Week 5 Blog Entry: w/c 19th October 2020 - Creative Enterprise

This week, I started taking my photos for my final pieces. Initially, I just wanted to take some test shots to see what effects were going to work for me and how I was going to go about creating the effects.

To start with, I decided to do a quick search on Google to see what effects were already out there. I did a little bit of this for my proposal and the effects I saw were really effective. I typed in "abstract christmas" and found quite a lot of really interesting techniques here, including bokeh, light trials, and macro. I tend to only look briefly into other photographer's work, because although I may be inspired by the shapes or colours, I don't want to create something that someone else has already done. I want to be able to make something on my own that no-one else has done before. I did do some research on Pinterest for inspiration and I have some boards that I have created that include techniques like bokeh and light trails. These will be useful to me, just in case I lose inspiration or need a little bit of extra help on where to go next.

The first experiment I did was this week, because I was really inspired by the light trails I had seen. These included some twirling effects with the light and it gave me an idea to try and create a Christmas tree using a different coloured lights. To do this, I've dowloaded an app on my phone that create a light show with a variety of colours that I can adjust to change the timings for when it changes to the next colour. I also found some glow sticks that I thought would be useful to create some thiner lines, as using my phone can be tricky when trying to create more delicate imagery. I had struggled in the past with using glow sticks, as the light wasn't very bright on the photo, so I think I'll experiment with the camera settings to ensure that the light can be seen.

I did look into some of the most commom imagery that appears in Christmas cards on Shutterstock and a lot of the images that appeared were very minimalistic and most appeared to be things like Christmas trees, snowflakes, baubles and reindeer. I did this reseach because I plan to create a number of different designs for the cards and I want at least one to include some imagery that is quite common. I want to do this, so that I can see what it is people are drawn to and what is going to sell better - abstract that is pretty niche and is rarely seen, or something that is more common and people will be attracted to because they know what it is. I actually really liked the minimalistic take on Christmas, because I think it's quite trendy and considering there is a decline in 25-34 year olds buying Christmas cards, I think this simplicity will appeal to them, as long as the price is right.

To start, I used my phone app to create my imagery. I set the colours up to change every 0.5 seconds so it would give a colourful element to the image. This also fits in with the pop art trend, with multiple colours and neons being used. This idea did work to a degree and I was able to create a Christmas tree with a light trial. The image itself was quite small, so I think I would need to enlarge it and crop out any unwanted space so that it would take up most of the front of the card. I did struggle adjusting the lens so that the light took up the whole frame, so I think some post-production editing will need to be used. Because the trees I was making were coming out a bit lopsided and at angle, I tried to create half a Christmas tree with the intention of flipping the image in Photoshop so it made the other half. This seemed to work, so my next step will be to upload the image into Photoshop and try editing it in the way I have described. I'm not very good at drawing so for this technique, I would have to stick with just drawing Christmas trees.

The next thing I tried with the swirly effect I had seen online. I didn't think I was going to be able to achieve it, but I thought I'd give it a go, as it was a really creative take on the more common imagery of a Christmas tree and I thought that if I could make it work, it would be nice to try and put my own spin on it. This was quite difficult to do, as I had to make sure that my phone screen was facing the camera the whole time and when trying to use the technique simialr to how I'd seen it, it became obvious that my phone wouldn't be useful for this image. I did also try using glow sticks, but similar to last time, I struggled to get the light to show up on the camera, no matter how many times I adjusted the settings.

The last thing I tried which I thought might be quite interesting was writing out the words "Merry Christmas" with the light trails. I had to be careful here, because the word "Christmas" was quite long and I had to make sure that the word fit into the frame. This idea worked quite well, but because I wasn't aware of where the frame began and ended, I crammed the letters to close together and ended up making the word look a bit scrunched up. When I come to actually making my final pieces, I will work on trying to fit them all into the frame. I think this is a fairly simple, but effective way to get the festive message across.

For my next steps, I will start editing some of the photos and using more post-production techniques to create some more abstract work. To me, this will be an important step in creating some work that is very different from what is already out there and creating work that people will actually want to buy. From this, I will then create a poll on Instagram (which is where I feel most of my target market are) and upload the images so that people can vote on which image they prefer. This will give me an idea on how many of one type of design I can make and what is more likely to sell. I might also decide to use this image as the promotional image when I come to market my products.

For my next shoot, I am going to be focusing on macro, bokeh and camera shake and really experiment with the ideas that I have. I know I want to use typical festive decorations to create my outcomes, but I want to know how I can use my abstract techniques to create something new and different. Based on some of the imagery I've seen that's already out there, I think I'll focus on the close-ups and camera shake, particularly as camera shake always gives me different results each time. Even though some of these techniques seem fairly simple and easy to do, they do add a complexity to the scene that might create a USP for my products. I might also find materials around the house that I can use to create some effects. For example, I have a long piece of shiny material that when I use the flash on my camera and I hold it far away enough from the camera, I can create some bokeh. I will experiment with a number of techniques until I find something that I can edit and I think will make a unique product.