EVALUATION.

EVALUATION.
For the series of final images for this project, I needed to think not just of the aesthetics of the final images but also the conceptual relevance and how I should put across my point of view to my audience. I started out thinking about issues which are very much in the forefront of public interest at present eg global warming, health and diet. Recent programmes such as Jamie Oliver’s “Fowl Foods” picked up on the controversial subject of modern day poultry production and conditions in which hens are kept. I thought I would explore this subject further with a series of photographs. As well as food production and ingredients of our typical Western modern diet, I also wanted to combine another idea as well as this about consumption and human stability due to the mass production of foodstuffs. Scientists say that we cannot maintain this production of food on such a large scale and we will exhaust our human resources in due course if we carry on in this way. In my work, I aim to combine the presenting of these two problems into one composite image.

For my research and also in order to find further inspiration I looked into product and advertising photography – especially the food genre. Also, I began exploring government and campaign advertisements for smoking adds as this was another area I wished to cover in my work. Although it was quite tricky to locate the information that I wished to explore, I found that most of the ad campaigns use a very simple and clearly defined way of presenting and demonstrating their ideas to their target audiences.
Therefore, for my series of images, I intended to use the idea of photomontage to create single images which have been split down their centers with the source of each product on one side and its final presentation as an item for the consumer to purchase on the other side. Both sides dissolve into each other and their dissolution leads to them appearing as one. For my first photograph, I planned to photograph a bottle of milk and merge it into a plot of grass as this is what it essentially is. Milk is one of the most important dietary commodities and needs a large amount of land space on which the cows must graze in order to produce the milk. The UK alone consumes vast amounts of milk daily. The purpose of the poster is not just to show the actual product and its source but also to highlight the issue of stability.

In the production of my first image, I had difficulty in how to lay out the wording. Also. In this entire series of photographs, I did not use the college studio as I set up my own studio at home using metz flashes and backdrops. I had difficulty on my first shoot with my milk bottle due to the colour calibration of my computer screen at home. I did not notice the backdrop colour variation that occurred and I feel somewhat spoilt the image as a whole and caused it to lose some of its impact due to the fact that, with this variation, the background did not look as sterile as I intended.

I had wished to represent the environment as if it was under scientific observation, giving the interpretation to the audience that it is a more factual and realistic image due to its connotations and semiotics. My second shoot of the orange bottle went much more smoothly as I was able to tweak the lighting better and improve on it generally as I had more equipment available to me, for example the wireless trigger sets which allowed me to have more lighting and therefore I was able to get the right effect that I wanted, The poster displays a quote from Arthur Miller which essentially weighs up the two underlying issues.

For my apple shoot, I had to make sure that I had my props in place – eg the bad apple which I had had to leave out for a few weeks to cause it to deteriorate into the rotten condition in which I wanted to portray it. Before I started shooting, I had to make sure that all my props were exactly as I wanted them to be. For example, the apple itself had to be a certain shape, clean and buffed. For many food shoots, photographers choose to use the fake plastic food as it shows food that is in perfect condition. The only tricky part of editing the apple shoot occurred when I found that the apple had shrunk due to decomposition. Therefore, I had to scale it up in photo shop to make it appear to be its original size. The main purpose of my apple photograph was to show to my target audience the truth behind many of the consumer products we buy and what we are really putting inside our bodies. The first impression one gets of this image is that it would seem to be an advert for a supermarket product due to the font and style of the slogan at the top. However, on closer inspection, the audience can see that it is in fact completely the opposite of what it seems to be. Instead of promoting the benefits of the object portrayed, the poster is actually warning the viewer of its detriments.
The pure white backdrop with a halo of light around the object shown helps to connote to the audience the purity of the fruit portrayed. The target audience for this poster consists of all age groups from all classes of society. For the final image that I produced for the series of images exploring products and their deconstruction, I chose to use the idea of black market cigarettes. My idea was to expose the truth about the contents of these cigarettes by photographing them broken in two with one side being the outside of the rolled cigarette and the other with the contents spilling out. The total shoot and production stages went very well. The only problem I feel that there is to the image is the blending across from one side to the other as if one looks very closely one can see why the changeover is not entirely to my satisfaction. What I feel might have worked better for this image is if the cigarette paper had dissolved through gradually. The slogan that I have used anchors the actual meaning of the image and is intended to be ironic for this slogan is used by the John Player company for their Navy Cut tobacco.

