Has the media shaped our vision of women through photographic portrayal and is their true purpose and identity betrayed as a result?
Amy Byron Photography
SHOOT 2 - ALMA HASER INSPIRED
Born into an artistic family in Germany, Alma Haser is now based in London and the East coast. Specialising in carefully constructed portraiture influenced by her creativity and background in fine art, Alma creates striking work that catches the eye and captivates the mind.
Expanding the dimensions of traditional portrait photography, Alma takes her photographs further, using inventive paper-folding techniques to create layers of intrigue around her subjects, manipulating their portraits into futuristic flattened-paper sculptures. Through using this technique Haser has created a series called cosmic surgery, which demonstrates portraits with origami placed over people's faces.
Alma is dyselxic, she originally mixed up the words cosmic and cosmetic surgery, making cosmic surgery and decided to keep it since the definition of cosmic is "relating to the universe or cosmos, especially as distinct from the earth". Giving the series an alien-like connotation, which can be infered from the shapes made by the origami which is then placed over the models face giving a futuristic effect.
I decided to use Alma Haser and her cosmic surgery shoot as inpiration as I like the idea that the origami effect suggests a disconnection between two people which is what I infered from this shoot, as it for me, the connotation of alienation is apparent - the state or experience of being alienated or disconnected from something. I applied this to my own images through the idea of using two females (mother and daughter, sisters or friends) positioned together, in a way that clearly shows the connection they have with one another, which is reinforced by the captured facial expressions and body language of the models. However it is the viewer of the image that is being disconnected from the atmosphere of photo as it becomes clear that we are unaware of one of the models emotions as it has become masked, making the viewer think for themselves and interpret their own ideas. This for me is my way of representing women are often alienated by the media and given new representations within today's society that are produced to essentially 'sell'. Therefore the importance of a women's feelings or emotions are being masked, quite literally through the origami shapes, which signify confusion, similarly to how they are within today's society.
The preparation for this shoot involved experiementing with origami shapes. I began creating my own origami pieces in shapes of flowers and stars to find a shape that fit best on the models face, I followed YouTube videos to do so. Firstly, I created a 4x4 shape filled with nine individual squares filled with small images taken from the models face in the pictures I had taken, such as the eyes, nose and lips. Once this shape had been created I printed it two-sided (back to back) and began folding different shapes from it. The reason why I only used specific feautures from the models face is because I found that once the shape was fully folded it was rare that an obvious feature was evdient within the shape, therefore by making the origami paper filled with the facial features it eliminated any less exciting areas of the face such as the forehead. Due to the fact that the process of creating the origami pieces took a fair amount of time I decided to use two final origami shapes in all my images depending on which one fits best, despite the fact that the facial feautures may not be from the indivual's in the photo it wasn't something that was noticable in my images, I found this was a more resourceful approach.
MY PHOTOS
This is my most successful image from the shoot as I feel the colours and the compostion work best within the image. Firstly, I found the colour is hugely important when creating these images as it determined how well the origami overlay fit with the image. For this image I used the vintage overlay effect, I thought this effect was the best as it allowed me to take advantage of the existing colours within the image as they enhance the colours and blend well, for example the ginger in the models hair and the colour on her top. I decided to add more origami overlays, reduce the opacity and use the colour picker tool to select existing colours within the image and create pattern in the top left corner, adding more style to the image. One thing I made sure to do was create an outer shadow on the origami shapes to give the added effect of the origami being placed on top of the image and not looking odd or out of place. I feel this composition worked best as if makes the center of the photo focused on the model with the origami's face.
I approached this image with an old-fashioned style. To do this I edited the image with a sepia effect, changing the colour balance, hue and saturation and adding a subtle gradient with orangey brown tones, which I changed the blending mode to screen which made it significantly lighter and rather faded, mimicing the old fashioned style of photography. I then applied a scratch overlay from a stock image to get the general old-fashioned effect. Once I had achieved the main elements of the image I tweaked the hair of the models, making them richer in colour, dulled down the t-shirt of the young girl as typically in an old image bright colours are not so successfully picked up. Similarly, iI enhanced the colour of the lips, which is a feature Haser uses in her own images. Although this is a subtle addition, I feel it is the most effective and makes the photograph. Finally, I added the origami, changed the transformation to fit the face accurately, and edited the layer style by adding a drop shadow in the opposite direction to where the light shines in the photo making the origami over lay fit with the image, also ensuring it is placed the gradient filter and the overlay.
When approaching this image I tried to be more experimental, adding my own element to the photos. The origami reminded me glitch photography, so I decided to add a second background layer, shifting the transformation and changing the opacity to reveal a second image giving a glitch-like effect. I ensured to do the same with the origami layer, as the model's face was at a slant I used the skew tool to slant the origami in the same direction, making it fit with the face more accurately. I found this image worked best black and white as there is a fair amount going on in the pictures that colour made the image look over edited. To add something slightly more interesting I pasted the original origami layer, duplicated it three times, lowered the opacity and arranged them in the left corners. Finally, I added a black border to bring the features of the image together.
Continuing to experiment, I added an RGB effect to this image which I decided to also be black and white, making the few colours that are in the image stand out dramatically. I changed the transformation of the second layer revealing the RGB colour effect. I chose the typical RGB colour of red by selecting the layer style and deseelecting the red channel. I did the same process with the origami shape. I felt the image still needed more detail, so I added another origami layer, changed the transformation to rather large and positioned it in the top right corner, I duplicated the layer and removed the red colour channel. I changed the tranformationt to reveal the colour beneath and changed the opacity so that it didnt over take the image. To further develop the shape to avoid it looking too similar to the origami on the face, I added a facial feature from the origami paper and overlayed this onto the larger origami shape, I changed the blending mode to vivid light, added a layer mask and rubbed away the edges with the black.
This image is slightly more traditional as it is composed like a family portrait picture and incorporates a background making it look slightly more formal and showing more personality., as it is set in a home environment. To edit this image I decided to use a sepia effect by changing the hues and saturation and selecting colourise. This effect makes the image look old-fashioned, therefore I decided to enhance this style by adding a scratch overlay. When adding the origami overlay I ensured to change the saturation to this also.
I kept this image rather simplistic by playing around with the colours in the photo. I took advantage of the amount of reds in the image and enhanced them, giving the photo and overall warm effect. Although not much was changed about the image I wanted to ensure it stood out, therefore I added a highpass filter, bringing out the details within the image. To bring the picture and the colours together I added a border, using the colour picker took to select an existing red within the image.