Week Two Tutorial Exercises

Spatial Montage

Jessica Cupitt (7542399)

So the idea was to cut out the buildings from the source pictures (listed at the end of this post) and place them into a desert landscape while trying to emphasise the spatial relationships between the buildings.

This is the result.

First I flipped the images so the light source appeared to be coming from more or less the same direction.

I kept the cityscape intact in two of the images and transformed them until they became a backdrop spanning the width of the desert-scape.

I attempted positioning the two buildings to the front of the cityscape as if they were getting smaller with distance, but I do not think it worked very well.

I had some trouble trying to position the Flatiron building. In the end I placed it behind the cityscape because is very tall and was taken at an angle where the viewer seems to be looking up at it. Also because placing it in the foreground would have blocked the Empire State Building.

Because of the amount of transformations I applied to some of the buildings, I decided to use a filter to sharpen some of the images again. I added some shadows around the foot of two of the buildings and to the side of the yellow building and made an attempt at colour correction, particularly on the Flatiron building which was very red and out of place originally. Several buildings also had their brightness lowered.


I did not like the look of the above image so I decided to turn the whole thing sepia, to see if a uniform colour made a difference. I must say that I prefer this image.

Having one tone also makes it easier to see that the two large buildings in the centre of the background look out of place because they seem to be less affected by the light source.

If I were to alter the final product further, I would lighten some areas on the buildings in the background. I might also rotate the building at the front left clockwise so it appears to be leaning towards the centre of the image. I would keep the image in sepia though.

I did not have time to complete the temporal montage activity in class, I will try to make one and post it at a later date. (Actually, I did not complete this in class either. Somehow the system had blocked me from using Photoshop. But not After Effects. Most unusal.)

Alphabetical Attributions:
andrew mace-:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acmace/4120587279/sizes/o/
Bobcatnorth:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobcatnorth/383409166/sizes/l/
harry_nl:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/harry_nl/4031055107/sizes/o/
RaeA:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raeallen/68856492/sizes/l/
ScubaBear68:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22310955@N02/2551583663/sizes/l/
sparktography:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparktography/91830784/sizes/o/