4th Plinth / Composition Work Diary

Description of shoot:

In this shoot, we used our own pictures to create a 4th plinth photo. I used a picture that I took from my landscape shoot as the background. The object I used to place onto the landscape was a marble ring holder. I took the pictures of the object in a studio to ensure lighting was efficient for this task. My idea was to have a landscape with a contrasting object placed onto it. This shows an abstract and unrealistic portrayal. This idea was inspired by Storm Thorgerson, in how it's placing random objects into a location to produce an abstract situation in the picture.

Editing:

 To create the objects that would be placed onto the background, I used two pictures that I took both with the hand placed in slightly different places to create a variation in my picture. I used the quick selection tool in photoshop to highlight the hand and then I deleted the background and copy and pasted them onto the background picture. I found this quite quick and easy to complete, this may have been because the hand didn't have any very small details, this made it easy to see the outline and therefore easy to select.

Final Outcome:

I made my background picture slightly darker by editing the levels and curves in photoshop. I did this to emphasis the dark tones, this made the white hands stand out more against the dark background, I think this also made the picture more abstract as the hands are more defined. 

I added three different versions of the hand onto the image as I wanted my final outcome to seem like the hands were an abstract portrayal of sculptures that have been placed there. I made them three different sizes and moved them on the photo so they seemed more randomly placed. 

I think my outcome was more dark and mysterious because of the dark background, than Storm's work. His work has a more happy and joyful atmosphere because of the backgrounds he uses and colours.

Progression:

I think next time I take a 4th plinth picture, I will use an object that relates to the picture a bit more, so there is a relationship between the object and background. In addition, I will focus on making the lighting of the objects. This is to make the lighting more realistic and more fitting with the background. This would make the objects look more like they belong to the picture and the picture would look more like an entirety.