Tuesday 29/9/20 - Photoshoot

I took this series of photographs based around my previous research. These were done both to experiment with portraits and using practical methods to add effects to my photography, being a glass prism and projector. Instead of using the projector simply to add a background I was using it as lighting to add to the theme. I projected three different images onto my model, one being a futuristic coca-cola logo, a splash of multiple colours and a futuristic version of the mastercard logo. I chose the two logos as I was inspired by the film Blade Runner. In both films the city is filled with advertisements on massive neon billboards that are unmissable. The idea behind these advertisments is to help show the idea of an advanced city however it's filled with the influence of corporations who use advertisements to show their power and control, something people with future ambitions don't exactly hope for. The colour splash was inspired by cyberpunk themed photos which featured bold neon colours with blue, purple and pink being the most notable. I used a glass prism in some shots as a chance to experiment with the different effects it could create. It reflected features of the surrounding room both in and out of shot and gave a natural distortion effect to the images. I liked this as it's also remniscient of glitch effects.

I also took 6 test photos of my friend working on his computer incase I wanted any different photos to mess around with.

Next came the editing in post, I wanted to keep the photos mostly unedited to show what I could do with practical effects. I used digital editing to add in the cybernetic faces to replace the flowers of the original painting. Initially I simply photoshopped an image I found online. I tried using different layers of colour with lowered opacity to help blend the cybernetic face in however due to lighting differences it looked very unnatural.

For the next one I tried something else, I found an action figure with a robotic face and took photos with similar lighting to one of the original photos I took. I also made sure the poses matched to make it look better in the photo.

I then cropped and cut out the majority of the image aside from the very front face plate. With a combination of slight adjustments to the original image and the ones of the 'face' through methods such as changing the exposure / contrast or adjusting the opacity to give it a more natural placement in the final image. In the end it was better than the first attempt but not perfect. Lighting still needed fixing but there isn't a lot I could do without a physical prop.

I decided to change my initial approach to this, instead of going full cyberpunk with robotics I decided to use something very modern but still fitting of the cyberpunk theme: censorship. Instead I was now going to censor the face instead of trying to replace it. This would help increase the quality and make things simpler.

I chose my favourite images from the shoot to work with this, in the end I didn't use the test ones as they were both under exposed and didn't capture the same style I quite wanted. For the first two photos in order to pixelate the face only I duplicated the layer and removed everything par the face of my model. I then used the mosaic tool in photoshop to help with this.

I also added a pixelated bar of colour similar to the black ones used to cover someone's eyes.

For the other photos I took a different approach and used images of skulls and robotic heads like my original idea, however this time I was combining it with my new idea of censorship. Much like the previous images I used the mosaic tool on the images that would cover the face. I also used colour halftone tool to add tiny coloured dots to the image (which is inspired by what was originally a printing process), I used this as it looked similar to static.

For one image I also decided to cover not only the face but part of the torso (shown below).

Even though it may seem like I just stuck the images ontop of the original photos I used transformation tools to better match it to the shape and size of the face to make it look less weird. I specifically chose photos that shared similar poses and angles to the original photo to help blend it in better. I also made small adjustments to the contrast, exposure, vibrance, saturation and white balance to help make the photos look their best.

Here are the final photos: