Location Recce & Equipment List

These are a few location recce’s that I did before choosing where to photograph my landscape images. I went with wide/open spaces and places that had a lot of obvious background, mid ground and foreground with clouds, trees and grass. Out of all of them I liked the one with the long road in the landscape the best. I like it the most because of the leading lines that the road gives and I think this would work well within my image and having the male model standing in the path way.

When shooting my background images, I am going to need to take some equipment with me, to make sure I don’t forget anything I made myself an equipment list-

Location Ideas

For the background of my final composite I wanted to have a wide landscape shot, with some sort of leading lines in the form of a road, bridge or river. Within the landscape I also wanted trees and bushes to give it a very nature filled feel. As I wanted to edit my final composite into black and white, I thought that having sky, trees and leading lines would look good with a high contrast and strong natural lighting.

In Hertfordshire there are a lot of fields, rivers and country fields which are very aesthetically pleasing to walk along and photograph and I have been here numerous times in the past and pictured it as a perfect location to capture my striking background shot.

I would like to capture an image looking similar to one of the ones above. The nature background image helps tell the message of my composite. The message being that coffee has a strong power/effect on our body and mind. With the background image being of nature, it helps put that message across as it shows that coffee is a natural source of energy and caffeine.

Practising Editing Techniques

To get to grips with editing my final composite for hand in, I decided to have a practise run on my test images. I knew that I wanted a field type background, with a man holding a large coffee cup and coffee beans in the image somewhere, so as a rough idea I gave it a go.

To start off the editing process I wanted to practise with putting the man into the image, I did this using a simple process with the magnetic lasso tool and then dragging him onto the background image layer in Photoshop. After I had put the man into the background, I then wanted to edit the sky to adjust the lighting in the sky. I wanted more direction in the natural light to be beaming down onto my model.

To do this I asked for Chris’s help in a tutorial as I was slightly stuck on how to go about getting this process to look right. Chris showed me a technique where he used the brush tool and levels to smooth the edges over on the model in the background. He then used the gradient tool, blending and more brushed to adjust the lighting on his face and hands. After this he then brought the sky into the image and used quick masks and gradients to adjust the lighting to be in a certain way, giving it direction onto the model and beaming in his direction.

Once Chris had showed me how to use quick masks and the gradient tool to edit the lighting in the sky I then wanted to practise adding in my coffee cup which would sit in my models arms. To test this out I got a picture from the internet to practise with until I take my own coffee cup pictures.

When I placed my cup into the practise composite image, I used the magnetic lasso tool to transfer it from one layer to the other, and then rubbed out parts that didn’t look smooth or parts that I had missed. I then used the dodge tool and a gradient quick mask again to match the sky’s lighting to make it look like the natural day light was shining on the mug, as if it was really in the image.

This is the finished practise image and I am happy with how it turned out. Seeing as it was just a practise for my final composite I wasn’t worried too much about it being ‘perfect’ but I just wanted to get to grips with the basics and adjusting the image lighting.

Seeing as I want to make my final composite looking a bit similar to this I am going to apply the techniques that I have learnt from this test run to my final composite to achieve the outcome I want.

 

Practise Photographs

With my idea I had in mind and in my notes/research, I decided to do a practise image of the kind of thing I wanted to create. This would give me the opportunity to practise my location shot, my model, coffee cup, lighting and even cutting out and layering.

I chose a location that would give me a wide shot and a lot of room to place things in. I thought of somewhere with a lot of greenery and somewhere that would have a clear horizon line between the sky and the ground. All of this combined would give me a good black and white image, with strong contrasting colours and a lot of room to place my model and coffee cup.

These were the practise landscape images. I took these images with the idea in mind of placing a man in the shot with a large coffee cup and some coffee beans. The idea behind it being that the coffee beans would be raining into the large coffee cup that the man would be holding. This type of landscape image in black and white would work with my image as the horizon line and foreground will contrast well with the natural lighting.

While taking these images and keeping my story/ message in mind of “coffees power on our body and mind” I also thought of the idea of having a large coffee cup sitting along the horizon line, pouring coffee down the motorway bridge in the image, this still giving the message/idea of coffee overtaking and being powerful.

Next, to give myself some more practise, I will take images of a model and a coffee cup and practise overlaying them onto these background images to see how my final composite may look.

Finalising An Idea

With all of my research and ideas in my mind, I started to finalise what kind of image I wanted to create.

I particularly liked the work of surreal photographer Tommy Ingberg, I liked how his images were quite wide shots, making the image look pretty bare, yet at the same time it had a lot going on? I also like how his pictures portray certain gloomy moods, and make you ask questions as to what is really going on.