As well as this, I have put official facts and health warnings beside the image I created in order to further shock my target audience. To make it even more convincing, I have used a font style that is usually associated with newspaper advertisements or government announcements. My intention was to convey the sense of factuality around my image as the audience might otherwise have interpreted it as some kind of joke and not taken it as seriously as they should. The overall project has gone very smoothly, partly due to the fact that I chose to do a very simple but dramatic idea.. The main purpose of my project was to create something more related to conceptual ideas rather than aesthetics. I thought the equipment was available to me, but due to my previous history in the Light Studio, I felt that as I had more time to photograph my objects at home, I would be able to get the right image I wanted and also, due to the size of the images, I could use the metz flash sets. This project has really opened me up to awareness of the mass industry of product advertising and the importance of post production. I have learnt through this project how new this form of digital post production is. It has only come into being in the last ten to twenty years due to the advancement in software and hardware equipment. This has made it easier for artists to be more creative and explore further possibilities of this industry. Nevertheless, this has caused problems in journalism photography as some images can be doctored, making their truthfulness questionable

Final Images

Here are a few photographs from Peter Kennard's series entitled "Decoration" - this is a photomontage comprizing photographs and paintings exposing the reality of the Iraq war
The series depicts the fallen soldiers with their broken medals intended to show the human cost and abuse of rights entailed in the earning of these medals. This is quite a controversial issue but it is a very dramatic way of putting across the viewpoints of both sides. Neither side has been glorified
This series has inspired me to contemplate how I may put across the idea of two images that merge into one to create a new meaning


form portfolio 40

supermarket apples are up to 10 months old

The controversial issue of Jean Charles de Menezes Doctored image of him and Hussain Osman, the real terrorist combining the two faces to put across to the jury how easy it had been to mistake one for the other. The very act of this positioning of halves of each face and also change of lighting on each one meant that it was ruled out for presentation as evidence in court.

This is the same concept as the one behind my series of images but the question is whether the depiction of each item, especially the apple is a truthful representation.

The prosecution say the police doctored an image of Jean Charles de Menezes for a composite picture comparing him with bomb plotter Hussain Osman




Here you can see the contact sheet for the series of photos in which I tried out the use of different types of lighting on many different types of apples. Also, I used different layouts for each photograph.

Here is some research and articles I found on supermarket fruit and other foods
Our tests show supermarket apples are up to 10 months old
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/supermarket-apples-10-months-old/2008/01/19/1200620272669.html
APPLES on sale in supermarkets are up to 10 months old, an investigation by The Sun-Herald has revealed.
Woolworths, which advertises itself as "the fresh food people", was the worst culprit, with the oldest products on sale.
The Sun-Herald bought samples of Granny Smiths from Woolworths, Coles and the Norton Street Grocer in Bondi Junction after learning that, within the industry, some products are nicknamed "birthday apples" because they are up to a year old by the time they hit the shelves.
All the samples were Australian-grown.
The apples are kept in cold storage under controlled conditions from the time they are picked.
But scientists said that quality and freshness was being affected because they were being kept for longer in order to satisfy consumer demand for year-round products.
Our apples were sent for testing at the independent Sydney Postharvest Laboratory, which conducts research for the fruit and vegetable industry.
Analysis showed the Woolworths samples were about 10 months old while the Norton Street and Coles products had spent 9 months in storage since being harvested.
The apples were also tested for firmness and levels of ethylene, a natural plant hormone that stimulates fruit to ripen but can also cause it to go off.
Stephen Morris, the principal research scientist who conducted the tests, said that Norton Street apples were of the best quality and Woolworths the worst.
Woolworths' apples had 75 times the ethylene levels of the fruit from Norton Street.
Dr Morris said: "Apples can be kept for six months and they will still be of very good quality.
"After nine months the quality is going to start to be affected and at 10 and 11 months you are not going to get such a good apple.
"If you want to eat fresh fruit now, don't buy apples, buy mangoes."
Dr Morris said that any apples on sale at the moment would be at least eight months old.
Woolworths chief executive Michael Luscombe said: "Apples have a very short growing and harvest season and it has always been the case that they are picked and kept in cold storage.
"The cold storage helps to slow the ripening process but of course it can't keep an apple as fresh as if it came straight off the tree so it will affect the quality.
"Customers want apples all year round. We have a big commitment to Australian farmers and 97 per cent of all our produce is from Australian producers.
"The only options other than cold storage would be to not have apples all year round or to buy from the northern hemisphere where the quality might not be as good.
"I accept that consumers might not be aware of the fact that the apples on sale are not fresh off the tree.
"It might be something that we need to do in terms of customer education, perhaps using our television adverts when we have staff members talking about what is in season to explain when they will have come from cold storage."
A spokesman for Coles said: "The technology for storing apples is now very sophisticated."

