Distorted Reflection
Antonio Gutierrez Pereira
The Distorted Reflection task is when an object or persons image has been distorted / disfigured while being viewed from a glass filled with water. Different shaped glasses would produce different outcomes / effects almost like a fun house with all the different shaped mirrors, producing a more outstretched contorted image. Above is some photos from the Distorted Reflection series by Antonio Gutierrez Pereira showing three people looking through different shaped glasses, which is distorting their faces in different ways. Below are some photos I took recreating the Distorted Reflection idea. I quite liked this task as it was funny creating different distorted images as well as trying to find different shaped glasses that would produce a completely different image. The use of colours in the task was fun as well because the dyed water coloured the face as well almost like Frankenstein, or the heads in a glass Jar.
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These three are my favourite three photos from this task, although I'm not a huge fan of most of these photos as I believe they aren't serious enough and/or don't actually incorporate the appropriate task. Il be looking to develop a greater development of these photos in my three strands as I didn't give this task a good enough effort. Also the Jars / containers used in this task were quite dirty which made the subject unclear. The use of the green coloured water on the last one made it so that the subject wasn't visible, so I need to watch out for that next time, though I thought the idea of using coloured water would look quite nice.
Reflection In Mirrors
The Reflections in Mirrors task incorporated the use of mirrors and a stunning fore/background, where the mirror shall be placed on the floor, typically surrounded in nice foliage or patterned surface. The mirror is then aimed up at the sky usually showing another object inside the reflection which is usually a tree as well as the sky. Using the camera to see different angles, you can then position yourself to take photos where the mirror could reflect a nice view or a fair bit of foreground objects. Below is the photographer Sebastian Magnani who is renown for his 'Reflection In Mirrors' task. This task was one of my favourite ideas and had the most promise in my eyes. The pictures done my Magnani (Below) are flawless, they capture a perfect balance of sky and ground and it makes a brilliant contrast between the two. Even better the trees in the background of the mirror create greater in depth contrast and pattern.
Good description of the aims of this shoot. Try to use another word besides 'nice' that relates to photographic terminology.
Sebastian Magnani
Sebastian Magnani was born in 1985 in Canton Valais Switzerland. He discovered his love for photography as a media designer in 2006. After 5 years as a creative in an advertising agency, he decided to make photography his profession and has won multiple photography awards. Above is three of Sebastian's pictures incorporating the Reflection in Mirrors task. They all incorporate nature and show a mirror placed centrally on the floor directly next to a nice floor / background where the mirror is faced directly upwards, aimed at the sky as well as (in these three pictures) a foreground object like the tree. This creates a lovely effect, as we can see in the middle picture the asphalt is particularly nice as it has a great depth in patterns and yet is very dark which contrasts the light of the sky reflected by the mirror in the centre probably making it my favourite photo from this series.
WWW: The Pictures using a smoother mirror came out quite well, There is an easily depicted foreground of the trees and the Asphalt in a lot of the pictures had a good contrast with the sky and trees.
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These three photos are my favourite incorporating the reflections in mirrors task. Although the mirrors that were used were very cracked and blurry, I think this task was surprisingly successful and I think the idea was very nice. I want to further develop this task, hopefully using a bigger mirror, broader landscape and a cleaner mirror where the subject can be seen clearer. The mirrors need to be properly aligned with the camera and the cameras focus looks a little off as well.
Above, is the second attempt at Distorted Reflection and was a very much, more serious task where a lot more photos were produced of higher quality. The camera focus was a lot better this time round and the subjects were seen much more clearer. The coloured water was used again this time round but again didn't live up to the expectations I was looking for. All together this second shoot was a lot better then the first one but wasn't ultimately successful at capturing clear looking, distorted images.
Josh, you've created a wide variety of images from this shoot. Please select your best 2 or 3 images and enlarge them. Have you done any editing on them? If so, include your Photoshop screenshots, as well.
Can you use another word for 'bad'?
Can you use another word for 'bad'?
