Digital Photography & Imaging: Project 1 (Week 2)
30-08-21 (Week 2)
Darren Liga // 0351480 // Bachelor of Design (Honours)
in Creative Media
Digital Photography & Imaging GCD 61204
Practica1
l: Collage Elements (Week2)
LECTURE
Week 2:
INTRODUCTION TO BASIC COMPOSITION
Focal Point
A key element to any good composition is a strong focal point, as it helps
your viewers’ eyes naturally settle on the important pieces of your design
first.
Scale & Hierarchy
Scale is often used to help communicate hierarchy by drawing attention toward
and away from certain elements, thus signifying their importance to the
communication.
Balance
A good technique for mastering asymmetrical balance is to think of each
element as having a ‘weight’ to it. Smaller objects might ‘weigh’ less
than larger objects, and heavily textured elements might ‘weigh’ more than
flatly colored elements.
White Space
is mostly known as “empty space” to balance up the main focus of a
composition. White space when used strategically can help boost your design’s
clarity and overall look by balancing out the more complicated and busy parts
of your composition with space that helps your design to breathe.
RULE OF THIRDS
The Rule of Thirds is the process of dividing an image into thirds, using
two horizontal and two vertical lines. This imaginary grid yields nine parts
with four intersection points.
When you position the most important elements of your image at these
intersection points, you produce a much more natural image. It is also
suggested that any horizon is placed on either the top horizontal line or
bottom horizontal line.
The Rule of Thirds is a way to:
- Use composition techniques that are in line with what’s naturally
pleasing to the eye.
- Creatively use negative space.
- Create conversation between the subject and background.
Fig 1.1: Rule of Thirds (30/8/21)
GOLDEN RATIO
The Golden Ratio is a mathematical ratio. It is commonly found in nature,
and when used in a design, it fosters organic and natural-looking
compositions that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
In design, the Golden Ratio boils down to aesthetics — creating and
appreciating a sense of beauty through harmony and proportion. When applied
to design, the Golden Ratio provides a sense of artistry
The Golden Ratio is a useful guideline for determining dimensions of the
layout. One very simple way to apply the Golden Ratio is to set your
dimensions to 1:1.618
Fig 1.2: Golden Ratio (30/8/21)
Week 3:
Introduction to Photoshop 2
Lasso tool, Pen tool & Layering
Lasso Tool
The Lasso Tool is great to use with a graphic tablet because it is similar
to a pencil. Unlike a mouse or trackpad, a graphic tablet can give a better
flow when drawing and making selections.
Pen Tool
When it comes to actually creating a path from scratch, the pen tool is the
most common option. The pen tool is the way that you add these points and the
way you drag the tool as you create the points determines how they will look.
The fewer points, the smoother a path will be.
The pen tool is a versatile tool in Photoshop that can be used to create
extremely precise shapes and paths, using manually placed anchor points.
Although commonly used to make selections, the pen tool was not natively
made as a “selection tool”
Layering
Layers are different images stacked on top of each other. You can use each
layer without affecting another one to make adjustments. Together they form
one final image. The advantage of using Layers is that you can save a
Photoshop file with all the layers included. This means you can use layers
for non-destructive editing. The adjustments in Photoshop will never destroy
the original image. The layers contain all the extra information and/ or
images you want to add to the original file.
Week 4:
Introduction to Photoshop 3
Adjustment Layer & Filters
ADJUSTMENT LAYER
The Adjustment Layers in Photoshop are a group of a super useful,
non-destructive image editing tools that add color and tonal adjustments to
your image without permanently changing its pixels.
With the adjustment layers, you can edit and discard your adjustments or
restore your original image at any time. This will make your workflow in
Photoshop more flexible and efficient, and is an absolute must-know.
When you add an adjustment layer to your image, a new layer will appear over
your image and a Properties panel specific to the type of adjustment you’ve
selected will pop up. The Properties panel will allow you to modify your
adjustment layer, which in turn will modify your image.
- Brightness/Contrast
Makes adjustments to the tonal range of your image.
The brightness slider is for adjusting the highlights in your image and the
Contrast slider is for adjusting the shadows in your image.
- Levels
modify the tonal values in an image by adjusting the levels of the shadows,
midtones, and highlights.
It’s one of the most used tools in the adjustment layer panel, and using
just a touch of levels will go a long way in correcting your images.
- Curves
let you adjust as many points as you want throughout the entire tonal range
of your image, and is the most powerful and precise tool for editing the
tones in an image.
- Exposure
lets you adjust exposure levels with three sliders: Exposure, Offset and
Gamma.
Exposure will adjust only the highlights of the image, Offset adjusts the
mid tones and Gamma will adjust the dark tones only.
- Selective Color
The Selective Color adjustment layer selectively modifies the amount of a
primary color without modifying the other primary colors in your image.
FILTERS
Using filters to edit photos is an essential element of Adobe’s graphics
editor.
