Assignment 2 Photo Manipulation Assignment

BEFORE

AFTER


For this photo manipulation I found a photo of an old town from Warsaw, Mazowiecki, Poland. The second photo is a statue in front of the Catherine Palace in Russia. First I brought the picture into Adobe After Effects. I applied a layer effect preset that I have used in previous assignment to get that old time color. I brought in the smoke effects from a preset video and framed it into the picture. I then brought it to Adobe Photo Shop to touch it up. I used a gaussian blur on each building, starting from the far back, to get that depth or the field of vision from when you look far. I also blurred the smoke so it does not look sharp and then applied a brown color to try and match it with the rest of picture. I applied a stale brown hue then blurred it again. I applied a fill layer of black and cut out an elliptic circle which left only the corners then blurred and reduce the opacity. I added a noise layer, made a soft light layer, and then reduced the opacity to give that grain effect like you see in a old photo. Lastly I added one last gaussian blur to reduce and blur out the highlights from the ledges and the horse. They gaussian blur really helped to make it looked washed out with all the fade effects.

The reason why I edited the photo like this is because I wanted to imitate Alfred Stieglitz photo technique. During Stieglitz time when he supported photography as an art form, all of his photos are calm, not chaotic. Their is not much cluster of objects in the scene. The element of smoke mimics the paintbrush strokes. The tone and contrast helps keep the atmosphere of the picture soft and emotional. The simple way of life is used commonly among Pictorialists. The deep, dark areas keep its mysterious and depressed. The blurred effects i added also imitates the soft-focus effects and depth you would see in Stieglitz's early photos