4th August 2020: A Successful Day of Editing

Today I spent all day editing the sex themed photoshoot on photoshop. I wanted the figure of the woman in the work to come across as an object, hence why I spent yesterday attempting to make the figure look almost like an antique table, inspired by Benjamin Spier's Artwork. I did this by dragging out the limbs and curling them around using a distortion effect, however as is evident from my post yesterday my attempts were not successful. I am not advanced enough on photoshop to successfully achieve this look without it looking unprofessional, and heavily warping the background and effecting the quality: so I have found myself improvising with photoshop today and coming up with a good final outcome, whilst still keeping the aesthetic and meaning of the editing relevant to the concept of the shoot.

As mentioned I wanted the female protagonist of the shoot to appear as an object. Yes, this would have been achieved by making her look like a distorted antique table- however I came to the conclusion that a statuesque look in the figure could portray the idea of objectification too and could actually be achieved on photoshop and this is a concept I had explored anyway in my R+D book (please refer to this).

Please see the image below for what it looked like before editing:

I begun the process by slightly adjusting the levels in photoshop. This always slightly improves the overall appearance of light and dark in the image, very subtly, but just polishes the image up slightly. This is something Gemma Latimer taught me in my first term when we were creating magazine covers!

I then used the clone effect to cut off the arms and feet in order to create a statue-esque look in the figure. This took a lot of improvisation and trial and error but I managed to get there after many hours. The clone effect can mean that the background can sometimes look off and the shadows can become distorted, so my keen eye for detail came in use in the process of editing the shots. I was very satisfied with how it turned out and I am happy that I was somewhat confident enough on photoshop but very confident in my vision that it came together.

I have always been inspired by the colour palette in Steven Klein's fashion photography which is highly prevalent in Italian Vogue. The images nearly always have an eerie blue tinge which I had decided I want to emulate in the editing of the photo. The sombre blue tone not only replicates this highly successful fashion photographer but also is appropriate for the meaning of the work. I did this by using ''auto tone'' to bring out more of the blue in the background and enhance the blue of the figure. This also created a better contrast between the red of the hair of the model, consequently creating a more ''Steven Klein'' look. I also enhanced the contrast for further dramatic effect.

I felt the need to enhance the blue of the photo even further through improvisation so used the 'hue' effect to achieve this look

I did create three outcomes as you will be able to see on the website once the project is finished: however, all of the editing processes are the same so it is futile to screenshot every single screenshot for every single image.

I am overall very happy with the outcomes. Yes the quality is not what I had wanted but due to the broken camera issue I faced I think I did as best as I could. The stark contrast in the unedited images (see R+D book) and the final edited images make me proud, as they show I can work with something which seems limiting, but can create a completely different, creative, artistic piece of work which is heavily relevant to my aesthetic and conceptual goal.