Project 7: Cyanotype and Daguerreotype photography

For this project we explored through photoshop how to create a cyanotype and daguerreotype style photo digitally. You can usually achieve cyanotype and daguerreotype through film photography but by using brushes and photoshop we created images in these styles digitally.  Cyanotype photography is a photographic printing process that gives a cyan-blue color to the image. This process was popular in engineering circles well into the 20th century. It was a simple low cost process which made it easy for engineers to make large scale copies of their work. Daguerreotype photographs are images that were formed on a highly polished metal surface, normally Sheffield plate. This technique was more common than the cyanotype technique. Using photoshop, we were able to recreate those two printing styles digitally.

For this project, we looked at surreal paintings and what surrealism was and tried to create our own surreal photographs using multiple images we had taken.

For this picture I began with the background which is an image of bristly brushes in front of a forest. I then added the girl, and changed her to black and white to make her seem ghostly. Next, to create the tire swing/mountain part of the picture I edited in the swing and I made the edges of the tire kind of sketchy on purpose to make it seem less solid and real. Then, I used an elliptical marquee to make the mountain circular and move it into the rope swing. Finally to try to unify the image I put a texture over all the images I'd put in and added a gradient. 

Overall, I did a fair bit less with this image than with the previous one. I took the background of the flowers and got several images I had of the girl, edited everything away from her body so it was just her. I made her much smaller than the flowers and placed her all around the top of the roses. In order to unify the image, I added a texture over all the pictures. 

Surreal Paintings

The project we are working on is a study of surrealism, and creating surreal pictures with our photographs. To do that, we must first understand classic surrealism. Surrealism is a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images. To me, surreal paintings and photographs are very dreamlike and portray something impossible and a little disturbing but still very beautiful. 

Salvador Dali

Max Ernst

Project 5: Basic Photoshop