Reflection of Colours
Tamara Lorenz
Tamara Lorenz was born in 1972 and graduated studies in Media arts in the university of cologne from 2001 - 2004. Her most renown project is the creation of various pieces of artwork and then taking pictures of them to exploit there abstract properties. She uses various colours that contrast with each other to create a 3D effect from a 2D image. The main idea of her work is to not find a direct subject of the image, that is probably unable to be seen but rather allow the person to gaze upon her work looking for something that could be interpreted by different people. There is not usually a subject in her work and it is rather abstract but different people looking at her work might be able to unravel some sort of subject not seen by others. Above are three of my favourite photos from Tamara Lorenz incorporating the reflection in colour task. Beneath shows my attempt at recreating Lorenz's adaptation of reflection
WWW: The contrast in colour is very good. An effective variety of shapes and patterns are used and a successful crystal shape was attempted and created.
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Beneath are some snips from the main picture above showing different colour variations and compositions using photoshop which ultimately produce very effective looking images from the first picture. I depicted different parts of the main photo following both top corners of the image, a snip from some of the surrounding triangles in the middle which almost look like clouds in a pink sky. There is one photo that more or less has the same colour variant as the original photo but the contrast has been increased, along with the saturation to allow for a more prominent image, almost looking mosaic. This idea would of been good as a final strand but I didn't choose it due to my liking of other tasks instead.
Reflections In Water
Slava Semeniuta
Slava Semeniuta is a Russian photographer that was Born in Serbia and worked / lived most of his life in Minsk Belarus. When he was young he had a great fascination with Art and loved to draw all sorts of pictures often showing Dinosaurs, Oceanic Creatures, Insects and Space. He was also intrigued by Science-fiction and documentaries through which he developed an interest in the cosmos and space. The Deep Thought of the cosmos succumbed his mind to draw all these different conclusions on how stuff really looked and was deceived. He thought that within the cosmos, there was solely just ultraviolet rays which are only visible neon colours. From this idea he branched off and created pictures that consisted of only neon colours within his shoots. He created various shoots with this idea and created these Neon light reflected puddles that look remarkable.
Halloween Reflection
Tom Hussey
Tom Hussey is an American photographer for that specializes in commercial advertisement and lifestyle photography. Tom Hussey created an award winning series called 'Reflections of the past' where it looked at an elderly person looking into their reflection and seeing a younger version of them selves and ultimately reflects how time flies. Hussey was inspired by a World War II Veteran who just turned 80. He said 'i Cant believe i'm going to be 80. I feel like i just came back from the war. I look in the mirror and i see this old guy.' Hussey saw this as a great idea to make his fantasy a reality by taking a photo of the veteran looking into the mirror gazing at a reflection that is his own but yet a younger version. This idea was very popular for Hussey and he decided to use that same concept for multiple elderly people looking into the mirror and staring at a younger version of themselves.
The Halloween Reflections task was a jokey task following the halloween period where we had a subject look into a mirror. Using a tripod we captured two photos one with the subject wearing a hood and mask, while looking into the mirror and one where he was completely bare faced. We then used Photoshop to layer the images and then lowered the opacity so the outline of the other photo can be seen. We can then use the rubber tool to go around the mirror so that the person is looking into the mirror, staring directly at a monster. This could be interpreted in two ways (Below) where the subject is either a monster and looks at themselves as a normal person or vice versa where it is a person that sees themselves as a monster. This idea was inspired by Hussey's 'Reflections of the past' task and proved very effective.
Good description above and shoot! Do you have any Photoshop screenshots you can show? Please include an artist section on the work of Tom Hussey here.
This is how I used photoshop to create this effect:
First we need to gather both photos taken (One where he is plain faced and the other one being him wearing the mask).
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Reflected Landscape
Guillaume Amat
Guillaume Amat was born in 1980, in Paris, and is a French photographer that likes to dedicate himself to long term projects to produce and photographic narrative. He strives to change different subjects, surfaces, camera settings and more to create a story narrative. He wants to create a different interpretation through the context of images by blurring the idea of reality and fiction. His most renown work is the Reflected Landscape series where he places a mirror in a certain landscape and then it is reflected back at him to maybe show a different landscape within the first one. Many of these photos can also show a subject in the reflected mirror, a dark black figure gazing upon the mirror. This can only be seen in some of the photos but poses a great mystery feel to the photos which I quite like almost making a bland photo more scary
Three Strands
Reflections in Mirrors
I was a huge fan of the reflections in mirrors task. I was greatly inspired by Sebastian Magnani's series of shoots incorporating this idea, and with my first attempt not going as good as i anticipated i wanted to recreate it in a greater variety of landscapes where i could capture multiple images that were cleaner and possibly using my own equipment and ideas within the project.
