TEXTURES AND SURFACES Level 1 - The Setup Ben Franklin 1081
Textures and Surfaces To introduce the topic of textures and surfaces, the page on the right shows initial photos above their edited versions from camera raw in photoshop. The aim in mind when taking these photos was to capture a wide variety of different textures, both man-made and natural.
Of these three sets, I’m most pleased with the results of the first - the flat, grey tones of the tarmac have become a clearer black, highlighting the sections where the sunlight hit the surface. To compliment this, the stripe of paint has more distinct shading when compared the original, which shows more of a single pale yellow colour.
HPIM0745.JPG -
HPIM0747.JPG
HPIM0767.jpg
HPIM0745Edited.JPG
HPIM0747Edited.JPG
HPIM0767Edited.JPG
The others feature more general improvements, most notably the elimination of the yellow tone in the centre photo. In doing this, as well as darkening the shadow which bisects the frame, I think this shot has been significantly improved. Thirdly, increasing the contrast and vibrance of the far right image has it appear much clearer and more defined.
Textures and Surfaces: Variants
Applying different effects and settings to various textures can have interesting effects, as demonstrated by the examples on these two pages. The entire tone of a photo can be altered with tweaks to the exposure, colour and definition. With textured photography like this, my general aim is to emphasise imperfections in the surface of an object, to show the large differences in small areas. HPIM0766Basics.jpg The two images above show the inverse of the effect I’ve tried to create in other texture work - here I used specific colour selection to drain the vibrant colours out of the image in order to better exemplify the difference colour and texture can make. The image on the right is flatter, less appealing in general, showing the importance of a focal point in pieces like this.
HPIM0759Basics.jpg
HPIM0759Inverted.jpg This specifc example shows a crack in painted plaster. Like the shot of the tarmac, I chose this because of the way the crack breaks the uniformity of the blank white wall, allowing for effects such as the inversion above to highliight the difference in surfaces within the picture.
My first thought with the below pair of images was to emphasise the blacks, the shadows between individual fenceposts. In doing this the knots in the wood were highlighted, lending even more texture to the piece. The seperate pieces of wood naturally divide the photo into vertical sections, each a slightly different colour.
Textures and Surfaces: Further Edits
HPIM0753Basics.jpg
HPIM0753Threshold.jpg In the process of making basic edits to this image I picked out the line of shadow across the upper fifth and the texture of the wall as two elements that I wanted to highlight. Using Photoshop’s threshold function as well as edits in camera raw to further emphasise the shadows, I think the image on the right achieves this.
I took a number of photos looking at textures in the foreground and background of a shot - different levels. The picture I chose to edit here is one which has four separate layers; both sides of the basket, the low wall behind and the window still further back.
HPIM0755Basics.jpg
HPIM0755BW.jpg In order to highlight each layer individually, I set the photo to black and white, then manually adjusted the colour settings, eventually producing an effect similar to an inversion of the image with some shadows showing up as the brightest spots in the image. The contrast this produces against the darkness of the wall as well as the emphasis on the window frame works well with the sense of layers here.
Textures and Surfaces: Final Edits and Scans
The pair of images on the left are edited versions of a scan composed of several separate pieces of paper. The original image (with basic edits done) is above - the wrinkles in the paper reminded me of scars in a flat landscape, or craters on the moon. This was the effect I tried to reproduce with the edits done to the picture below, beginning with the solarise effect and then adjusting exposure from there.
IMG_0409Basics.jpg
HPIM0764Basics.jpg
The second set of pictures here were taken because I noticed that the majority of the textures I had chosen were urban, man-made. To compound this, an image of leaves like this one was one of the first ideas I had when considering subjects for this assignment. Again, the picture above has only basic edits performed on it, while the effect produced in the below image adds a contrasting colour to the otherwise flat tone, as well as a general theme that’s almost psychadelic.
IMG_0409Solar.jpg
HPIM0764Difference.jpg
Textures and Surfaces: Contact Sheet