There are filters to change colour, add blur or create completely new image
effects. Photoshop offers a virtually unlimited variety of filters for this
purpose.
INSTRUCTION
<iframe
src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Dev8HymJ4PInR-q-JdT2Ed_iV-VHAGA/preview"
width="640" height="480" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
We were instructed to make 3 compositions using those cutout to form the
collage for our week 2 practical exercise. My 3 compositions:
Project 1b
Project 1a
For the first collage project, we were instructed by the lecturer to gather
newspaper or magazine to collect elements for our physical collage. I then
got some magazine which i cut out several elements, from texts, quotes to
images. My progress is shown here:
Fig 1.1: Cutting the elements (30/8/21)
After cutting a lot of elements, i had to sort them from similar lexical
field to not cluster the idea and make it overwhelmed with too much
information.
Fig 1.2: Selecting elements (30/8/21)
Fig 1.3: P. Collage Comp. 1
This composition was my first ever trial on making a collage, i had no idea
of what i was doing since i am quite new to this. After being fed with
lectures regarding composition, i tried applying the knowledge i learned in
this composition.
Fig 1.4: P. Collage Comp. 2
After realizing my first composition was too crowded with elements, i tried
going my preferred style of design, minimalistic. My second composition
looked clean and minimal contrasted with the 1st composition, which i
believe i may have over reduced the graphical elements.
Fig 1.5: P. Collage Comp. 3
For my 3rd composition, i messed with the orientation of the whole frame, as
i've used 2 vertical frames for the 1st and 2nd composition. I tried going
for different approach on composing this collage by arranging elements
horizontally and causes the whole visual direction to change. After further
examining this composition, i believe that this composition is the best for
me, although the horizontal aspect does not really fit. I then prepared to
change the collage once again to have a perfect balance between all 3
compositions i arranged.
Fig 1.6: P. Collage Comp. Final (31/8/21)
I then finalized my collage by using this composition. Behind this ideas was
a merge between 3 of my compositions, to create the sweet spot ideal
balance. For this final composition, i wanted to use some white space to
portray my preference of minimalism while applying the golden ratio and
creating that pleasing visual direction. (i may be wrong)
The final step for the physical collage is glueing.
Fig 1.7: Glued P. Comp. (16/9/21)
After feedback was given for my final comp., Mr Martin said it looked too
much like a magazine cover, so i went for my initial composition for the
final submission.
Final Physical Collage Composition
Fig 1.8: Final Physical Collage (18/9/21)
<iframe
src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xsQbDS03U6T9Du9XQdrf7rxpstm0kI0X/preview"
width="640" height="480" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
For the second part of this project, we were assigned a digital version of
composing a collage. After Mr. Martin gave his lecture regarding the basics
of photoshop, we were assigned to create another 3 composition of a digital
version of the collage using a given number of images.
Fig 2.1: Elements given to create the 3 digital comp. (6/9/21)
From those provided images, I composed these collages:
Fig 2.2: D. Collage Comp. 1 (6/9/21)
I have quite an experience with using adobe photoshop, for me i dont really
have issues regarding the software and how to create collages. Although,
since i have never created these kind of artworks, it was a bit challenging
at first, overwhelmed with all the theories and rules of composition.
Fig 2.3: D. Collage Comp. 2 (9/9/21)
After several hours spent in composing these collages, it was getting
better and the idea came easier. for the second digital collage
composition, i went for a minimalistic design once again. i played with
the invert tool to get the best out of the limited resources given.
Fig 2.4: D. Collage Comp. 3 (9/9/21)
For the 3rd composition, i wanted to experiment on utilizing 2 different
background textures to create that visual direction.
Final Digital Collage
Fig 2.5: Final Digital Collage (18/9/21)
<iframe
src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q_-C_AJHFVykquNmOJ-F-udQo14qh9Z_/preview"
width="640" height="480" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
FEEDBACK
Project 1a
Week 2: My physical collage composition was commented to be too messy
and too much elements were used for the 1st composition. Mr Martin
quickly commented "sometimes, less is more" after reviewing my second
composition, and said a better improvement over the first composition
but being too bland and empty.
Project 2a
Week 3: The digital collage was approved by Mr. Martin and said
submitting the first and second one would confirm a high score,
although the third composition wasn't too pleasing. For the final
physical collage composition, i went with my 3rd trial as Mr Martin
commented on my glued final composition saying that it looks to much
like a magazine cover compared to a collage.
REFLECTION
For this project, since it is my first time creating these kinds of
artwork (collages), i believe this method of learning composition is
really helpful for development. In my opinion, the randomness from
elements (both physical and digital) forces us to design the
composition and make it work is a hard thing to do when we're just
starting out in this new field. For me from designing the collage
composition, slowly helped me improve the creativity and ideas to fill
up a frame and give a visual conversation with out intended audience.
Comments
Post a Comment