As Lavazza campaigns are very fashion and editorial looking, creating something inspired by Ingberg would give my Lavazza campaign a whole different look and make it look arty and abstract rather than bright and sexualised.

From the start of this project, I liked the story of coffee being powerful on our bodies and mind, and what effects it has on us in our day to day life. Using Ingberg’s work as my inspiration, and how he mainly uses one main large object in his images, it made me think of using either a large coffee cup or a large coffee bean to be the main focus of my picture.

I created a spider diagram and notes to give myself and my tutors a clearer idea of what I want to create-

 

Surreal Photographer Inspiration

To get some more inspiration to support my ideas I decided to look at Pinterest to see what I could find. I ended up finding some photographers and images that I really liked the work of and would find helpful when developing my own idea.

Joel Robinson, Storm Thorgerson and George Christakis were some of the ones that I found on Pinterest. What I liked about their work, that I can apply to my own, is the idea of having random objects filling up most of the image. In Storm’s work there are red balloons, in George’s work their are eggs and in Joel’s work there are coffee beans. I like the idea of having some coffee beans or a lot of coffee cups taking up most of my image, whether they be scattered along the floor, floating in the sky or making up another part of my image. Having something like this in my final image would give the message of coffee across clearly, a bit clearer than previous Lavazza campaigns.

Looking Back At Lavazza Campaigns

To give myself a bit more inspiration and help towards thinking of my final composite image, I decided to look back over some of the old Lavazza campaigns again. Including work from photographers such as Finlay Mackay, Ellen Von Unwerth and Erwin Olaf.

(Finlay Mackay and Ellen Von Unwerth)  

(Erwin Olaf, Ellen Von Unwerth and David LaChapelle)

When looking back over previous Lavazza campaigns I noticed that majority of them were very brightly coloured and they all featured main women roles. The campaigns all gave the same image of having a powerful women as the main aspect of the campaign image. As well as this, I noticed that the coffee cup and the idea of coffee isn’t very obvious in the images, it doesn’t seem to be the main focus?

After noticing these things about the previous campaigns, it made me think of how I can make my composite image different to anything previously done for Lavazza. As the campaigns are brightly coloured and feature mainly women, this gave me the idea of creating a black and white image containing a male character/model.

With the work of Tommy Ingberg and Erik Johannson in mind from previous research, I will apply the surrealism aspects to my ideas for this project. Meaning that I will most likely come up with a black and white image, with a main male character and having a surreal aspect to it.

Photographer Inspiration

The first surrealist photographer I looked at is Erik Johannson. Johnson is a surreal photographer who uses large objects and landscapes to create his unique style images. By combining physical objects, real environments and a lot of digital retouching he creates images that seem like a fantasy world.

I like the idea of using a normal looking landscape, that doesn’t have anything special about it in particular and using objects and props to make it into a magical image, like Johannson does in his work.

A wide landscape shot with a lot of field space in it would work well for my idea of having a large coffee cup in my image somewhere as it will allow me to place the coffee cup almost anywhere and not have limited space to work with.

The second surrealist photographer I looked at was Tommy Ingburg. Ingberg creates black and white surreal images, expressing a feeling or creating a subconscious within a picture. Ingberg says that when viewers see his work, he wants them to create their own questions and answers to his pictures, and that that is more important to him than his own interpretations of the images he creates.

What I like about Ingberg’s work is the simplicity of it and how there is usually a large object within each simple landscape. He uses a lot of clouds and open spaces in his images, making your attention focus more on the large object and person he uses in his images.

Looking at his work, I like the idea of having the coffee cup being almost like a large raincloud in the sky, and having either one person or numerous people underneath it with umbrella’s, with the coffee cup raining coffee beans. Giving the message that I mentioned before of coffee having a power over us, and the caffeine having effects on us as human beings and how we work.

Planning

After planning out some ideas to do for my Lavazza campaign and looking at previous campaigns, I am going to create a surreal looking image, with a large coffee cup, symbolising that coffee has a power over our mind and body. Also, how heightened caffeine can make our bodies energy. I am now going to look at photographers, artists and other campaigns to build a stronger idea of what kind of image I want to create.

Looking At Previous Campaigns

Looking at previous Lavazza campaigns, it is clear to see a white Lavazza cup somewhere in every image and it is also clear to see that they are very surreal adverts. I saw a lot of campaign images have women in them, at a large scale to signify some form of power, I wasn’t so keen on these images, I preferred the surreal ones that had something unique about them. I also liked how there was one large scale thing in each image, whether it being a person, the coffee cup or some props.

By looking into some previous campaign images, I want my composite image to have a large coffee cup in the image, to symbolise the power that coffee has on our body.