Exam Idea: Death

I have explored the experience of death and afterlife by photographs of a grave yard. I tried to concentrate on head stones and how the light reflected off of the stone and created different textures within the photograph. 

I edited the pictures in the style of Giacomo Brunelli and tried to create a dark, eerie and morbid effect. Using photoshop I edited all the images from colour to black and white. I then enhanced the contrast levels and reduced the brightness of the image. I then changed the levels of each photograph to make the shadows more visible and to contrast the highlights from the dark tones. I also edited the colour balance to enhance the blues of the shadowed areas and the yellows of the mid-tones.  To each image I created a black vignette and changed the layer style to overlay and reduced the opacity, this created a central focus of the image and enhanced the morbid feel of the image. 

I am very pleased with the above shot. I like the position and composition, especially how the branches of the tree spans across the top of the photograph creating a border, also how the headstone is in the center and foreground of the photograph. I also like how the headstone in the foreground is dark and creates an eerie effect which contrasts the highlights on the stones in the background. Finally, I think the editing of this shot successfully creates a morbid atmosphere through the use of the vignette which draws the focus on the central headstones. 

I like the composition of this shot and how the stone texture is captured in the light. I also like how the shot is positioned and the head stone is not central and is taken from an angle. The lighting is important to the shot, I like how the face of the headstone is highlighted and the corners and background contrasts in the shadows. 

I think this shot is slightly boring and uninteresting, however I like how the shadows make the design on the top of the headstone clear and sharp. The contrast of the shot could have been better and included more highlights of certain areas as the bottom of the headstone is lost. 

I am not really pleased with this shot, it is too dark and the contrast is too low and because of this the subjects get lost in the background. The composition and positioning of the shot is not interesting and the subjects are not in the center and the shot is at a slight angle.