Ben Heine Responses

For Ben Heines' response I decided to pick a main theme to go along with and build on it using his technique. So firstly I found old photographs of what Nottingham looked like in the past and decided to compare it to how it looks today using Heines' technique. This first one I did shows an old bus in market square. I then took the next step and estimated where this was taken due to the angle and composition of the photograph and took a photograph of my own trying to get as close as I could to the original composition. After I experimented, I chose an appropriate photograph out of the collection I produced and then proceeded to draw the illustration using pencil first and then outlining it in black fine liner, and then used black pencil crayon to do the shading. I wanted the illustration to remain in black and white to reflect the old photograph that I was basing this on. I took a Photograph using the studio of the illustration and the last step was to use Photoshop to edit both the photographs that I took and then merged the two together. I made the Photographs grainy to make it more like the old photograph, however I had to play around with the brightness and contrast a little so that the two images merged together well and it didn't look odd. The image below was the final outcome of this response. 

Next I found an image of the Theatre Royal from a front perspective. I found the angle of this a little more difficult to complete because the setting has obviously changed from what it used to be like, however I still tried to get the main element of the old photograph onto the new one, so I chose to illustrate the wording on the building as that seems to have the most dramatic change between the two photographs. I used the same method as the previous image by choosing the old photograph, then going to photograph my own version, illustrate, photograph the illustration, and lastly using Photoshop to merge the two together. The final outcome of this image is different to the first response as I used different brightness and contrast settings and altered the grain quality differently as the old photograph seems to be more darker in tone and I wanted to experiment with the different effects it can have on the Photograph. It is quite difficult to make them blend together well but I feel that I did well in completing this considering it was my first try at using this type of technique. Below is the final response to this image.

 This last response to Heine was a side profile of the Theatre Royal. I liked this angle better, and felt it was much easier to complete this one than the one above. I also felt there was more detail in this illustration which I feel is more interesting to the eye and gives the overall image a better effect when merged together. This final response is my favourite out of the 3 I have done. I feel that the technique I used for this got easier as I went along and by using Photoshop I believe that I have built on my skills by using Photoshop with this technique. Overall, out of my 3 Photographers, I feel this one is the most effective and creative and can create a really interesting feel to the Photograph. I believe these responses have captured the theme that I chose in the beginning well, and I definitely took the creative aspect of Ben Heines' work and tried to develop that into these responses.