Object Therapy: Final Images

Finally completed all the images so here they are: 

Head Hat (2020) By Zoe Van-de-Velde

This image has my two holiday hats they sit forlornly now on my cupboard awaiting to be adorned upon my head in hot sun!

Mask Head (2020) By Zoe Van-de-Velde

This mask I bought from a craft fair - it was probably the only thing not for sale - I persuaded the maker to sell it to me and again it sits on my cupboard totemistic and most enjoyable to have around.

Orphan Doll (2020) By Zoe Van-de-Velde

Found object - found upon a Leicester bin (prior to the Covid I might add!) I took her home and now she stays with me. The pot was given to me by a friend, it holds emergency cash in case of crisis.

Big Putin/Small Stalin (2020) By Zoe Van-de-Velde

Genuinely from Russia - I bought them back with me the little dictators - I punish them by making them sit by books they might hate!

The Hand (2020) By Zoe Van-de-Velde

The hand I an art project never completed _ I bought it and never used it so now it stays holding out its little fingers perhaps praising God, perhaps just waiting to be useful in life!

Woman (2020) By Zoe Van-de-Velde

Woman a gift from husband when I left I think it is one of the best presents I have ever received.  A woman alone is always at her strongest. 

So here they are and I am most pleased with them - they are consistent and they have the look I intended.  Now I just have make them into a little book!

Process of Creating Aged Images on Photoshop

I am doing this rather late as can be seen I should have finished this last term however assessments took over but always determined to finish what I started I will continue!

So here is my process for ageing my own images - I will just post one as otherwise this will be very repetitive and you will get the idea!

So here is the original image that I chose to work with for the book 

I have uploaded this image to Photoshop from my desktop.  I then change the colour to Sepia

To do this I simply went into adjustments and photo filter and picked 'sepia' and adjusted the density.

I now want to create a kind of frame to give it that old photo look.

So here I created a new blank layer and then used 'edit' 'fill' and picked a colour from the original image.  I then used 'transform' and scale to place the border around the image.

I now want to add texture and that old 'feel' to the image so I downloaded a couple of images from the internet of rust and old paper - here they are:

I will now layer these on top of the image and use opacity to give the look I am after.

I now want to soften the edges of the photo and frame so it looks dated and not sharp.

I used the smudge, blur and burn tools to soften the edges and just darken the image in places.

I will now save this image as a jpeg so that I have the final version ready for the book pages

I think that this has worked really well and each image will be unique as I can use the tools creatively on each to give the look I am after. 

I will now create the rest of the images show these in my next post

Process: Technical Research Photoshop

It has been a while since I have looked at aging and photographs and the last time I did this I was restoring old family photos rather than making them look older which is what I want here.

My aim is to create a very mall book with photographs and text as I stated at the beginning of this project. I want the photos to look aged and used to add some depth to these objects and give the photographs a more textured feel.

I am following some of the instruction here on this video - which is very simple and very clear:

Ageing the Image By David Tipper (2015)

The video using a variety of tools including the smudge, blur and burn tools to soften and discolour the image.  It also uses overlay and opacity to create the texture that you want to create.

Take a look if you are interested for any of your own projects.

Development & Process: Contacts #03

The next set includes a further African figure - however, I think the problem with this is perhaps this is too stark with a plain background - let's take a look. 

I think I actually prefer this one when you can see the books at the edge as this kind of balances out the shot, more inspection of this one will be needed later.

The ophan doll here may have something and I like the final compositions where she is sitting sideways to the camera. 

Orphan Dool: ISO 400, F5, 1/200, FL 14mm

I do think this has something - the doll stares straight at the viewer - the books next to the doll work with the images in the set and the pattern on the pot really works to make this work taking some time over. Check this out in a frame...

This works much better than the flowers tested earlier - here there is longevity to the visual time you could spend on this image. 

I am not going to add the rest of my contact sheets - there are five more but for the most part, these would be rejections - however if I decide to use any from them I will add them in. 

I will now begin to choose the final images that I would like to use and begin to put these together in post-production. 

Development & Process: Contacts #02

To continue we have many more flowers!

As there are many and they may not be included in the final cut, let's look more closely at these shots 

Flower Test: ISO 400, F5, 1/40, 20mm Focal length

As can be seen, the shot is okay the light and composition are okay but is it interesting? 