Here are a few adverts that inspired me to split objects in two in order to show what each object actually consists of.
In this advertisement we can see very clearly demonstrated how it works using installation



Here is an advert for Heinz ketchup which uses images that are very similar to those that I am aiming to create.
The Heinz advert uses the essential ingredients of the ketchup -eg the tomatoes themselves - to create the shape of the bottle.

Another advert shows how much butter you will use in your meals throughout the year.
This is a very clear and concise way to show to the audience how important the product is in their life.







Research into campaign ads

Here are a few UK government ads intended to raise awareness regarding heart attack symptoms and the dangers of smoking.
I wanted my work to have a very obvious and literal meaning. These ads do not present literally what is happening to the subjects - they use metaphors to shock the audience. For example, in the photograph taken by Alan Mahon, intended to represent a heart attack victim suffering pains in his chest, digital grafts with prosthetics have been used to create a belt made of his own flesh tightening around him. Mahon considered that using digital imaging alone the effect would be too much like a cartoon so a real physical object was created for the purpose by the prosthetics expert employed to help create the desired effect.The metaphor which anchors the whole image is so powerful that no text is required to convey the message to the audience. Mahon explains that he had particularly aimed not give any indication of what social class the subject was from in order that the image would impinge equally strongly on people from all walks of life, across the social scale.




This is another series of photographs taken by Nick Georghiou. He is an award-winning photographer who has worked on campaigns for Landrover and adidas etc.
In this series, prosthetics were also used as well as digital imaging. Little plastic hooks were used to stretch the models' mouths and then these were removed artificially
Accompanying this series of photographs was a TV ad which helped to create one of the most successful "Quit Smoking" campaigns. However, in my opinion, unlike the work of Alan Mahon, this photograph seemed to be somewhat stereotyped and this may have had an impact on the overall success of the campaign
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creative review the photo

adbusters 72

Black Market Cigarettes.

For one of my final images, I am going to produce an image that will demonstrate to my audience in a clear and decisive way what is exactly inside a "fake" cigarette.
By splitting the cigarette in half and filling it up with factory floor sweepings from a tobacco factory. This is what actually goes into "fake"cigarettes

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For this photograph, I chose to use a quite long lens - 55mm - which would give me the right perspective that I wanted for the cigarette and its box to make the right kind of composition.

To produce my image I photographed two images and blended them together, making sure that the settings and lighting were exactly the same for each one.
Stage One.
Load two photographs onto the same canvas but using different layers.
Step Two.
Align the photographs perfectly so that they fit exactly but if not use the scale tool to increase the scale and dimensions.
Step Three.
Remove one side of the photograph, e.g. the cigarette box directly in the middle.
Stage Four.
Use the eraser tool but lower the opacity and remove the edge so that the tobacco and the paper blend together.

