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Tuesday, 26 April 2016

Double Exposure

Double Exposure photography is a method that uses more than one image at different exposures to overlay each other in order to create a really striking image. This form of photography can be used anywhere and can be based around pretty much anything, therefore I have decided to experiment with this for myself and base this method around my topic of water.




In order to take the best images for double exposure I needed to take silhouetted portrait photographs of a face that would stand as the main frame/shape of the main image. The best way to do this was to setup a camera in a studio with a white background. By placing my subject in front of the white screen and setting up a studio flash to illuminate only the background, I was able to take photographs of my subject as a silhouette. which then meant I was able to take photographs of water that could be placed over the image in Photoshop. By placing the portrait silhouette on a layer below the water images and setting the water image to the layer effect screen,  the layers were merged together, making a  surreal double exposed picture, that really captures what I wanted to emulate.




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Monday, 25 April 2016

Under Water Photography

Underwater photography has been popularly used by many natural and wildlife photographers wanting to get snaps of fish and other marine life, but its not just the animals under water that make a good photo. The natural scenery underwater can be a rather interesting and beautiful subject in it's self, giving us an insight into what the world looks like under our rivers and lakes. 




The main way to take these photographs would be to use a camera that uses waterproof housing to keep it dry and prevent the camera from being damaged, but in recent years camera companies such as Go-pro have popped up, meaning taking images underwater have become much more easier and convenient to achieve. For my own experiment I I'll use a Go-Pro Hero Session camera in order to achieve this. The Go-Pro Hero Session, uses a wide angle lens that creates a distorted fish eye shape. This meant I was able to take more within the photo, giving it a deeper field of view.








When taking the photos I did encounter a few problems such as murkiness of the river water that clouded my vision and added a yellow hue to the images, distortion due to the waters alteration of light, and also some areas of the images foreground being slightly blurred. These are only minor setbacks that are expected when taking images underwater, although when taking these images into Photoshop I was able to alter the hue/saturation, levels, and brightness and contrast and iron out some of the imperfections.

I feel that this experiment has been a success, as the only way I can get better results would be if I were to find naturally clearer water which would be a lot more difficult. Man-made tanks/ponds/lakes could offer better results but the likelihood that these water sources would be better visual quality is low and hard to predict as algae and other sediments can still cloud the water.

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