One way to really see - add to it a frame, consider if you would want it on the wall.  The answer here is a definite no, it would not sustain much attention for long!  Sorry flowers..

So here we have the Russians and the books - you have seen these before in my initial test shots - I still like best tiny Stalin and now we have the final shots I think he will make it!

Stalin Test: ISO 400, F5, 1/25, FL 16mm

I may shoot this one again with Stalin in focus and the books blurred however and compare this to my original test shots to choose the best image. 

Continuing - although I have spent many many hours monkey making and this here is sofa monkey - I don't think he will make the grade, However the mannequin and the strange half balaclava here I really do like and will be looking much more closely at this 

Head Test: ISO 400, F5, 1/40. FL 20mm

I like the rule of thirds composition here - the image is sharp and you can feel the wood stool texture in contrast to the polystyrene head.  The woollen balaclava is strange and I will tell you this story when I add this to the book. 

Development & Process: Contacts #01

As I have 18 contact sheets I will break this down into a few posts.  I used my Olympus E3 to take all the images and show on a wide aperture F5/5.6.  I was indoors so my ISO was on 400 throughout.  I shot all the images in Black and White and I also shot in RWA and high quality so that I have choices in post-production.  I was most interested in playing with the light levels to get the right tones and shadows I was looking for in the images.  

So here you can see I started with the hand as I used as an example in my last post - this image could be interesting the final work and could work as per my sample.  The next was the mannequin - this one I am still contemplating, the images work and there is something about the form and composition here that I am enjoying.  The mask on the wall may not fit in compositionally with the set so I will need to look at this more closely as this is on the wall and portrait. There will need to be decisions around whether to include both portrait and landscape images and how this would affect the layout of the final book.  The bowl and African figures would like to keep in as these are important to me to include.  

The summer hats on the dummy head I actually like these images, I think the most, I was not expecting these to work particularly but there is something about these that will work and as an object in these images there is definitely something interesting.

The African figure here does not work as well as the pair with bowl - but I will need to examine this more closely to see if it makes the final cut.  Then the flowers I took quite a few of the flowers however I am not sure that they even fit into the methodology of the work!

Project Development: Object Therapy

George Perec 1936- 1982

When in doubt I like to consult Perec - Perec was a writer, filmmaker, and essayist.  He enjoyed wordplay, creating crosswords, classification (taxonomy), and lists.  He tried to find order in life essentially and here in Species of Spaces he states when considering the objects on his worktable 'It's several years now since that I have contemplated writing the history of some of the objects on my worktable.  I wrote the beginning of it nearly three years ago; re-reading it, I notice that of the seven objects I talked about, four are still on my work table (although I have moved house in-between).  Tow has been changed: a hand blotter which has been replaced with another hand blotter (they're very much alike but the second one is bigger), and a battery alarm clock (whose normal position is on the bedside table, where it is today), replaced by another wind-up alarm clock.  The third object has disappeared from my work table.' (Perec, 1997: P145) and so this continues, to some this may not seem very interesting a chapter on objects on a work table however I do consider this a piece of high art.  How important the objects are, Perec recognises this in every part of his life, the spaces he inhabits day to day.  This is why I have now photographed my own objects that I will use for this project.  I will add and discuss these in the next post.

Objects inhabit our lives and become part of them, I cannot imagine what it would be to lose all objects that I have.  As I discussed before about them being touchstones - they are memory but they are for the moment, they create familiarity, I come into my home and the objects welcome me, they are a constant, a comfort, a safe place.  

The objects I will discuss all inhabit my home and I will add these photographs with text to create a small book - here is an example with one of the images - I have just grabbed this image - the rest are taking some time to become contact sheets as I took over 500 images (the miracle of digital photography - means I can play until my heart's content).

The Marble Hand

The hand here has really no purpose, originally bought for an art project that I have forgotten (or never developed) I just keep it on the shelf.  It sits among the books and like statues where they are pointing to God, I rather consider that this hand does the same. It is the hand that is reaching to God for me, every day.  It has no function, it is not attached to memory, it is simply a totem that is constant.

This is kind of the idea - a sample, of what I intend here - eventually, my pictures will be complete and I will share the set with you!

References

Perec G. (1997) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Penguin Books Ltd. London