WWW: I used a mirror that was 3x the size of the mirror used in the last shoot. It was also a lot cleaner and didn't have any scratches on it. The backgrounds had a lot more depth with what was reflected and created a neater contrast between it, and the image in the mirror. There are more vibrant colours coming from the nature surrounding it. I Think this shoot was very successful.EBI: I should of taken an even greater amount of photos. I should of made sure the camera and mirror was angled properly as seen in some photos where they are slightly turned which unfortunately makes the picture slightly worse. The use of the background was a consistent colour and although the reflection in the mirror looks very good, it lowers the contrast with the foreground whereas a background with one plain colour would contrast much better. |
Above are three of my favourite photos incorporating the Reflections in Mirrors task. In the first photo I was just experimenting with the mirror by holding it in different angles and reflecting different images seen my the photo. This was my favourite one of all the photos I took like this as the trees can be clearly seen and the dark background contrasts well with the beautiful blue sky - my hand is annoyingly obvious but other than that I think this photo is very good. The middle photo was a very effective idea I came up with which was surround the frame of the mirror in leaves so it adds a more naturalistic vibe to the photo without it looking to forced or out of place. I think this photo is my favourite incorporating the leaves idea as it shows a nice amount of light reflected from the mirror as well as trees and a few shadows to add to the overall atmosphere of this photo. The last photo is one of the more 'plain' ideas and simply shows a mirror being reflected on the top of my shed roof. what makes this effective is that there was a tree over looking the shed which allowed for some light to pass through ultimately giving little streaks of light that were reflected my the mirror. It being of my shed shows a lot of natural moss growing and then some leaves that had fallen down from the over looking tree.
Further Development: Reflection in Mirrors
Using this photo my main priority was to add more saturation and vibrance to the photo, though I didn't want to make the image too saturated and so it looks unrealistic and the frame would turn orange. I made Vibrance 80 and Saturation 20 just to add more light to the photo. By this point I wanted to add more contrast and in doing so lower the brightness just so the image still has some more shadowy/ darker parts. Lastly I cropped the photo so I could see less of the roof but however keeping as many leaves in the photo to make sure that it was still 'natural'. This image was very effective and I am greatly relieved by the outcome and feel this photo is very successful.
Further Development: Reflection In Mirrors
For this photo I wanted to bring out the colour of the leaves and so I increased the Vibrance and Saturation as well as some colour balance so it didn't come out "too red" and unrealistic. I lastly played around with the brightness and contrast which allowed for the leaves to have some darkness and ultimately led to my final product which I really liked.
I more or less only played with the Vibrance and Saturation of the photo as I thought the contrast of the black and white background and a colourful, vibrant picture within the image was very effective. (I put the saturation at 100 and the vibrance at 0).
This photo was very barren anyway and didn't consist of much colour so I thought to just turn the photo completely black and white by making both Vibrance and Saturation at -100 and changing the brightness and contrast a little so it looks more realistic. This created a very gloomy photo which I actually quite liked, almost like an old horror movie.
2nd Further Development: Reflections in Mirrors
Reflections on Water
This task has some great potential and i was willing to seek out the different ways i could manipulate water into making really sharp images with beautiful reflections of light and colour through the water's surface. My first attempt of this was quite poor but being limited to the landscapes around me in school i needed to take this shoot into a more natural landscape where i could blend different natural aspects together and possibly create a few images that are really eye-catching.
WWW: This task was heavily engulfed
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Further Development: Reflection in Water
This is a photo adapted from the reflections in water task and It was one of my favourite photos that I wanted to adapt. It consisted of a person holding a mirror that reflected the sunlight into the puddle and furthermore into the camera so there was an effective glare and reflection across the water. I attempted to crop out the mirror so it would look more natural but it instead left the outer rim of the mirror which I actually quite liked and so decided to keep it in the photo, as it almost looks like a star of light perhaps shining brightly into the puddle.
