Thursday 1 May 2014

Assignment 4 - Real or Fake?

The brief for this assignment is to create an illustration for a book cover using digital techniques and use this as a means to explore the ethics of image manipulation. Book covers (along with record sleeves and film posters) are something I find of great interest - I love the way a single image can be used to define another art form. Sometimes the approach can explicitly define the contents while at other times the content can be abstract. The well worn cliché 'never judge a book by its cover' can at best be seen as cautionary advice since I doubt such energy would be given to designing book covers if they did not influence sales a great deal; I know I am guilty of buying more than one book because it looks good on the shelf! More importantly for many authors, musicians and film makers however is that the images they choose to represent themselves with can go a long way to define them as artists.


This assignment differs significantly from others because it requires only one image to be produced rather than a set, although this could consist of a composite. My initial research into potential approaches for the assignment led me to a number of interesting articles. In late 2013 the singer Morrissey released his long awaited autobiography after a period of typical controversy when he appeared to have fallen out with publishers Penguin. The exact nature of the dispute was not completely clear but one of the key stumbling points appeared to be Morrissey's insistence that his work be published under the Penguin Classics imprint (Penguin eventually agreed and the book was published.) This stance was ridiculed by many as further proof of Morrissey's tenuous grasp of reality, but others saw this as brave evidence that he was unwilling to accept any compromise on the way his work is presented. Since the early days of The Smiths and continuing through his solo career Morrissey has been obsessive about the way his work is presented. Following the books eventual publication, The Guardian invited readers to produce alternative covers for the book, most of which are humorous and flippant. This led me to my first idea to design an alternative cover in a humorous style.

Another article I came across discussed the effect that the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' trilogy had on publishing. The set of books was a phenomenon that seemed to come from nowhere in 2012. One of the effects of this is that many publishers attempted to cash in on the success by reissuing books with covers that echo the cover of 'Fifty Shades.' Perhaps I could do this too, and maybe create a cover whose style was completely at odds with the content of the book?

Again from The Guardian this article shows a number of real life and extremely ill judged book covers of famous literary works.

I knew from previous experience that the planning and concept stage of assignment preparation can often lead to procrastination and lack of progress. With my course deadline approaching I knew I could not afford any delay, also, the thought of approaching the exercise as if it was a commercial assignment with a definite deadline was one that helped focus my mind. I started to think about books that have had an effect on me and which I already knew a great deal about so would be able to think of an approach quickly.

After scouring my bookshelves I came upon 'Book of Matches' a 1993 poetry collection by Simon Armitage. The book is published by Faber and Faber who unify the style of their poetry collections by using only plain (albeit strongly coloured) covers featuring only the authors name and the title. This seemed like the ideal choice as it is a work I love and also I would be producing the cover without anything to influence me. I knew I wanted to be keeping with the simple style of the existing cover so thought about bold and effective imagery that would complement rather than detract. I decided to try photographing a box of matches as this would provide an interesting counterpoint to the writing and I would also be able to play with literal and metaphorical readings through the image. Looking through my cupboards I found an old matchbox that I thought would fit perfectly because the battered box would echo the themes contained in the book of looking back, the past and nostalgia. I set the matchbox on a plain background and photographed in a number of different ways and angles using a tripod as I wanted to capture as much detail as possible and needed to select a small aperture. At the time of shooting I had a strong preconceived idea of how I wanted the matchbox to look: I would take the shot directly from above to keep the perspective true which would echo the shape of the book. Experience has taught me it is important to keep an open mind and experiment to find the right approach so I shot the box from a number of different angles as well as open and closed so I would have a selection of shots to choose from and could experiment with which one was the most successful. 

I used Photoshop to create the cover, first creating a canvas the exact measurements of the real book. For my first attempt I placed a closed matchbox near the centre of the cover with my intention being that I would put the book title across it and the author name at the top. I quickly aborted this as the approach did not seem right - the final effect was missing the boldness I had preconceived, also, it seemed wrong to have the matchbox shut. I went back and to my shots and chose another image of the matchbox open with the matches showing. I was struck with the idea to make the box the same width as the book cover, this seemed to work well and left me with around half of the cover blank which I decided to could use to place the text in a similar way to the existing cover. Next, I wanted to accentuate the creases and folds of the box along with the texture of the matches so duplicated the image layer and applied hard light blending mode which increased the contrast and saturation of the image. I also needed to remove the background at the top of the box, with hindsight I should have shot the box against a contrasting background as the grey was extremely close to the colour of the box and this would have made it easier to select. In the end I used a layer mask to hide the photographs background so I could go back and edit my selection if necessary once I had added a new background. Next I needed to delete the writing on the box, I did this with the clone stamp tool followed by the healing brush to replace any texture that had been lost. To emphasise the edges of the cardboard a little more I duplicated the layer and changed the blending mode to multiply before adding a layer mask and painting over the edges of the cardboard to emphasise the degraded nature of the card. Lastly I chose the colours, I decided to do this by using the eye dropper tool to sample colours already in the image - for the background I sampled the grey of the open box, the authors name is sampled from a match head and the book title is from a match itself. The effect I wanted from this approach is for the colour choices to subtly unify the image.


Original image


Cover A

I am happy with the end result as I think I have managed to fulfil the brief I set myself for the cover - I wanted a simple, bold image manipulated subtly so it retains the appearance of reality. I was lucky to find a prop in the old matchbox which aided my vision, without this I would have had to use a lot more Photoshop work to produce the aged appearance I was after. The choice not to do this was all about ease of achieving the end result rather than any ethical choice about the pursuit of truth. I am well aware of my limitations in using Photoshop however and doubt I would have been able to create a convincing result myself but I imagine many digital artists would be able to in a way that would leave the viewer with no clue as to the level of manipulation involved. The way the image is presented gives it a more illustrative rather than photographic feel, there is a sense of heightened reality rather than photographic truth.

I made a conscious decision not to produce alternatives for this assignment and I have enjoyed the discipline this has enforced which has made me focus my attention. The motivation for this approach has been one of ensuring I keep to timescales and achieve deadlines, in a commercial situation I would imagine the client would expect to see a number of treatments to be able to reach a decision. Out of interest, I quickly changed the cover to reverse the position of the matchbox and the titles which interestingly feels more like my original idea for having the titles as writing on the matchbox itself.


Cover B

Looking at the work of other students for this assignment it seems many have chosen a much more manipulation heavy approach resulting in much more abstract images. I have interpreted the brief in a quite straightforward way and the results are clearly a photograph. Does this show an inherent conservatism in my work? Believability is something I hold dear and I consciously try not to over egg my images, however, I can appreciate strong manipulation in other images when done well. When I first became interested in digital photography I would use Photoshop extensively but over the last few years I have been concentrating on camera technique and have rarely used Photoshop doing most of my post production in Lightroom. Now I am more confident with the camera perhaps I should learn more about Photoshop and begin using it more extensively in my images - it seems the key difference between then and now is that I am now better at being able to understand the image I would like to create rather than trying to use the software to make something from an image that does not deserve having the time spent on it.