Tom- Location photography proposal.

For this assignment, I propose that I will do a project inspired by the Cottingley fairies photographs. As well as this, My images will be accompanied by a short story in the style of a children's book. The images will be shot in an area of my garden which has overgrown plants and gaps which is similar to where the Cottingley images were shot. My images will also be shot in black and white, I will also experiment using both digital and film cameras. With the images shot with the film camera, I will try and distort the images to make them appear older, by processes such as burning, scratching and tinting the image. With the digital photographs, I will edit them using photoshop to create the same effect.

Tom- Project research

The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Conan Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, but others believed they had been faked.

Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls grew up, married and lived abroad for a time. Yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination; in 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the UK. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story. In the early 1980s Elsie and Frances admitted that the photographs were faked using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time, but Frances continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.

The photographs and two of the cameras used are on display in the National Media Museum in Bradford.

 

Steve- Lumen prints

These lumen prints were created by taking a plant and placing it on photographic paper, Then placing it beside a window in direct sunlight. This made the photographic paper develop and created this unique print that is very different than taking a conventional photograph. This process was simple yet effective, and I would consider using it in the future.

After experimenting with this process, I decided to experiment with it further by editing the image using photoshop. I used curves and levels to create this sharp, more defined version of the image. I prefer this version as the colours are more visible and sharp, also the image looks much more interesting and like a finished image.

Steve- Joiners

The photoshop technique 'joiners' is when a series of close up images are taken of a location and then merged together using various processes on photoshop. I did this by taking the images, with a variety of shot types, and then I used photoshop processes to merge them together. I then made the individual images look less connected by adding a border around each image.

I like this technique as it is like a panorama image, but reconstructed to create this mish-mash photograph. Also, as it can be used with many different backgrounds and objects, and can be created neatly or like the image below.

Using blending modes to edit under/overexposed images.

The images displayed are parts of a subject I did called location portraits. I edited the images using blending modes. With the under-exposed images I used screen, then with the over-exposed images I used multiply. I then changed the opacity to suit the image. These edits changed the lighting of the images to make them appear correctly exposed. 

I will use this editing process in the future as the effect it created was natural and would be unnoticeable.

Steve- Planets

These 'planet' images were created in photoshop using a panorama image and distorting it using polar coordinates. This creates the rounded image resembling a planet. This process was quick and easy, it is also a technique I would consider using in the future.

I could improve this image by cropping the image so that there was no white gaps, as seen in the centre of the image below.