Development of Final Ideas: How I would structure my final outcome

I felt that even though origami was a simple and unique way in which I could possibly present my flower images, I wanted my final piece to be more realistic and striking. I decided to experiment with how I could possibly build a flower- like structure, made from my final images. I tested this idea first on a small scale prototype.

I cut out petal shapes from my reverse lens final images and carefully placed wire strips on the undersides as a way of supporting and shaping my flower. I felt that this idea was perfect for presenting my final images.

Development of Final ideas: Origami

I decided to start my experiments with some simple techniques such as origami. Without using my final images, I began to play around with creating origami flowers, following a step by step guide found on http://www.origami-instructions.com.

I wanted to make flowers because I felt this would link nicely to my theme of ‘Nature’ and would serve as a reflection of what my close up images are of.

Developing my Ideas: Research on Szymon Roginski

I wanted to make my final outcome as interesting and unique as possible. I began to research interesting ways that I could present my final ideas. I came across famous photographer and artist Szymon Roginski, who folds and sculpts his images to create unusual, striking outcomes.

I decided that I wanted to experiment with possibly making my images 3 dimensional. This would be the perfect way to present my images in an obscure and unique way.

Experiment shoot: Nature/Plants

I began to narrow down my ideas and decided that I wanted to somehow incorporate the theme of nature into my project. I have always shared an interest in wildlife and nature and so felt that it would be suitable to combine the topic of ‘Close up’ with my passion.

I took to the garden and began to photograph plants and flowers with a macro lens.

 

Experimenting with reverse lens photography

These are some of the images that I produced in my reverse lens shoot. I was overall very happy with the abstract and unusual appearance of my photographs and felt that these could possibly work very well as part of my final outcome.

Developing my initial ideas

After taking some macro photos of plants and flowers I began to feel as though I could make my images more interesting and iscolated by moving closer in to the subject that I was photographing.

I found a tutorial on Youtube that showed how I could make this possible…

Man Ray Photogram experiments

This was my first photogram experiment in the style of Man Ray. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this technique and found that I could also incorporate my topic of ‘Close up’ into this style of image. I experimented by placing objects and pieces of material in the enlarger and negative carrier, whilst also placing objects directly onto the photographic paper before exposing it to light.

I found that this technique was perfect for creating abstract and unusual images, two qualities of which I hoped to somehow illustrate in my final ideas. I was interested in keeping my experiments close within the theme of close up ‘Nature’ and so in my experiments used  plants, microscope slides and blades of grass to create these photograms, as well as some everyday objects.

Research on Man Ray

Man Ray (born August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in France. He was a big contributor to the Dada and surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of different media but considered himself an artist painter above all. He was best known for his photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with Photograms, which he called “rayographs” or “rayograms” in reference to himself.

Analysis of Edward Weston Experiments

I was quite happy with this image as I felt that the black and white effect really made the mushroom stand out and also helped to enhance the fine details of the mushrooms underside. I was also pleased with the positioning of the mushroom, as the stem was central to the bottom of the image, the head formed a neat semi circular shape, making the image more interesting overall. Next time I would like to move closer in on the object that I am photographing so that I could possibly develop Weston’s technique and create a more abstract image.

Edward Weston Experiments