Combining it all...

After taking the images of the boys and manipulating them, I wondered whether I could edit the pinhole camera images into them also.

I do like how the colours compliment each other, but I would like the shape of the light trails to follow the shape of the main focus. 

Some more experimenting gave me a bit of success in terms of getting the light trails to bend to mimic the shape of the main focus, however, I had to take notice of how it was distorting the shape of the trails. I also decided to manipulate the colours to match the main focus of the image to make them blend together, to make it seem as though it was the figure making the light trails.

I am quite pleased with the overall effect that the images have. The use of the pinhole camera images has really given the eye another focus when viewing the photograph, I really like the burst of colour that now accompanies the figure. I do think that I need to use images that have more focus on the figure, as I feel the middle image is too broken down to really see what is happening.

What do you think?

Learning New Techniques...

Only a quick post to get the images up, and I will update it later on. Trying to catch movement of the full body is far trickier than I thought, especially when you have an idea in mind but you are hampered by the resources that you have.

Anyway, after a bit of editing, I am quite pleased with the outcome, I can see where I think the project is going in terms of final pieces.

Off to walk the dogs...

Update, it is a little rainy outside.

Anyway, these images took a long time to work out  in terms of the best shutter speed, light sources, timing, focus and movements. It took far more time than I thought it would in terms of being able to capture a photo that I was initially pleased with, without any editing. The boys did well as the subjects in the photos and their movements worked well in the end. 

When editing the images I have manipulated the brightness and contrast to get the best distinction between the colours and the actions. It also had the added benefit of making the background much darker and therefore making the main focus stand out. Some of the images have had the fresco effect applied to them as it gave the photos a painting quality and made the subject more of a stream of coloured movement.

A New Direction?

This is titled a new direction but it is the same concept as the last few posts but just using a different subject and going extreme with the edging. I stumbled across images by a guy called Cafini, he recorded motion in one image against a dark background so that the movement and colour were the main focus. They really are stunning images.

It was much harder to work out this technique than I thought it was going to be, I understood how the method and how it should work, however, getting it to work was a whole other story. I eventually managed to get some images that are capturing the essence of what Cafini's work is showing, but I have a long way to go before it reaching anything that I am truly proud of.

To take it a step further than just viewing my poor attempts at capturing motion I have edited my images using the find edge technique to see if I could just highlight the main lines and therefore the movement.

Here are my results:

I do like how these turned out in the end, as it has captured the movement, however, I do need to try this with a full body movement to get some further experiments done.

The response from my Mum - "At least those ballet lessons when you were little have now had some use!"

And on another positive note, we managed to find two of the pinhole cameras that were put up at the beginning of September, so fingers crossed for some good results.

Development of the idea...

And I really must go and pick up the pinhole cameras before the weather makes them inaccessible until after the winter! Will check to see how long they have been up for first before braving the muddy fields and nettles.

On with the show, after having a quick look at the first few reviews that came in after the new images were posted (you know the A-Ha inspired ones), I have been having another fiddle with some images that I took of the boys playing at the local park.

I think that the subject and the angles that the images are taken at really plays into how well this technique works, and the overall result of the final image. During this process I created the original image and then played around with the different effects to see what I could do to boost the image.

Here we go...

This is the original image once completed, I have run a couple of adjustments over it to brighten the image a little to bring out the detail further.

On with the playing, I used a duplicate image and ran a find edge filter to create the white lines that are evident in the final image. I quite like this as it makes the figures a bit crisper on each of the layers.

I do like a good bit of black and white in photographs, so I thought I would try it out on this image and see the result. I have added in a further duplicate image to find the edges and changed the settings a little to boost the outlines. I really like this image, the grainy effect on the original image is interesting as it is in contrast with the bold edges that have been overlaid.

The Results are in....

After leaving the post up for a while to gauge reactions to the different paths that I could take, I have enough responses, both verbal and digital to make a decision on what to do next in terms of work....drum roll.....

The majority of people really like the image of the boy in red running towards the camera, and work that was similar to this concept. I have to admit that this is also my favourite image as I like the idea of tracking something through a series of movements. This is similar to Étienne-Jules Marey but with fewer image included to maintain an uncluttered feel to the images.

Here are some new ones that I have produced using the same techniques as before.

I took a set of images of my husband walking down a set of stairs, I then had to select the photos that would work, showing the sequence of walking down the stairs without overcrowding the image and also just laying images just because they were in the series that I took. The development included a large amount of manipulation to get the different positions in the right place so that they are visible in the final image. Once I had the sequence I was then able to experiment with the background and foreground colouring, as above shows the figures in colour and the background in black and white and then inverted on the second image. I am not sure which is my favourite out of the two as they bring different things to the image. The colours of the trees and the contrasting colours are really beautiful, whereas the coloured figures lead the eye through the sequence of movement.

I was having a bit of a A-Ha moment when I decided to create part of the image with a sketch effect, no idea where it came from as I was walking the dogs at the time and I don't listen to A-Ha either. I think it was a strange 6 degrees of separation thing where I was thinking of Bond movies - A-Ha did a Bond song - they did the video that was part sketch and part reality and there you go, the method of thinking behind this set of image. This was just a bit of fun, but I thought that I would post the results to see what people thought. The first image has the background as the sketch, with the second having the sequence of figures as the sketch with the background as black and white.

So what do we think of the next step?

Expanding the paths to follow...which way to go?

I am at a bit of a road block in terms of which way to progress next to develop my work further. I have been playing with some photos this evening to try and find a style or genre that I am interested in developing further.

I had a bit of a play with one of the images from the other day that I created, using the colour and black and white version to create an image with only the main focus in colour. I do like black and white photographs and I think this splash of colour works really well and it looks like the main focus is travelling through a different world.

So far I have looked at blending exposures and then cutting sections out to create a painting feel to the image. See the image below, the photos used where taken this evening as the sun was setting as it had some amazing colours going on. I have layers the different images I took over half an hour and then removed sections of colour to show the images underneath.

It is a bit of a crazy experiment and loosely based upon the work of Matt Molley, who uses a collection of images to create impressionist style photographs. I quite like the patchwork effect of the sky and the colouring that has developed.

The other experiment for this evening was looking into chrono-photography, or the idea of showing motion in an image, again this is mainly done post-production of the photos for me currently. I took a burst of photos while at training the other weekend, and the attempt was to construct one image showing the dog's movement.

This again is similar to the work of Étienne-Jules Marey who took a number of photos of the same scene but at different times, and combining them together to show the movement of a person or animal. I do like this one from a training piece as it shows the dog's stride pattern and its technique, which is very useful in terms of working out pacing and stamina building. 

So any ideas on which path I should be taking, it could be one of these or a path from one of my previous posts, such as the overlaying of images:

UPDATE: A COUPLE OF NEW IDEAS TO HAVE A LOOK AT..... 

So which path do you think my work should go in? I leave it up to you guys.

What do we think?

New Experiments...

While I was out with the dogs, I quickly got out my phone to take a few photos that I could manipulate. The result is not too bad, the only issue is that I have 2 black and white dogs, this means that they don't show up that well when using the laying technique to overlay each image to give a pathway.

Still the little dog, who is blond, shows through pretty well. It did take a bit of editing to get rid of the trees and grass from each layer so I did not have a weird blur going on.

Here are the original images:

Combine Images to show the path of the dogs as they run back to me with the toy.

You can see the pathway that the dogs pick as they come back.