Textures. In Ellen Lupton's study into Graphic Deisgn: The new Basics she describes texture as the tactile grain of surfaces and substances, helping to understand the nature of certain things, alarming one to whether that thing is dangerous or pleasant. Setting the scene and using instincts to observe and asses the situations present. 

Texture can be employed in a variety of ways, through the material used to print onto images such as paper, cloth, silk or through the image itself portraying texture and adding detail to the image through the use of texture. 

Textures invoke emotion. Smooth textures can bring a sense of calm and flow to an image while a rough hard texture can make an image stark and abrasive. 

During this task I worked to explore two vastly different textures. A naturally made, organic texture versus a chemically produced and unpredictable texture.  These were used because of their juxtaposition and how they could be further manipulated to create interesting, amazing and new shapes, forms and textures. 

Reasoning
One of the most interesting forms of natural texture I find is skin. The natural lumps and bumps caused by age, sun, stress, the temperature, hair. Broken up by the texture developed by the mixture of man made chemicals and water - a bath bomb. I wanted to juxtapose the dark, high contrasted skin images with the bright vibrant swirls of the bath bomb. I photoshopped the skin to increase the textures and to abstract the image, creating a new and manipulated texture. 

Technique 
I used a Canon 600D with a 35mm lens. 

Process

For the bath bomb images I wanted to simply enhance the brightness and saturate the image with colour. I intended to bring out every colour and increase the vibrancy and intensity of the image. For the skin I increased the contrast to highlight the imperfections, lumps and the raw texture of the skin. In the further abstracted images I copied the image and layered it over itself, decreasing the opacity and increasing the contrast and features of the below layer. This then gave the image a hazed and foggy appearance. 

Reflection
In reflection I found that photo manipulation can really accentuate textures that are not visible at first, allowing for amazing, intricate, vibrant and raw textures to be produced. 

The bath bomb was a very unpredictable texture, it was constantly moving, fizzing and throughout all of the water different colours were emerging and swirling. 

The skin was difficult to work with because of its odd nature however it was easy to manipulate the subject and retrieved the images needed. 

References