I took a similar photo from the first development and tried again at recreating an effective effect this time round I only got rid of the hands and went for a blue variation colour. This ,though, I feel didn't have an as good effect as the first one but was still good.
Distorted Reflection
The Distorted Reflection task was a fun and whacky task that I thought was quite fun to shoot. It was annoyingly difficult to capture an image properly where the subject could be seen yet distorted because most, when distorted, wouldn't come out clearly and so this task was slightly difficult. Antonio Gutierrez did this task very well, making the image very easily seen yet it was very distorted. Unfortunately I don't think my attempt lived up to its potential but I still had fun making it.
WWW: the objects used in the shoot were not as blurry as before and showed the subject greater. The camera was properly adjusted on the tripod and the camera was in focus.
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Final Outcome 1: reflection
Josh - replace all the words like "nice" with more professional terminology - in this case "effective" could work.
Enlarge your original Distorted Reflection photos - right now, they're quite small.
Rearrange your Reflection in Mirrors section so the order looks like this:
- Artist research
- Intentions
- Contact sheet
- Enlargements
- Edits if any and screenshots
- Analysis (www + ebi)
Move your 2nd Distorted Reflection development task just below your 1st one so we can see direct development before your Sebastian Magnani work.
Move the Slava Semeniuta section below the Reflections of Colours paper cut sections.
With the image you've created using paper cuts, I'd like you to zoom in and crop the image so you've created different kinds of compositions using the same original image and then rearrange them so you have a number of different compositions.
Upload your images for Guillaume Amat.
It's not clear whether your further development of your Reflection in Mirrors came from the contact sheet above it. If it didn't, please include the contact sheet of those images. Also, select a couple of images from that first contact sheet to enlarge and analyse and then talk about what you're going to do next. So - how you're going to get from that first strand shoot to your next set of images.
What about for a further development for your Reflection of Mirrors if you do what I suggested with the paper cut outs? Start cropping those images and rearranging them so you have different variations of those beautiful reflected images that you twist around so you're really taking apart the image and zooming in so we're just seeing sections of it and then you rearrange them and make a GIF of them. You'd be taking an idea and really further developing that.
Go back and further develop your Reflections in Water because these are beautiful images and did something similar - you can continue to develop this - go back and take more/different images in puddles but looking at the reflection and possibly using the mirror in it again but not necessarily.
Select your best image from your last Distorted Reflection shoot, go in and edit it so you've got some final pieces from that. I would move the whole section up so it becomes part of the 3 strands but the first of them so we really see your further developments with one of the other three.
Enlarge your original Distorted Reflection photos - right now, they're quite small.
Rearrange your Reflection in Mirrors section so the order looks like this:
- Artist research
- Intentions
- Contact sheet
- Enlargements
- Edits if any and screenshots
- Analysis (www + ebi)
Move your 2nd Distorted Reflection development task just below your 1st one so we can see direct development before your Sebastian Magnani work.
Move the Slava Semeniuta section below the Reflections of Colours paper cut sections.
With the image you've created using paper cuts, I'd like you to zoom in and crop the image so you've created different kinds of compositions using the same original image and then rearrange them so you have a number of different compositions.
Upload your images for Guillaume Amat.
It's not clear whether your further development of your Reflection in Mirrors came from the contact sheet above it. If it didn't, please include the contact sheet of those images. Also, select a couple of images from that first contact sheet to enlarge and analyse and then talk about what you're going to do next. So - how you're going to get from that first strand shoot to your next set of images.
What about for a further development for your Reflection of Mirrors if you do what I suggested with the paper cut outs? Start cropping those images and rearranging them so you have different variations of those beautiful reflected images that you twist around so you're really taking apart the image and zooming in so we're just seeing sections of it and then you rearrange them and make a GIF of them. You'd be taking an idea and really further developing that.
Go back and further develop your Reflections in Water because these are beautiful images and did something similar - you can continue to develop this - go back and take more/different images in puddles but looking at the reflection and possibly using the mirror in it again but not necessarily.
Select your best image from your last Distorted Reflection shoot, go in and edit it so you've got some final pieces from that. I would move the whole section up so it becomes part of the 3 strands but the first of them so we really see your further developments with one of the other three.