Ideal Display of Portfolio

This module's portfolio was developed with its being exhibited as a final outcome in mind.

Ideally the prints would be A2 and window mounted using archival quality mounting board held together using acid-free linen tape. These would be in undecorated black wooden frames and hung either left to right along one wall or clockwise over several in the same order as is in my printed portfolio.

Mounting Board: http://www.preservationequipment.com/Store/Products/Conservation-Materials/Mounting-$4-Framing/Framers-Mounting-Board

Linen Tape: Linen Hinging Tape (gummed) 1"x50 yds. (150ft) http://www.silverprint.co.uk/ProductByGroup.asp?PrGrp=822

Frame: http://www.imageframes.co.uk/product/IF4W420H594/a2-22mm-black-paint-picture-frame

Picture 6: The Dress - Original, layers, edit

Again, very little was done to this picture. In this case, apart from raising the brightness and contrast, all I did was raise the saturation, however I used a little bit of masking over the white patch on the right side of the log so as not to have it lose too much detail in the highlights.

I also, as you can see from the close crops from the original negative above, used the healing and patch tools to remove some of the dandelions from the picture where they were in places that I felt detracted from the composition of the picture.

Picture 5: The Teeshirt - Original, layers, edit

This picture was one that felt ever so slightly overexposed due to the brightness of the sun reflecting off the white wall. I used an exposure adjustment layer to try and correct this. It also, once the contrast was increased, had a slight blue cast. I fixed this with a combination of lowering the saturation and lessening the blue with both Colour Balance and Channel Mixer.

Picture 4: The Jeans - Original, layers, edit

Beyond increasing the saturation and contrast, I only made one major alteration to this picture. I felt there was too much detail in the space under the bush, revealing too much rubbish and mess that was wedged under there. In my attempt to remove this clutter, I started by making some subtle removals using the clone and healing tools. I then made an adjustment layer with a mask in which I lowered the brightness just in the places I considered necessary, painting on the mask so it would only affect where I needed it to.

Picture 3: The Underwear

Once scanned, this picture required no adjustment beyond slight tinkering with the brightness and contrast to make it ready to print. During test prints I noticed that the printer profile reproduced the photographs slightly darker than I wanted. I therefore upped the brightness on all of them before the final print was made. The conversion to JPEG for uploading to this blog also seems to have lessened the highlight detail, in the other posts for my final images it is still possible to compare the unedited version to the final picture.

Picture 2: The Shirt - Original, layers, edit

 

I used one layer mask to lower the saturation of the wall before raising it for the picture as a whole, and two more to raise the contrast on the shirt to one level (+8) and the rest of the picture even further (+10). The layer titled 'Brightness/Contrast 2' was to raise the brightness on the picture ready for printing.

Picture 1: The Hat - Original, layers, edit

After removing any dust or hair that was caught when the negatives were scanned using a combination of the healing, clone and patch tools, I moved onto adjusting the colours the way I wanted. I brought up the contrast - in both the hat, and the metal fence - using two seperate adjustment layers each with their own mask. The saturation was raised on the image as a whole after I'd already lowered it on the top third of the picture, keeping the difference between the fence and the pavement at the ratio I wanted.

Three Pictures Chosen from Third Shoot

These are three pictures, unedited, picked from those I took on my last shoot.

EDIT: I later decided not to use the picture of the shoe, as it's composition was not strong enough and was too similar to some of the other pictures in the series. The final number of images stands at 6.

Third Shoot Contact Sheet

My third and final shoot did not differ in any camera related variables, however I think I slightly overexposed for the first two locations in it. I had intended to meter for the midtones but forgot about the bright white wall and the bright highlights on the fence. All locations were discovered whilst walking around that day and picked on the fly. After an attempt at it, I did not deem the third location right for that particular item of clothing. The fourth one, on the log, worked out better. I could not, however, better my first composition there. The distance between the camera and the subject was intentionally closer than on the other pictures as I thought it would make a good last picture.

Two Pictures chosen from Second Shoot

These are two pictures, unedited, picked from those I took on my second shoot.They are the two most successful images off the roll of film for what I wanted from my images.

I decided against including any of the pictures of the tracksuit trousers as I did not get the positioning of them satisfactory in any of the photos I took. One also had a light leak which must have happened when the film presumably slackened at some point. The only other picture to suffer from this was the double of the shot with the underwear on the wall framed the way I decided upon for the final series. Fortunately for me, I had taken two of them at the time.