Part One - Composite Portraiture
Sir Francis Galton
invented composite portraiture also known as composite photographs in the late
1870’s, the process of this was thought to identify different types by
appearances, composite photographs was hoped to aid medical diagnosis and
criminology by identification of typical criminal faces. It concluded that such
types were not attainable after a lot of exhausting experimentation.
Working in the
borderland between art and science extending practise influenced by Galton,
Nancy Burson uses morphology and genetic codes to digitally manipulate portrait
photographs of the human face. This technique was used to update images of
missing children at one point when the FBI enlisted Burson.
For this assignment I
had to create two composite portraits using at least three existing photos to
produce a new face, the portraits will come under the headings of Family,
Fictitious, Killer, Celebrity or Gender.
I started by scanning
in photos of my Grandad on a resolution of 4800 so that when I print the final
image off on A4 the pixels wont look so pixelated.
Once I had the photos
I needed I took them into Photoshop and began layering both photos of my
Grandad on top of each other, it was very important to join up the eyes and
nose so the faces fit together. By turning down the opacity on one of the
images I was able to make good judgement when lining up the photos.
I added a third image,
which was of myself to the layered photos on Photoshop and again played around with
the layers and opacity until I was able to join all of them together. To merge
the images together to make it look as realistic as possibly I played around
with the layer effects such as overlay, hard light and multiply but I found
that soft light worked the best as it gave the best natural looking complexion.
However because I used old and small photographs
they still showed up pixels but this adds to the outcome making it rough and
dated. What is great about this style of portraits are you get a messy boarder
around the image from each photo which adds to the final outcome making it
artistic and graphic.
I am made up with the outcome
of my first composite portrait and would not change anything about it, I have
captured the resemblance between myself and my Grandad threw the photo and love
how alike we are and have the same features I never really noticed this until
after I produced the photo. I would in the future like to have another go at
composite portraits using other members of my family because it’s fun, easy and
a nice way to compare photos from different generations and ages.
My second portrait comes under
the heading celebrity, I chose to firstly match my face up with Stephen
Mulherns, (presenter) as I constantly get told we look alike, again using the
same process as my first portrait I reduced the opacity of the top image so I
was able to match up the faces. Our faces fitted surprisingly perfect together
I just needed to now find a third image that would sit nicely with the others.
After a lot of research and
looking for celebrities that would compliment and add to the portrait I came
across the actor Jim Parsons who is best known for playing the character
Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, I selected an image that had similar characteristics
as the other two this way the final outcome would look realistic.
I placed the image of Jim over
the layers below and matched up his face, I noticed that his head needed to be
flipped horizontally so that the shape fitted correctly, before I did this his
features matched up right but unfortunately his head didn’t compliment the
photo as it looked to messy and not as professional as I wanted.
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