Exhibition Essay

PhotoAccess Exhibition

"Dragon Airways" by Josh Dykraaf 

This image appears in the PhotoAcess exhibition at the Manuka Arts Center, in Manuka. The artist is Josh Dykraaf and the piece is entitled “Dragon Airways”.

The exhibition is made up of local photographers and has some extremely good and interesting images within it. The show has no real theme running through it but small areas where one artist has three or four pieces all of the one theme in it. The show has a varied amount of talent, some pieces make you stand in awe of it and some piece you feel shouldn't really be up among some of the better pieces.

This piece by Josh Dykraaf is really interesting because it is not just a photograph but is an extremely good photo manipulation. The piece to me shows a great imagination on the artists behalf and great patience. The artist has turned a simple plan into a dragon and to do this it would have taken a huge amount of concentration and patience. All of the images that Dykraaf has used to construct the bigger picture was taken by him so there is no issue of using stock images.

I really love the small bits of detail that Dykraaf has included; the second airplane or 'dragon' shows some context and that this is not just a one of case of 'Dragon Airways'. Also the little bits of luggage which help to continue the tail but for me add a little bit of humor to the image. How many times have people lost their luggage during a flight!? 

I also really love the composition of the image. The artist has used the rule of thirds quite effectively in this image, it places the focus on the first plane. I also really like how the artist has created the sense of direction in the image, i can tell that the plane is going through the image and not just stationary.

The artist has really effectively created the illusion of the dragon, he has competently changed the planes so that they are just not a collection of planes but a dragon.

i find this piece to be really effective and quite a good use of the artists imagination. The degree of skill that it would have taken the artist is quite high and makes me appreciate him and his work that much more.

Image found at: http://dahoota.deviantart.com/#/d3bd0jr

More of his work can be found here: http://dahoota.deviantart.com/

"Red Light Crusier" Josh Dykraaf

"Toruble in Big Book City" Josh Dykraaf

Self portraits

Self portraits

This image is my fantasy self portrait. It is meant to be like a scene from a superman movie where Clarke Kent is running through the street and is ripping clothes off to reveal his superman suit. Since early high school i have often had connections with superman purely because of the amount of superman clothing i have. I feel that this is quite i good fantasy image for myself. However i find a few things wrong with this image: My face, because of the slow shutter speed that was used while shooting, is out of focus. To get the correct pose that i wanted i was actually ripping my shirt off and i am not sure if i am happy with my face not being in focus. Also it is a little bit grainy because i put the ISO up to 1600 to try and get a faster shutter speed, it has created more grain in the image.

This is my 'real' self portrait. Outside of photography i work in a bar and absolutely love it, i plan on one day living in Ireland and working in a pub there and that is what i have tried to show through this image. I have also tried to convey the idea that bar tenders work late and are 'creatures of the night' as i often work past midnight and into early hours of the morning. To show this i have used a solitary light, which i placed to the left of the image.

This is another idea for my 'real' self portrait, having curly hair is a big part of my life and personality. One of the biggest things that annoys me about this image is the light reflection in the glasses.

Emotions

The task we were asked to complete was to create portraits that showed emotions. As it is a single image it can be quite tricky to show emotions through the images. After awhile we discovered that it was quite easy to produce evil emotions but particular hard to create more complex emotions, such as joy, cheerfulness etc.

My images from the session

With these images i tried to represent anger and despise. The main idea behind showing these emotions was to show Ellory sneaking up and killing Wayne. I wanted to show Ell in quite an evil way and to do this i decided it would be best to have the lighting coming from quite low and pointing up at her. it was meant to try and create dark shadows on her and give her a bit of an serial killer look but i don't feel that it was quite successful in this. I also used a second light, a softbox, to light up the side of Wayne's face and i feel that this light was successful in its purpose.

On the whole I'm not too happy with these images. If you look at the second image in the bottom left-hand corner the part of Ell's body that is there is completely blown out and you can't see any detail there. This also occurs in the top image but not as bad. I feel that these images don't really convey the emotion that i intended.

Reproducing lighting

For this task in the studio we were asked to look through several images and choose one to reproduce, focusing mostly on the lighting.

This was our final image.

Along the way:

one of our first images that we produced. We decided that this set-up only used one light so we set a soft box up to the right hand side of the subject. We also need to change our white balance to 'Tungsten'

After our last shot we continued to work on the light, we felt we were getting close to having it right but it was not perfect. we re-positioned the light so it was more evenly pointing towards Emma's face. Before this we had had the light too low.

After this we felt we had the lighting correct it was just about getting the correct pose, so that we could match our image.

Superman

Inspiration images for my self portraits!

"Superman" by Urban-Barbarian (deviantart artist)

The image above is really what i imagined my lighting as being like. I wanted to have streams of light coming past my shoulder as i had just stunningly emerged onto the scene and was ripping off my shirt to reveal the superman logo beneath. The pose is a little similar to how i want to be in my image but it would a bit more in a standing position


"Superman" by Roberto-Flores (deviantart artist)



Self portrait ideas

When i get a chance to scan in my original concepts i will post them up.

Studio Self Portrait Lighting setup

Today in the studio i took the time to work out how i would have my lights set up for my fantasy self portrait. I really wanted to work with some backlighting and i thought this would be my main source of light but after a few attempts at trying to get the set-up to work i came to the conclusion that i would have to use a second light.

The image above is with only using 1 light. as you can see near the arm and should there is some really nice rim lighting, highlighting the outline of the body but the face and the chest (where the majority of the focus will be) is too dark. The light in this image is placed almost directly behind my subject and slightly directed so it pointed to more of the shoulder.

The main idea was to replicate a comic sort of style in this image. I wanted to try and have streams of light going past the subject. After this i tried adding in a second light.

This image is with a second light added, the light behind my subject is a tungsten lamp without a soft box because i wanted it to be quite strong and directional. The second light that i added a tungsten lamp with a soft box, this was to try and add detail to the front of the subject, i feel it was quite successful BUT i lost the rim lighting that i was starting to get on the shoulder and arm which i thought was quite effective.

For this image i moved the second the light from the right (looking at the image) to the left of the subject. This is quite effective in highlighting the subject's face and chest where the majority of the focus will be placed when I shoot the final image and i have kept that rim lighting on the arm and shoulders. However the lighting is too spread and i want to try and focus it just a little bit more, one suggestion was to place cardboard with a hole in it and this will help to focus it and decrease the spread of light.

Final lighting setup