My angle of photography started as silhouettes. However I had overlaid some of my images using photo shop. This made my designs of the silhouettes more interesting and not as boring as the originals. To create the image I was looking to accomplish, I used double exposure which is the layer over the silhouette and it fits inside of the images outline. It can also make the portrait look like something else To begin with, I attempted to take silhouette pictures of my two friends and edited them on photo-shop by darkening the outline of the bodies and whitening the background so that it looked more like a silhouette.
As you can see the image is dark so of course I had to brighten it so it would look affective.
These were the first images I took and when taking them, I tried my best to angle the photos so that the models were central, as well as being the darkest that I could get them whilst having a bright background, so they were half way to being silhouettes without any editing on photo-shop. After taking the images, I instantly uploaded them to the computer and edited them. I combined the two single photographs that looked the best once I had darkened the models structure as much as I could, and brightened the background until it was white and then I faced them towards each other. Once I was happy with the silhouettes that I had produced, I played around with images that I had took a while ago of different materials and I combined them.
The first material I combined with my images was pages from a book that I took a few months before I started my project. This image wasn't going to be used in any other way as I though it wasn't good enough, however, combined with the silhouette portraits, the book pages look really effective.
My second material was an image of a leaf zoomed in, which again is what I took months before my silhouette project took place. As well as the book-page-image I didn't think that this picture was very good, but layered inside and on top of the silhouette portraits, it is also just as effective as the one before.
Double Exposure Project
I have only recently started to work on double exposure, however I find it more interesting than silhouettes. I really like this project because it can portray a hidden secret in the piece of work or tell you more about the artist. I began my project by playing around on an app on my phone called 'PicsArt' which is basically photoshop for phones. I started by inserting an image to edit and played around from there.
This was the image I started off with. It is of Bradley Will Simpson from The Vamps and it was taken by Connor Ball, another member of The Vamps. I chose this picture because it has a wide range of colour to play around with, there is a space around Brad's body for overlays and extra things/ images to add in and the background has a lot going on. I played around with this image on 'PicsArt' and found myself on special effects where I could edit and add my own effects or if I wanted to, I could combine effects. This is what I ended up with.
With the image I started off with, I thought it would be fun to lay an image over the top of it. However it didn't turn out as well or as clear as I hoped. This was the image I layered over the top.
This was a 'free image' from the internet which means it has no copy right charges and the photographer is anonymous.
I then rotated this and made it opaque so that it wouldn't look too bold over the top of my original image.
My result wasn't what I would of hoped for it to be, however, the more I practice on double exposure, the more my work will improve and look better and more professional.
Here is more of my work from PicsArt.
My Double Exposure
This was my first attempt at producing a double exposure piece of work myself. It isn’t as good as I hoped however there is room for improvement under every topic that I work on. I don’t think that this is great because it doesn’t really portray a depth. The only thing that I think could be a hidden secret about the finished portrait would be that because Justin is on stage, he is overwhelmed with the atmosphere, therefore, he is seeing it in different perspectives and ‘loosing his head’ about it. I didn’t think about what the picture could mean before I started working on it, this is why it doesn't have a strong meaning behind it, I just loved the picture I started off with and that’s why I chose to work on it.
This is a piece of double exposure that I produced. I completed this piece of work in a number of steps. Again, this isn’t a strong piece of work from me because I didn’t think about it before I started to work on it, so it doesn’t have a depth to it. I believe that double exposure is about the depth behind the picture which I am not accomplishing at the moment. I am just focusing on the photoshop side of it before I can combine the two. For example, my inspiration for double exposure is Dan Mountford who has a depth or a meaning behind every piece of work that he produces.
Below is the image I started off with (from the picture above)
Below is the step by step guide of how I produced this image.
Unfortunately I missed out a few steps in the progress pictures, however it was basically a repeat of the first 3 images.
This image was the first of my silhouette work and I thought that I would combine working with silhouettes into my double exposure work. Here are some edited versions of this image that I could work with in the future.
I have decided to work with the second image because it would be easier to create a depth with this certain image because of the bricks in the background. I thought that they could represent the background that I have came from or that the models have came from.
I decided to insert an image of my baby cousins which I had already dispersed part of. This implied my home life because the bricks could represent a steady home and my cousins represent family.
Step by step of how I dispersed the image.
I was happy with how this image turned out, even though it is more on the silhouette side than the double exposure, I still feel like my work is on the way to having depths to it.
Here are more pictures that I have incorporated to my silhouette image.
Another subject which I will link to both silhouettes and double exposure is dispersion. This is basically cutting a piece of an image and making it look as if the picture has distorted or ‘moved’ / is moving.
I recently found a new app on my phone which is called Photofox. It is an app created for double exposure and dispersion.
On PicsArt I created a few images by some that I was inspired by. Here are the images that I was inspired by and below are the ones that I created.
Here is my work.
I really like the inspiration images as well as the ones that I created. I think they are very effective because they are colourful and not just dull and boring which some photography work is like. I have used images that represent me to to begin the project so that when I get used to making these double exposure examples, I can make it so that they have a background which I hope to accomplish throughout every photography project that I complete. The background to these images are that I enjoy my friends company and I love music / bands and musicians, this is why I have used images of Justin Bieber and The Vamps members. This work is very wacky and I love it for that reason. It is my style of work, and by this I mean I don’t think I would get bored of it easily or even at all, I can introduce new colours and effects but just make sure that it is still bright and effective otherwise I will go off task.
These images link to my other double exposure images because I have dispersed them. I have chose to do this so that all of my work links together, whether it is the style of image, what the image is of or how I have edited them.
With the images that I was inspired by, I decided to disperse them aswell as my own pictures. I done this to show the association between my work and the origionality of what inspired me.
I think that dispersion is effective because it creates a fluent path of colour, because it is moving away from the original image. As well as my silhouettes and double exposure projects, dispersion also portrays a story. Depending on what the picture is of, dispersion could make it look as if they are moving away from the bad in their lives. This could be a mental illness like depression or anxiety or they could be moving away from a home or just bad in their life. The images that I was inspired by do not show a sad side so therefore they cannot relate to a drastically moving away story or depth. However in the future I will pursue more dispersion pieces that have depth.