My Urban Camouflage

This is my first Urban Camouflage picture. This is my sister wearing my skirt and my backpack.
I got inspiration for this one day when I wore this same skirt and backpack to school. My friend, who was behind me, told me that she couldn't even distinguish my skirt from my backpack. I remembered that all of a sudden last night and decided to use this idea as one of my urban camouflage pictures. 

*The original copy in my folder looks a lot better. For some reason, when I imported the picture into my blog, the colours got all messed up so the shades of black are all different.*
This is my sister wearing my mom's black sweater, scarf and toque. She is sitting in a black chair, supposedly disappearing in the chair.

This is my final Urban Camo picture. I used face paint to paint my sister's face grey, then I used eye liner to draw the stars. I put the scarf around her. All of these pictures are my take on Urban Camouflage. Though these pictures don't necessarily have the person blend into their surroundings, they match/blend into other objects. 

Urban camouflage Examples

Urban Camouflage Examples

This is a picture by a Chinese artist by the name of Liu Bolin. I chose this picture because for one, I really had to closely to find the person. I also really liked how the artist captures every detail of the colour and the lighting. I loved how Liu Bolin even managed to get the shading and the shadows of the chair. The entire person has been painted, and I can’t even begin to imagine how long it must have taken to paint the entire scene.

This is another picture by Liu Bolin. For this picture, the first time I looked at it, I really couldn’t see the full outline of the person. The shoulders completely disappear in all of the soda cans. Not only did this picture capture all of the lighting, but it is also crazy detailed. The artist painted every single pop can, will the labels to perfectly match the real labels.

My third picture is by Yvonne Bayer and Sabina Keric. I really love how they stuffed the person inside a box, and sent them to a store to go and stand there. I’m not exactly sure what those teal-blue boxes are and what is inside of them, but I still like the picture. Really, you wouldn’t know that anything was different until you realized that some of the boxes were sticking to the side of the bigger box.

Urban Camouflage

Urban Camouflage Research

Yvonne Bayer

Yvonne Bayer was born in 1983 in Ulm, Germany. She currently lives and works in Cologne, Germany.  From 2003–2010, she was working on a Communication and Product Design degree at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. From January – July 2007, Yvonne Bayer was doing Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. In February, 2010, she earned her diploma in Communication Design (equivalent to master’s degree) also at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

She calls herself a communication designer.

She likes working in different fields, such as graphic design, conceptual design, culture and exhibition projects. She is very interested in artwork projects as well.

Since October 2011 she has been doing freelance work for nondesign in Cologne, Germany. She has been doing freelance work for Lange+Durach in Cologne as well. Yvonne has also been doing freelance for Hauser Lacour in Frankfurt since 2008. In July 2010, Bayer did an Urban Camouflage workshop. She also helped out at the Pottfiction Summer Camp. Then, for a month during the spring of 2010, she was in charge of advertising media design for the Karlsruhe Artist’s Fair.

Yvonne did her first internship at Duodesign; an agency for applied ideas in her hometown of Uln, Germany from 2002-2003. From March to July in 2008, she did an internship at Hauser Lancour in Frankfurt. In 2009, Yvonne Bayer did a third internship at Eat Sleep Work Play in London.

Yvonne started the Urban Camouflage project in 2010 with her friend and college-mate Sabina Keric. They focused on going into stores with homemade costumes. The costumes were all made from products found at the store. Most of these products were stapled on to plain white painters suits. They would then go to the part of the store that housed the product they were wearing and strategically positioned themselves in front of it, disappearing completely from view.

I did take a bit of inspiration from Bayer and Keric’s work. I liked their use of everyday household items to create a costume. However, since I have neither the resources nor the time to create such costumes, I will have to resort to simply using paint. I like their use of boxes and the paper. It would be easy to tape paper onto someone and have them stand beside something that blends in with the paper.

This is some of Yvonne’s Urban Camouflage work in collaboration with Sabina Keric. 

Dreams of Flying

Dreams of Flying

Test Shots

Final Shots

This is a picture of a person meditating atop a pile of pillows. The background is a black blanket. I positioned the pillows to be standing up, and my sister siting cross-legged on "top" of the pillows. I took this picture from the top of my stairs at home. I did not edit this photo in any way. I did not have any specific inspiration for this picture. The idea just came to me when I was shooting my other test shots. The picture is a little bit blurry because there was a smudge on the lens. I cleaned it and attempted to re-take this photo but none of them turned out as good as this one, so I kept it. 

