Collecting ideas

I collected some ideas from the 'Wildlife as canon sees it' adverts from the National Geographic. I looked specifically at the adverts which showed animals with the most texture and patterns to give me an idea of the types of animals that I should look into and photograph. I realised that some of the best textured animals are ones from exotic places which unfortunately means I cannot photograph them, but I made note of all the animals that are possible for me to photograph. As the adverts were in the National Geographic magazine, I cannot show the images I chose on this blog, but this is a link to the website with all of the adverts on.                                                                                            http://www.canon.com/environment/communication/ad/wildlife.html 

Textures/Patterns

Alot of my work shows alot of texture and patterns. I went to Bristol Zoo and focused on these elements. Here are some of the photos I took.

 

I first looked at butterflies as they have a range of patterns and colours and shapes in their wings.  I like how they have very bold colours that stand out against each of the other colours. I then went on to look at reptiles as I like the way their skin is very scaly, meaning there is a lot of texture. Some of the reptiles had both patterns and textures, but the most interesting ones were the animals with peeling skin. Their colours gave a camouflaged look, but the types of greens and blues made them almost shimmer. I like the image of the spiky tail as you can visualise the terrific detail that there is that you do not necessarily think about or notice when just glancing at them. One of the most interesting photos is the one of the bird, as it manages to capture the texture of the feathers that you would not normally think an animal like this has. It shows that even the most simple of animals can have interesting details and intricate patterns. 

 I decided to try and replicate some pictures of the Orang-Utan's using a human model. I looked through my images to find the portraits with the most human characteristics and posed my model in the same positions. You can see the similarities between the Orang-Utans eyes and emotions with the models eyes. I used Wanda Wulz as the inspiration, and decided to merge the 2 images together. After resizing and rotating the images, I edited the opacity of the top image and created a merged photo of the Orang-Utan and models faces.

Wanda Wulz is an experimental photographer who's most famous piece of work is a self portrait merged with a cats face.
That is the image which imspired me to try merging my orang-utan portraits with some portraits of my model.
It wasn't easy to merge my images as it was hard to get my model to pose in exactly the same postition as the orangutan. Wulz's image is well merged to make it look like a human with a cat face and the cat details are really clear. Whereas my image is cleary a merged one, although I do like the end result. 

This image was harder to replicate as a human model has different size body parts to the orangutan. I had a few attempts, but this was the one that was the closest representation. I used photoshop to edit the contrast and brightness, and the dodge tool to replicate the sunlight in the top left of the image. I edited the photo to make my models skin tone closer to that of the orangutans. When I tried to merge the images together it didn't work as well as the sizing didn't fit. The previous images of the close up face worked better because I was able to resize and rotate them to fit perfectly with eachother.

Experimental techniques...

I thought I would try some experimental techniques, so I began with cyanotypes and kallitypes. Personally i think the cyanotypes worked better as the colour was more vibrant and the contrast was more visible. This meant that the small details, like the hairs and reflections of the eyes were very clear. Although the kallitypes match the original images better because of the colour, I don't think they worked as well because they didn't stand out as much. The contrast wasn't as clear in the kallitypes, meaning the image wasn't as detailed and the emotions in the eyes weren't as clear. The colour of the kallitype is too dark and there isn't enough definition between the colours.    

This final image of the turtle didn't work as well as there wasn't enough different contrasting details in actual turtle, so it just came out as a block colour.

 

 

As I said earlier, my interest stemmed from my pets. Dogs are another animal that can show its character through its eyes and facial expressions. I took lots of images of my dog, Molly. She shows different characteristics and personalities in each set of shots.

Taking photos of animals is fairly difficult, as sometimes the subject does not stay still, and therefor you cannot always get the images you want. These are only a few of many attempts.

Again, these images are inspired by Herb Sennett and his idea of simplicity. But, rather than making these photo's make the viewer see the animal in a different way, I wanted them to induce emotions. I wanted these ones in particular to make the viewer think 'awww', just how a dog should make you feel.

Some of my own images. 

Herb Sennett's images inspired me to look into more common animals and photograph them. I tried to take the images in a less simple way, vaguely emulating his ideas of looking at every day animals in a different light. I particularly like this image of th horse, as although it is a simple picture capturing the horse eating grass, I like the way the light shines, giving it a heavenly look.

I also like how the cat image portrays the curiosity of the animal. The way the photo is taken magnifies the head, making the body looks alot smaller. Like the Orang-Utan images, this images shows the animals personality.

I also got some inspiration from a photographer called 'Herb Sennet'.
Herb specialises in macro photography and close up nature images. He also explores landscape and still life and likes to explore with computer software. He seeks to show how impressive & valuable even the most common species are if you are prepared to view them from a more common perspective.

 

I like these images because they show the most common animals in a different way. In addition to liking these images because of the simpleness of the common animal, I also find it fascinating the amount of detail shown in the images, and how you can pick out the tiniest hair and each specific colour of the eyes. I also like how the images portray the insects. From a normal naked eye view, these insects have a simple dull colour, but these highlight the vibrant colours that can't be seen from a normal perspective.