My images

For my piece of work, I decided to use light painting to portray the zombies in my photographs. I decided to do this as it is a very different approach taken in comparison with other 'zombie' pictures.

These are my images/ test shots:

Using these images, I photoshopped them together to create a whole new image that gives the impression that they zombies are coming towards you.

This is the image:

To give this image more of a setting, I hand-crafted a moon so that I could photoshop it in later on. This is the moon that I created:

This is the photoshopped and final image:

The purpose of this photograph is to portray the film genre 'horror'. I have focused solely on zombie's and existing 'zombie horror' genre images.

My images are similar to that of my researched images because they follow the theme of zombies. This image is similar to one of my researched images because both use back-lighting to light the characters in the images.

My image also uses the use of dark (black) colours with hints of bright colours as does the researched images.

We really get a feel for zombie's from my image.

To further develop my final image, I decided to experiment using different techniques in order to understand how I can alter the image slightly to give a different effect.

These are the images I developed:

For this image, I decided to alter two things to give my image a different feel. I altered the moon to make it a lot more circular and more realistic. I also edited out most of the back-lighting behind the zombies in order to give more of an eerie feel. This effect makes it look like the moon is back-lighting the zombies.

This image is exactly the same image as shown above BUT it's been edited black and white. I decided to do this because it give the image more of a 'zombie feel' and gives the impression that it's totally dark and the moon is the only thing that is lighting things up.

I think that the moon is the main focus in this image as it is a lot brighter and it stands out a lot more. This helps to enhance the image because we often link a full moon with werewolves, vampires and zombies.

Horror image inspiration

Film genre Horror

Film Noir Research

The term film noir describes a type of film that is very dark in its outlook. The word noir is French for 'black', and it was during the 1940s that film noir came into its own. The term was coined by film critics just after World War II. Film noir was the flip side of life. Doomed heroes, manipulative people and hidden personal and political agendas were around every corner. The lighting used in film noir was very dark, creating long shadows and claustrophobic atmospheres that pervade the films. The characters in film noir of the 1940s always seemed to be set in dark, smoke filled rooms, like flies trapped in spider webs.

FILM NOIR PHOTOGRAPHY 

The woman in this image is most commonly known (in film noir) as the femme fatale. The femme fatale was a portrayal of women as they had been seen before. She was the exciting, illicit desire of the male protagonist. She could lure a man to commit murder for her own purposes; the murder would usually be that of the man's wife. In film noir, the gender roles had changed; the woman was usually the stronger character and sometimes the villain. I think that this image portrays the femme fatale very well. Although the lady looks rather elegant and lady-like, the gun gives her a bit of an edge - something to be wary about.

To create the background of this image, shadowing has been used. A plant of some sort has been placed in front of the side lighting (on the right) to give the 'leafy' effect on the back wall. This technique gives the image a bit more depth; instead of there being a plain white wall behind the model there is a more interesting pattern which gives the eyes something extra and more interesting to look at.

http://www.lafterhall.com/filmnoir.html