This is a picture of a person hanging on for dear life at the edge of a cliff/pit. The inspiration for this picture is from the book "Mark Of Athena", where the main characters are hanging on to the edge of a giant pit. The ground is a brown blanket, and the pit is a black blanket. I did not edit this picture in any way. I took this picture from the top of my stairs at home. As always, I find that my test pictures are always better than my final image. However, I had to take a final shot as the test image has the wall in it.

This is a picture of my sister balancing upside down on one finger while reading a book. The inspiration just came to me when I was taking my other test shots. Originally, this was my test shot and I had taken another image to use as my final shot, but I decided that I liked this better than the final image. The image that I had originally taken for my final shot is the image that I am using for my test shot. I did not edit this photo. I placed the chair on its back and took the photo from the top of my stairs. 

My HDR

Normal:

HDR:

This is my first HDR picture taken with the Nikon camera at school. I used the program "Luminance-HDR" which I downloaded from the internet. The process is fairly simple, you upload your three photos and the program merges them together. All you have to do is choose the settings that suit you best.

Normal:

HDR:

This is my second HDR image. This picture was one that I took Summer of 2012 in London England. This monument is called the Big Ben. For this image, I used Photoshop CS6. I first made three copies of this image. I then opened up two of them in Photoshop and changed the exposures- one overexposed and the other underexposed. I saved and closed these images. I then went back to photoshop and went File- Automate- Merge to HDR Pro. This merges the three photos together. For my settings, I left this one on "Custom".

Normal:

HDR:

This is my third HDR image. This photo was taken Summer of 2012. This is the Notre Dame in Paris, France. For this image, I used Photoshop CS6. I first made three copies of this image. I then opened up two of them in Photoshop and changed the exposures- one overexposed and the other underexposed. I saved and closed these images. I then went back to photoshop and went File- Automate- Merge to HDR Pro. This merges the three photos together. For my settings, I left this one on "Custom".

Normal:

HDR:

This is my fourth HDR image. This photo was taken at White Rock Beach a few summers ago on my dad's Nikon D7000. For this image, I used Photoshop CS6. I first made three copies of this image. I then opened up two of them in Photoshop and changed the exposures- one overexposed and the other underexposed. I saved and closed these images. I then went back to photoshop and went File- Automate- Merge to HDR Pro. This merges the three photos together. For my settings, I decided to change it around a bit. This is on "Surreal". 

HDR Research

HDR Research

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography is the process of combining three or more pictures at different exposure and lighting and combines them into one. This process creates sharper, more vivid pictures. The pictures are essentially made to bring out more contrast between the darkest and lightest parts of the picture. ^{[1] “}Ideally, the photographer takes a range of bracketed photos – that is, photos of the same subject taken with varying shutter speed/aperture combinations in order to produce a set of images with varying luminosity and depth of field.”

HDR can be achieved in many ways, but they all start off the same way. The first step is to take three pictures of the same thing, preferably on a tripod to attain the best results. One picture needs to be over-exposed, one under-exposed and one normal picture, set at the correct exposure. It's important that you change the shutter speed, NOT the aperture -- the reason being that since you will be combining several images to make one, you don't want your DOF to change between shots. From here, paths split.

[2] One way to get HDR from here is to open all three pictures in Photoshop. Go into file, then the Automate submenu, and finally, select “Merge to HDR.” When the box pops up, select your pictures and hit ok. Go to the Image menu, the mode submenu and click on “16 bits per channel.” When the box pops up, go to the little menu and select “Local Adaptation.” Finally, bring the left hand side of the histogram to the beginning of the shadows information. Play around with it until you are happy. The picture is complete.

[3] Go to fotor.com and create an HDR image without the use of Photoshop.

[4]Another way to create an HDR image is using the program “Luminescence-HDR.” Open up your photos and create your image.

^[1] From: http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/what-is-hdr-beginners-guide-to-high-dynamic-range-photography/#ixzz2iZywfk4X

[2] http://backingwinds.blogspot.ca/2006/10/how-to-create-professional-hdr-images.html

[3] http://www.fotor.com/

[4] http://www.wikihow.com/Create-High-Dynamic-Range-Photographs