Mackenzie Reynolds

Mackenzie Reynolds is an artist who was born and raised in Northern New York but now calls the Midwest her home. Her understanding of photography has pushed her to question and investigate the limits of photographic interactions. She is currently investigating the principles of a physical family photo album. Working with found imagery, she studies the cognitive processes that allow us to rebuild memories, giving long-forgotten treasures new life. Mackenzie Reynolds lives in Wisconsin, where she works as a cultural heritage photographer.

For what it's worth, Mackenzie Reynolds

Mackenzie Reynolds' photograph captures an intruiging scene with a vintage aesthetic, having a figure dressed in what appears to be military gear from the past. The photograph's worn look, with its discoloured and black-and-white tones, provides a historical appeal, taking viewers to another time period. The subjects outline shows the individual standing firmly in front of a bell tent, suggesting a sense of adventure and exploration. The blocked view beyond the tent adds to the mystery, allowing the veiwers imagination to roam over the surroundings. Behind the cut-out figure, a piece of writing on paper fills the voided space, its white surface stands out against the photograph's deeper tones. This written piece adds depth to the composition, perhaps hinting at a narrative or providing context to the scene. Additionally, the reflection of the figure cast behind him adds an intriguing feel to the photograph, implying an overlap or relationship between the subject, his environment and the written note. Overall, Reynolds' photograph draws viewers into an imaginative world of history, adventure, and imagination, captivating them with its mysterious beauty.

I hope to encourporate this same sence of imagination and depth into my own responses, incourporating my own old family photos and hand written notes.

My responses

DIGITAL

Digital editing process

Before editing (Raw image)

After editing

Firstly I scanned all my images on a CanonScan Lide 400, this enabled me to be able to see them on my computer and upload them onto my one drive. After doing so I opened up this specific image in camera raw, where I subtly editing the images Exposure (+0.05), Contrast (+3), Highlights (-26), Shadows (-16), Whites (-14) and Blacks (-15). I found that this provided dimension into the image, when increasing the contrasts and decreasing the highlights and shadows, I was able to subtract the white reflection of, of the subjects yet still being able to retain the vintage feel of the photograph. Additionally, I did crop the image, attempting to even out the border that was already there.

Then I moved onto removing one of the subjects from the image creating a voided space for the second image. I did this by opening my, now, camera raw edited image up in photoshop, where I used the object selection tool to designate a rough outline of the individual. Following this I selected and masked the outline, doing this I was able to add and subtract to the selection making it softer and sharper ultimately creating that feeling of the cut out being perceived as actually hand rendered. Finally, when I was happy with the selection I inverted it (Ctrl, Shift, I) and created a layer (Ctrl J).

Additionally, I began to open up many of the written notes, letters and doodles I scanned in at the start of the project, placing them behind the voided space, figuring out witch ones worked, and which ones didn’t. This part was a lot of trail and error, I copied and pasted the image opened and placed it behind my top layer, messing around with the angles and size until it was perfect (CTRL T)

Finally, by double tapping my top layer I was brought to a layer style page, here I was able to select bevel and emboss and drop shadow. I slightly messed around with the opacity, distance, spread and size of the drop shadow enabling me to alter how the cut out subject looks, resulting in the photograph looking as if it is sat on top of the written note.

HAND - RENDERED

Hand-rendered editing process

Before Hand-rendered

Hand-rendered scan in

When finding the images for this artist, I filed through hundreds of albums that were once my grandmas. I loved doing this as I was able to discover so much about past relatives in my family, I found letters cards from the war and even news articles. After I selected the photos I wanted to use, I scanned them in using a Canon ScanLide 400, where I was able to have the images digitally to print them or edit them.

Following this I edited the images on photoshop, so I was able print to scale how big I wanted to the image sitting behind the photograph. After that, I printed both the top image and the image with the writing on it, I used a scalpel to cut the subject out of the photograph, witch was proven to be harder than it looked.

This was the final outcome, which I was very pleased with especially considering it was hand-rendered.

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