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Final Project II: Streets of Taiwan

Artist Statement: 

During recess week I went to Taiwan for 10 days to travel around the island and get to know country and people. Taiwan really fascinated me and I took a lot of photos of places and people that I found interesting. Besides the fascination the second strong feeling I had was that I was really foreign and alien in this country, everything was so different to the culture I normally live in. I decided to use these two feelings and the photos I took to combine them for my final project. So I tried to use expressive images and edit them in a way that a mood of fascination and also foreignness emerges.

In my further work flow I tried out different topics and styles, showing just emotions of people on the street or using just places without any human beeings in it… It all didn`t really showed what I wanted to show so I ended up combining the both. I builded pairs, each having on photo of an abandoned place and a photo with people in it. Then I tried to edit them in a way (mostly on colour and brightness basis) that the two photos as different as they might be still evoke the same feeling and impression. In the following you can see the 14 images that resulted in that work flow.

Technical decisions:

I took the photo with my own camera, a Nikon D3400 and my lens Nikon DX 18-105mm, because I am used to take a lot of photos with this camera and I love the lens.

First Pair: The Scooter and The Biker

Both images show straight streets on a crowdy, even rainy day. I mainly used the colours blue, green and yellow to adjust the photos to each other.

Second Pair: The View and The Plaza

This pair shows a view of different coloured houses and a view of different coloured humans. I manly used pastel colours to adjust the pictures to each other and get a softer feeling out of it.

Third Pair: The Playground and The Couple

A playground without any children just looks sad, even with the brightest coloures. The couple with their warm clothes and umbrella at a really warm day also looked wrong in their enviroment. I also liked the contrast of the young and the old. So I combined both images and mainly changed the saturation and brightness, concentrating on the colours yellow, blue and green.

Fourth Pair: The Picture on the Wall and The Food Stand

Both photos were taken in the same area in the town Jiufen, which is a real tourist magnet. But in the morning, when the tourists are not there yet, it has a real special atmosphere, when the town is getting ready for the people that are coming. Here I mainy worked with red, yellow and green.

Fifth Pair: The left Place and The Dog

Both these houses as well as the dog on the street a bit sad and abandoned and kind of being in their own world. Therefore I combined them and adjusted the colours orange, green and blue.

Sixth Pair: The green House and The Woman with the Bike

In both of these pictures I liked the bright colours and the calmness that the images expressed to me. So I adjusted the bright colours red, green and yellow in both images and lowered the saturation in the other areas.

Seventh Pair: The Cottage and The Trumpet

Also in these both images I found two “objects” beeing on their own in a vivid enviroment. The cottage was next to a walking treck close to a national park and seemed to be only occpied by  cats. The man was playing his trumpet like instrument in a city park in Kaohsiung.  I darkened the enviroment to strenghten the separation of the object and the surroundings and adjusted the colours red, and different shades of blue and green.

Google drive link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=11L5l2RV53iXZJr9vpKh4dKpJLyPOphFZ

 

Final Project I: Streets of Taiwan

Artist Statement: 

During recess week I went to Taiwan for 10 days to travel around the island and get to know country and people. Taiwan really fascinated me and I took a lot of photos of places and people that I found interesting. Besides the fascination the second strong feeling I had was that I was really foreign and alien in this country, everything was so different to the culture I normally live in. I decided to use these two feelings and the photos I took to combine them for my final project. So I tried to use expressive images and edit them in a way that a mood of fascination and also foreignness emerges.

Technical decisions:

I took the photo with my own camera, a Nikon D3400 and my lens Nikon DX 18-105mm, because I am used to take a lot of photos with this camera and I love the lens.

First Image: Man in the crowd

Before:

After:

Technical Decisions:

First I started with a Lens Correction. Then I used differen Masks for the man in the foreground, the Lights on the left side and also the Lanters. The inverted masks of the man and the lights I used as background masks. I applied different adjustments until I was happy with the results. I also used a green channel mask for the background and a red channel mask for the man in the foreground to create highlight and shadow masks.

Artist Statement:

My aim was to put the focus of this image on the man in the foreground. He looks sad and apathetic in the crowd and I wanted to express these feelings by adjusting his surroundings in colour, saturation and brightness.

Second Image: Woman on the Wall

Before:

After:

Technical Decisions:

I started with some general adjustments to this image, by using a gradient mask and a green channel masks to emphazise shadows and highlights. Then I created a mask for the woman on the wall and the inverted one as background. Again I used a gradient mask and red channel masks to create highlight and shadow masks for the background. I worked with a colour range mask to change to colour of the bright wall a bit and masked the lights of the boards in the shop to lower the brightness here as well. Then I created some adjustment masks on the different  levels.

Artist Statement:

I really liked this picture of the woman on the wall, but she looked to faded out and I wanted to change it. I decided to put her in focus of this image arranged the surroundings accordung to that. I also liked, how she looks a bit longing from the dark side towards the light side of the street and this image.

Third Image: Scooter

Before:

After:

Technical Decisions:

I started by cleaning the image. Then I worked on some general adjustments by using gradient masks for the sky and an inverted one for the steet. I used green channel maks to create highlight and shadow masks. I created a mask for the scooter in the foreground and inverted it for the background. Then I applied different adjustment layers and masks.

Artist Statement:

It was one of the rainy, cold days, when I walked along this street. I really liked this scenery and took a picture of it. I wanted to emphazise the feeling of a dismal rainy day and therefore darkened the image a bit and lowered the saturation, except for the scooter in the foreground.

Fourth Image: Woman with Bike

Before:

After:

Technical Decisions:

I started with some cleaning again, then I worked on some general adjustments. I decided to put the focus on the woman with the bike by masking her and create an invertef mask for the background. Then I used the red channel to work on her skin colour and applied further adjustments on the background mask.

Artist Statement:

This was the first image I decided to use for this project. I really liked the radiance she had with her modern bike and her old fashioned had. So I wanted to put the focus on her and tried to fade out the backround so that she shines out even more.