Lucy Burden took photos of random objects like a teddy bear and orange juice to practice photo editing techniques inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's style. She edited two images using an online tool, applying effects like focal softening, duotone, and film grain. For one image of water in a sink, she used red and black tones to give an eerie feeling and focused on the water. For a photo of lipstick, she kept the lipstick red against a black and white backdrop and added matte, boost, and cross-process effects to mimic aged film and highlight the red color.

1. My Photo Editing
By Lucy Burden

2. In order to practice photo editing and gain
an understanding of what kind of message
I wish to portray through the advertising of
a horror film, I decided to take a few of my
own pictures and manipulate them to look
similar to Hitchcock's style of work.
I took a variety of pictures of random
objects including a teddy bear, a sink, a
lipstick, trainers, a flower and a glass of
orange juice. I chose two of these images
to edit and in these slides each stage of
this edit is listed. I used an online website
called Piknik to edit my images.

3. Original image

4. 'focal soften' - selecting the area I wanted
to be most clear and prominent (the water
and plug), blurring the area around it

5. 'holga-ish' - named after the Holga camera,
a combination of black and white film with
a red filter, giving it a darker feel – perfect
for my chosen genre

6. 'duo-tone' - selecting two colours to be
applied to the image I chose black and red
as this is the same colour scheme that
Hitchcock uses so frequently in his posters.

7. 'vignette' - darkens the edges of
the photo adding an even darker
and mysterious feel.

8. 'film grain' - ages the photo slightly and
makes it darker

9. 'focal-soften' - repeating this to make the
water sharper as a focal point for the
image

10. 'cinema-scope' - adds a slight grain
and the visual letterbox border of
a classic movie

11. 'texture' - a faint image of writing
adding a darkened mood and
secrecy
FINAL IMAGE

12. For this image I used the
influence of red and black
which Hitchcock uses
frequently within his work to
represent danger or blood. The
black gives it an eerie feeling
and by softening the area
around the water I feel it has a
little more focus instead of
being a simple image of a
flowing tap.

13. original image

14. black and white effect with the exception of
the red lipstick to make it stand out

15. 'matte' - a light glow on the
edge of the photo for eeriness

16. 'boost' - increases the contrast to
bring out the colours more strongly,
again linking the colour scheme of
red and black as Hitchcock did

17. text in a spooky font

18. 'cross-process' - to mimic the intentional
use of incorrect chemicals on film to create
more interesting colours and contrast. This
also creates a more aged look and
provides more focus on the red.

19. texture - a scribble over the top of the
image gives an impression of destruction
FINAL IMAGE

20. Again I used a black and red
theme as Hitchcock frequently
did and found that the wallpaper
blended very well for my final
image so I decided to have an
overall lighter image than the
first as this made the red stand
out equally as well. The texture
of a scribble on top of the image
seemed to work well and I still
managed to keep to the same
three colours for continuity and
to avoid giving viewers a
headache!