A test shot of a scanned in tobacco pack
Here are some of my test props which were my inspiration

Here is some research and the facts I discovered about Black Market cigarettes to get an accurate record of the story Fake cigarettes 'more hazardous'

Can you be sure you know what you're smoking? The growing number of fake cigarettes coming into the UK contain high levels of hazardous substances, the government has warned in a new campaign. The fakes are not only illegal but pose an extra health hazard to smokers buying them, warn ministers. Criminal gangs have the cigarettes made mainly in Eastern Europe and China to look like well-known brands. More than a million fakes - containing high levels of substances like lead and arsenic - are seized daily in the UK. Boycott call The illegal tobacco market grew rapidly during the 1990s, when cigarettes were exported from the UK to avoid tax and then smuggled back in and sold on the black market. A government campaign managed to stem the supply, but the criminal gangs involved have now switched tactics and started manufacturing fake cigarettes, often sold in pubs, on streets or in markets. Smuggled goods now make up 15% of the UK cigarette market. Customs will continue to crack down on this illicit market and the organised criminals who run it Customs minister John Healey The campaign launched on Wednesday is encouraging smokers to boycott the fake goods. Customs minister John Healey said new research showed buying cigarettes from smuggled sources could be "downright dangerous". He told BBC News: "Smoking's bad enough but the risk to people's health from these fake cigarettes is even greater. "These have hugely higher levels of tar, nicotine and some of the cancer-causing chemicals lead and arsenic." He said 85% of cheap cigarettes sold illegally in London, and more than half of all smuggled cigarettes seized nationally, were counterfeit. Fake cigarettes used to be easier to spot as the packets sometimes had foreign writing, did not display health warnings, or spelt a brand name incorrectly, a Customs and Excise officer explained. But now the counterfeits, which replicate many popular brands, have become much more sophisticated. Kidney disease In three London hotspots - Holloway Road, Dalston and Whitechapel - officials found all cigarettes tested were counterfeit. Mr Healey appealed for help from the public in the form of information about where gangs were operating. Independent research carried out at St Andrews University showed fake cigarettes being sold in the UK contained five times as much cadmium as genuine cigarettes. Cadmium can severely damage the lungs and is linked with kidney disease. Fakes also carry nearly six times as much lead, which damages the organs and nervous system, especially in children. High levels of arsenic, which increases the risks of lung, liver and other cancers, were also found, said Customs. Further research by an independent laboratory showed counterfeit cigarettes seized by Customs also contained 160% more tar, 80% more nicotine and 133% more carbon monoxide than genuine cigarettes. The government says any brand can be faked, and many smokers are unaware of the fact cheap cigarettes may not be genuine, nor of the added health risk they contain. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4096911.stm Fake fags For the Midlands' smokers the lure of cheap cigarettes may be tempting. But Inside Out can reveal that many are actually fake and contain far higher levels of chemicals than legitimate ones. HM Revenue and Customs seize millions of cigarettes and tonnes of rolling tobacco in the Midlands every year. It's estimated half is actually fake. Staff at parcel centres scan packages that are sent to the UK. Some fakes are smuggled inside toys but imports are scanned and inspected. A high percentage of parcels from China have been found to contain counterfeit cigarettes. Around 14 million a month are seized overall. Fake or real - spot the real thing. However many do go undetected and still make it on to the streets. Often the packs aren't cheap because they're smuggled or duty free, but because they're made of other ingredients - including rat droppings or sawdust. A recent raid in Coventry discovered a haul of 14 million fake cigarettes, and those that go untraced are typically sold on the street or at car boot sales. An estimated 3% of cigarettes smoked in the UK every year are believed to be fake. While some are packaged like the main brands, many originate in the sweatshops of China or Eastern Europe, made for as little as six pence a packet and containing floor sweepings. In Inside Out's report an undercover reporter goes onto the street to see how easy it is to pick up cheap fags. The cigarettes we bought at the car boot sale were real but out of date so still illegal. Those bought on the street were analysed and found to contain three times the level of arsenic than normal cigarettes - so would cause three times the damage. Fakes also contain higher levels of nicotine and cadmium. Can you help? If you have any information about counterfeit cigarettes, you can call Customs Confidential Helpline on 0800 595000. Testing for fake cigarettes. Fact file: counterfeit cigarettes * The Tobacco Manufacturer's Association (TMA) estimate that around £2 billion counterfeit cigarettes were successfully smuggled into the UK in 2006. * In 2006 cigarette consumption was estimated to be 67.5 billion – around 3% of the total was estimated to be counterfeit (source: TMA). * Counterfeit cigarettes come from a variety of illegal factories in countries such as China, the Far East, Russia and Eastern Europe. * All cigarette packs manufactured by the Tobacco Manufacturing Association’s member companies will carry a covert security feature from 1st October 2007. This will allow HM Revenue & Customs to authenticate the cigarette packets on retailers’ shelves. * The security measures are designed to act as a deterrent to any retailer tempted to deal in counterfeit tobacco products * The scheme has been funded by the tobacco industry. * The security feature will also be extended to include pouches of handrolled tobacco from 1st October 2008. * Counterfeit cigarettes are sold through informal networks including street sellers, markets and car boot sales. Genuine cigarette packets. * Counterfeit tobacco products vary in quality and taste. They are unlikely to stick to the standards set down by the UK Government for levels of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide. * HM Revenue & Customs estimate that around £29 billion in revenue has been lost since 2000/1 as a result of smuggling and crossborder shopping. * Counterfeit cigarettes are illegal. * Counterfeit cigarette trading is a highly profitable activity for criminals. Customs estimate that about £2.00 profit is made per pack by smugglers involved in their distribution. * Potential dangers for smokers include higher levels of carcinogens and potentially harmful extra tar. "The UK is being targeted with counterfeit cigarettes. Not to be confused with genuine cigarettes, these fake cigarettes are manufactured illicitly, contain higher levels of toxins than their legal counterparts, and are smuggled into the country by criminal gangs to be sold cheaply nationwide." HM Treasury, 2004. http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/content/articles/2007/11/07/westmidlands_fake_fags_s12_w9_feature.shtml

