Patterns - Kew Gardens
Plans for shoot -
My plan for this shoot was to head to The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, London to collect images that I could use as natural patterns. I wanted to take photographs of different plants quite close up to show detail and depth. In this shoot I wanted to gain a range of colour that would stand out against black and white portraiture.
Research Influence - John Stezaker
This shoot was mainly influenced by the work of John Stezaker as he overlays landscape images onto people faces however I decided this would work well with patterns especially of flowers and different plants. Below are two examples of this -
I particularly like how in the first image you can see the smile on the boys face just below the landscape adding expression and emotion to the image. This is something I would like to try when it comes to experimenting with my own work.
AO1 - From reflecting upon the work I have produced below I believe I have been influenced by the work of John Stezaker because the patterns I have produced will work well in his style. I have tried to take images in both landscape and portrait orientations so that when it comes to editing I will be able to see what works better with each photograph. I have also tried to take some harsh or masculine photos (such as the cactus) and some feminine images (such as the flowers), therefore I can match them to the person similar to what John does.
Image Bank
Below are some images that have actually been taken at Kew gardens itself that I found online. These are the kinds of images I was aiming to achieve when I was there as they are patterned and would work well over black and white portraits.
Contact Sheets
Best Images (Edited)
AO2 - This shoot was taken at Kew Gardens which has an array of plants, textures and colours that are perfect for my proposed idea. As I was walking around the Botanical Gardens I didn't have the opportunity to use a tripod therefore had to ensure I was using a high shutter speed that wouldn't produce blur (majority being over 1/80sec). The photographs that you see above were taken with a small aperture due to the close nature of the images, however the top two were in a more exposed environment, requiring a larger aperture. Throughout the shoot I stayed at ISO800 as it was quite a clod day and I was shooting inside, hereford I needed more light sensitivity in the camera. Despite this being quite a high ISO it didn't interfere much with the quality of the images.
For the images I have produced I edited them slightly just to increase the contrast and the saturation. This made the images look more aesthetically pleasing but not unrealistically edited as I want them to remain similar to how they were taken. Below is an example of the editing I done -
As I have been shooting in camera raw the first step of all my editing is to adjust the exposure, contrast, temperature and more in quite close detail. As you can see I didn't change much about the image mainly the temperature.
The second thing I changed was the curve option allowing me to just eliminate the slight over-exposure of this image.
As mentioned before the editing of these images was kept simple as I didn't want to alter the natural beauty of the plants too much. Plus in John Stezaker's work the landscapes he uses aren't edited, they are placed onto the portrait just as they are and I think this works really well.
AO3 & AO4 - I believe I have produced a good piece of work relevant to my original intentions, the images I have produced are ones that I can effectively use in the experimentation part of my project. These images will be used as overlays to portraiture photographs covering the eyes or whole face of the person. Although I am happy with the work I have produced I would have liked to include more texture in the photographs or experimented with the patterns themselves by using magnifying glasses.
Progression
As mentioned in AO4 I would have liked to experiment with the patterns themselves. This could be through perhaps shooting with magnifying glasses to distort the flowers, this would transform not only the overall image but also the overlay, making the image much more interesting. The future of the images in this shoot is to be used in the style of John Stezaker, using these photographs over the top of portraits. This will be one of my experiments and will be completed when I shoot my portrait images.
Experimentation
As mentioned above these images will be used going forward with shoot 3 - portraiture. This is in order to create some John Stezaker style images. Below are my results-
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