final picture was this one of Hyde Park:

I really like how everything is balanced and how the pathway ends in the middle of the picture and the trees arr all in line of the framing. I also like how the bench is just caught right at the bottom of the image adding a more realistic touch.

My other image consisted of Trafalgar Square:

I chose the iconic monument to be to the left of the framing just like the painting because i believe that it makes it more a landscape picture because its looking outwards across the busy London streets.

Landscape Experiments

The first painting i wanted to try and imitate was the Royal Albert Hall painting. i took a few picture from different angles, and i was sure that this was the look i was going for :

i tried to only have a little of the building peeking through the trees, however it looked quite bland. So then i started to take it from different angles:

Then the other paintings i tried to copy were the ones of the parks and the whole idea of the pathways to be the main focus.

But then i found this wider space, with more greenery like the paintings. i tried placing my camera in a more diagonal point of view like one of the paintings but i didn't like the way it came out, so i kept the camera straight in the middle of the pathway, because i felt it stood out more as a landscape framing.

 The last few shots were of the London eye and Trafalgar square. i tried to get up as high as possible to take the picture of Trafalgar to get it as close to the painting as possible, i found that i succeeded the Trafalgar picture first time round however with the London eye picture i felt that it wasn't doing the painting justice seeing as the weather was quite dull and the framing wasn't as accurate as i hoped it would be. Therefore i didn't use the London eye pictures as final pieces.

Landscape Research

For the landscape pictures i wanted to find paintings of iconic London landscapes, such as Trafalgar square, London eye, and various parks. I wanted the theme to be iconic London because i knew that the best landscapes i could find where ones of iconic settings.
As i was searching on the Internet for any famous painters or painting of London landscapes i came across a few that i really loved the look of. 

One was this one of the royal Albert hall, i loved the use of colour and almost abstract feel of the painting. I also really liked how the artists didn't use, the whole of the building, like conventional paintings but he only captured half of the royal hall and also parts of a tree and other buildings.

The other ones i found where these of parks. i especially like how the path way is in the main focus in both but i also like the diagonal point of view from the second painting. i chose these paintings because they offer a wider view of the beauty nature has to offer. i also chose parks because London is full of iconic parks such as Hyde park, st Jame's, and regents.

The last few i found were these of the more known iconic London landmarks. The top one is a beautiful bright painting of the London eye and he one bellow is more a a duskier, warmer painting of Trafalgar square. i knew these would be easier to imitate because they are such iconic parts of London.

Portrait Experiments

I experimented by taking photos of people in a cafe in Paddington. As portrait is all about the view being able to engage with the mood, personality and character by the facial expression, I made sure most images have the models looking directly at the camera.

 In the two photos above, I tried to capture the relaxed faces of the models in the cafe. It was difficult to make the models look directly at the camera for a long time but was necessary to show the mood in the picture.

I

Here, I tried to capture a more playful mood of the character. I think this picture really shows the personality of the character and lead to a successful experiment.

Portrait Research

Graham Sutherland

Graham Sutherland was an English artist who painted portraits. This is a portrait of Somerset Maugham which is one of the most famous portraits that he has painted. The way Somerset is presented, from his posture and facial expression the viewer is able to identify the personality of the character.

Francis bacon

Francis Bacon was also an English Artist who is very well known for his dramatic and emotional images. "My painting is a representation of life, my own life above all, which has been very difficult. So perhaps my painting is very violent, but this is natural to me." is a quote by Francis.

David Hockney

David Hockney is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer. The image is  “Mother I” created in 1985.This portrait shows that the mther has many different hidden faces.

Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud is an English painter and is well known as working in a representational style and is described as Britain's greatest living painter. This painting of the queen brought a lot of attention in the media as people did not think it was a flattering image of the Queen.

Final Surreal Images

Here is one of the final images for our Surreal section. This image was composed from two images, ( one taken in Paddington Central and one taken on Brighton beach). I decided to make it a more subtle type of surrealism. Some people might say that this is not actually surrealism as it is, in some way, possible for a jet-ski to get on the canal, however i wanted to make it more playful and have fun with it and as it is most likely illegal to jet-ski down a small canal i believe this counts as surrealism.

For this image I wanted to play with the original concept of this well-known game and again keep it a simple form of surrealism. I wanted it to almost look as if the hand belonged there and similar to Erik Johansson by making the audience notice it gradually.

For the final image I wanted to keep it playful and humorous like the other images and have fun creating something abnormal. This is not so subtle like the previous pictures and immediately the audience knows it has been manipulated. This is the case with many surrealist artists and I wanted to show the different sides of surrealism.

Surreal Experiments

After going out and taking photographs around Paddington Central in London we decided to experiment with the surreal task and see what we come up with.

Here I attempted to dry out a canal in Paddington Basin however it is much harder to do than I first thought as it was difficult to makes the boats appear as if they were sitting on the canal-bed, rather than in the water. The dry ground also looks to high to look realistic enough and even with much research on photoshop tutorials i was unable to make it look like it was intended. After getting feedback from friends this idea was scrapped and we tried other ideas.

Here are two separate images I took and tried to converge them into one to create something surreal. Again it isn't very interesting and I felt that it was too simple to show surrealism. Practicing with these images taught me that it's quite hard to get things right in the first attempt and with photography we are able to make changes until we are happy with the final result.

Surrealism Research

Rather than just randomly snapping photographs we decided to first off do research into the three task areas, getting ideas and being influenced by artists and photographers.

Salvidor Dali is one of the most well-known surrealist artist, with work such as 'Swans Reflecting Elephants' showcasing clever manipulation of a painting and really engaging with the audience.
The double image (swans on top/ elephants below) really makes the audience think and concentrate on the painting, making it more memorable.

Here Dali has again got a multiple image painting, (a face/ a vase/ a dog) which is slightly hard to notice at first. Once the audience begins to concentrate and focus on the details in this painting new elements are discovered and more meanings are revealed.

At first glance its almost impossible to notice what it wrong with this photograph by Erik Johansson, looking simply like a spilled cup of coffee. However the surrealist element here is concealed so well that when noticed it leads the audience to perceive this is very cleverly done. The spilled coffee forms the shape of a world map, which would be naturally impossible without the help of photo manipulation. This image is very thought-intriguing and one of the most interesting we found.

Also by Johansson this photograph is really interesting and caught our attention as it is something quite simple but its effective in showing surrealism. What is also striking about it is that the photograph looks quite realistic even though we know it is impossible and has been manipulated.

Romain Laurent has created this image in a surreal manner. This piece of advertising photography called 'Pickpockets' has been conveyed with a surreal sense of playfulness and has fascinated us as he has fun with the image and plays on the audience's sense of humor.