http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17554359&method=full&siteid=93463&headline=warning-fake-fags-will-kill-you-with-arsenic--cadmium---lead--name_page.html

Fast Food Post Production Image

Here is another artist who uses food photography to construct a miniature world made up of food but in a way that the eye does not recognize straight away
In this photograph Gayle Chong Kwan has created a world totally made out of food.
This architecture of food is reminiscent of the Colisseum in Rome. The fact that the structure is made out of pasta is indicative of the Italian connotations


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I was looking into the way in which other food photographers have represented the food they photographed - especially those photographs concerning meat products.
I looked at Chris Turner's work in "Critical Review Magazine" - the annual edition for 2007.
This photograph shown above is entitled "Split Skin"
The food is here represented in a way that is by no means flattering and the photograph has deep profound meaning. It is possibly posing the question of ethics as to whether or not it is right to eat meat products at all.
This is the style in which I shall photograph

For one of my final images I intend to demonstrate exactly what a poor quality hot dog sausage is made from. I will photograph it in exactly the same way in which a photographed the milk bottle,
Photographing the sausage and replacing the middle section with artificially constructed texture of rotting meat and gristle cleverly placed using opacity and feathering
Clearly demonstrating my point in a very simple and decisive way
Here you can see a rough version of the final texture which is comprized of three images which I hsave selected to use for different key area - for example the bone. Created by using the clone tool at lower opacities to merge the three different textures into one.
For this photograph I used wireless flash to bring out the highlights and shadows to create a very disgusting vew of the carcass. I highlighted the gristle and showed it falling into darkness.

Here are the three images that I am using for the texture of the meat product
I have done some post production on these photographs to bring out the right colour tones to represent them in a way that should be very repulsive to the audience.