Week 12 Test Concepts

Looking at Hue/Saturation, cropping, and layout:

Looking at creating montages:

Inspiration: Work by Natalie Nicklin

Looking at using a Natalie Nicklin style of overlaying

Inspiration: From the Daniel Regan typeB photo series

Looking at breaking up the circle

Looking at Fong Qi Wei's techniques again

Looking at overlaying text like my some of my first works

Inspiration: "Asterisms are star patterns. Artist Christopher Willey created his asterisms by mapping the freckles and moles of his friends."

Using dots in the style of Christopher Willey

Inspiration

Inspiration

Looking at using a style like astronomy maps to represent moles and sunspots

Inspiration

Inspiration

Looking at trying to make my images feel like scientific specimens

Inspiration

Inspiration

Inspiration

Inspiration

Looking at putting a mole map on the image

Going back to looking at overlaying scientific text - like some of my earlier work

Cropping into the shape of text

Cutting text out of the image

Cropping into the shape of a mole

- I tried out all of these concepts to see if I could find a way to enhance my images and the ideas within them with digital montage, but I think they are overcooking my ideas and making them too obvious. I like that my photographs are ambiguous and have a simple elegance. These feel too forced and start to look amateurish. I don't like that most of these concepts really start to hide or break up the photograph as the textures, shapes, and colours in the photograph are the most important thing.

Framing Artist Reference

Marco Suarez

"My work is a testament to the intelligence of creation's balance and composition. My work takes many different mediums and combines them digitally."

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MarcoSuarez?ref=pr_shop_more

- I like how this photographer crops his images into circles with large white borders around them. I am thinking that this might be how I frame my images as it reminds me of specimens in petri dishes. Circles also relate to a lot of my key themes; the ozone hole, the sun, the earth, moles/sunspots, cells, cancer etc.

Chlorofluorocarbons

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are used in the manufacture of aerosol sprays, blowing agents for foams and packing materials, as solvents, and as refrigerants.

- Perhaps bringing in some imagery like this that relates to how the ozone hole was formed might be a way that I could make my images more digitally manipulated.

Week 11 Critique With Shaun

I showed Shaun the 142 raw images that I liked from my photoshoot that I did yesterday. He thought they were really nice and that I could just present some of this work on the wall as prints by themselves rather than having an interactive projection next to them. He also suggested, when I was talking about how I had so many to choose from and I wasn't sure how I could possibly narrow it down, that I present more than 10 because I had so much material. He told me that a simple thing like how I crop the images (e.g. putting them in a circle) could really elevate them. We discussed how my images weren't that digitally manipulated, so maybe I could play around overlaying symbols that relate to mole maps etc.

Readings About UV Light Damaging Humans

"UVA penetrates into the deeper skin layers, where connective tissue and blood vessels are affected. As a result the skin gradually loses its elasticity and starts to wrinkle. Therefore, large doses of UVA cause premature ageing. Furthermore, recent studies strongly suggest that it may enhance the development of skin cancers."

http://www.who.int/uv/faq/uvhealtfac/en/

"UV is an environmental human carcinogen. It’s the most prominent and universal cancer-causing agent in our environment. There is very strong evidence that each of the three main types of skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma) is caused by sun exposure. Research shows that as many as 90 percent of skin cancers are due to UV radiation."

http://sciencelearn.org.nz/Contexts/You-Me-and-UV/Science-Ideas-and-Concepts/Positive-and-negative-effects-of-UV

"Ultraviolet light is sometimes referred to as ultraviolet radiation. It comes from wavelengths of light that are produced by the sun and other light sources but which are invisible to the human eye. This wavelength of light is able to penetrate into cells and cause damage to their DNA. The high energy light rays of UV light are able to cause chemical changes within the DNA molecules, changing their chemical structure and breaking bonds. As MedlinePlus explains, this can cause the skin cells to become weak and die off, leading to the skin appearing to be abnormally old. This skin damage can also cause wrinkles to occur.

In some cases the DNA damage causes genetic mutations, which can lead to skin cells growing unusually quickly. When this happens, it can lead to skin cancer; high amounts of UV exposure is a leading risk factor for the development of skin cancer."

http://www.livestrong.com/article/90618-ultraviolet-light-affect-humans/

http://scitechdaily.com/stanford-scientists-examine-how-uv-radiation-affects-the-protective-functions-of-human-skin/

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8c698988-67e6-4a69-bb59-3ad884ce4531%40sessionmgr4004&vid=1&hid=4211

Test Work

During my interim critique, Shaun suggested printing out an image of something being projected onto skin and then projecting the same image onto itself. I set this up and then photographed the layering.

I printed out an image of the double-layered photograph and then projected onto it again - so that there were three layers of the same image.

I like how the act of layering the same image on itself over and over again starts to form correlations with the idea of layers of skin.

I put glad-wrap over a print of one of my photographs trying to emulate the style of Jacqueline Fraser's 'The Making of American Gangster'.
How the light reflected off of the plastic was interesting. The plastic could represent layers of skin.

Making an image using Fong Qi Wei's Techniques.
I like how this image looks like sun rays, but also how it could reference tanning/skin colour.

Making a collage on Photoshop in the style of Scott Hazard.
This looks like pencil shavings! Also, the cells look very disconnected from the skin.

After my collage in Photoshop in the style of Scott Hazard didn't turn out right, I looked at creating this collage using the analogue technique of cut-and-paste.
This feels much more visceral than the digital versions and I like the imperfect nature of it. I also think the reveal of the cells is much more believable.