The Digital Dimension: Photography in the Digital Age

1. The User Experience (Unit 4) The digital dimension: photography in the digital age

2. Phenomenon dreamscapes bird nest Analyse the image on the left. What techniques do you think the photographer used to create this? • Uelsmann used four enlargers • Blended three photos: • a raven • a tree trunk • his wife’s hands holding a bird’s nest Jerry Uelsmann (2006)

3. “The primary creative gesture for most photographers used to be when they clicked the shutter [...] But I realized that the darkroom was a visual research lab where the creative process could continue.” Jerry Uelsmann (2013) http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/before-there-was-photoshop-these-photographers-knew-how-to-manipulate-an-image-36808349/?no-ist

4. Cottingley Fairies

5. Faking it - pre-Photoshop manipulation • Photomontage (multiple photos cut and pasted together then rephotographed) • Multiple exposures (masking, multiple exposures of same negative) • Combination printing (using two negatives to create an image [see HDR]) • Overpainting (adding colour pigment to photographs) • Retouching (addition of media or chemical/physical removal of material)

6. Before there was Photoshop... Techniques: • Dodging • Burning • Gradation • Focus (sharpening) • Masks • Feathering

7. Dodging; A card or other opaque object is held between the enlarger lens and the photographic paper in such a way as to block light from the portion of the scene to be lightened. Since the technique is used with a negative-to-positive process, reducing the amount of light results in a lighter image. Burning: To burn-in a print, the print is first given normal exposure. Next, extra exposure is given to the area or areas that need to be darkened. Gradation: An image's tonal contrast range. The range of light and dark tones in a subject that a film is capable of showing (i.e. how a film reproduces contrast). The gradual changing of one tint or shade to another by very small degrees Masks: In art, craft, and engineering, masking is the use of materials to protect areas from change, or to focus change on other areas. Feathering: Feathering can be used to control how much of the light generated by the main unit reaches the backdrop, allowing photographers to enhance or minimise the background brightness easily and without the use of any extra tools

8. Dove Evolution What are the social and cultural issues that this video raises? What ethical issues does this video raise? What does this video tell us about the representation of women in visual media?

9. Manipulation and ethics What are the issues related to representation in this image? What are the social and cultural issues that this video raises? What ethical issues does this raise? How has technology contributed to this trend of image manipulation? • Body image • “Whitewashing”

10. Homework task Research two relevant, contemporary digitally manipulated images (a magazine cover, newspaper photo, celebrity selfie etc.). • Discuss the way in which the images may have been manipulated: what technology and techniques could have been used? • Why do you think these changes were made? • Discuss the cultural, social, ethical issues raised by the manipulation of the image. • Discuss issues of representation that these manipulations raise. • Why do you think these techniques have become so commonplace? • Explain how these issues could be relevant to your own professional practice.

11. Bibliography http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/before-there-was-photoshop-these-photographers-knew-how-to-manipulate-an-image-36808349/?no-ist http://mashable.com/2015/02/19/before-photoshop/#qIcP9eYHZkqq http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/exhibitions/2012/faking-it https://ethicsinediting.wordpress.com/