Shoot Eleven - Work Diary

This image is one of the best that I took, I really like the lighting in this image as it makes him look a bit less shadowy. The photograph has quite a dark background but there is a lot of light colour with the white peace sign. This is quite informally framed as you can see the side of the door where the doorbell is. Although I think that this works well for this image.

This is one of the photographs that I would say is one of my best, I really like the background of this image as it contrasts with the clothing he is wearing because he is wearing dark clothing, whilst the background is full of bright primary colours.

This is probably the worst image from the shoot because it is slightly out of focus, which is a shame because I really like the composition of the photograph and the location that I took it in. I think that the colourful background contrasts really well with the dark colours that he is wearing so it looks good.

Progression:

If I were to re-do this shoot, I would think more about what locations I was going to use, rather than just wondering around and looking, however I think that this works well regardless as I found some interesting places whilst wondering. 

Shoot Eight - Work Diary

Aperture: 11

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 200

This is probably the best image from my shoot, I really like the lighting for the photograph as there aren't really any shadows on the face, it is mostly just a light photo, whilst still having dimension.

I am doing the same pose as in one of my shoot nine photographs, I wanted to do this so that I could show a direct contrast in presentation and how it can change what you think of somebody, I'm wearing makeup in this image which is in contrast to shoot nine where I'm wearing no makeup

Aperture: 11

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 200

I don't really like this photograph because I'm not focusing on the camera so I'm looking to the side which means you can't see my face straight on, in addition, my hand is in shot, although this doesn't ruin the photo, I don't think it works well here, I would prefer it to be out of shot in this image.

This is the lighting diagram for shoot eight, I used a soft-box on the face, although it was at an angle so there is still some shadows on one side, and to light the back so that it wasn't too shadowy I used a snoot on the light, however I put it up too high which meant that there was still some shadowing at the bottom of the image.

Shoot Nine - Work Diary

For this shoot I did some self portraits, I wanted to do one masculine style shoot and one feminine style shoot to look at gender ambiguity. 

Aperture: 22

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 200

This is my best photograph from the masculine shoot, the lighting in the image is quite harsh and there is a lot of shadows, a lot of the face is hidden due to the light being positioned on only one side, I really like this photograph because of the contrast, there is a lot of light on one side and not on the other, I am looking towards the darker side in this image which also brings negative connotations.

Aperture: 22

Shutter Speed:1/125

ISO: 200

I don't like this photograph and I think it's the worst of this shoot, the shadows on my face make it look misshapen, in addition, my glasses are reflecting a bit which doesn't look very good. I also think that the light was a bit too bright in this photograph, my face is very bright compared to the darkness of the photo and I think that it would look better if it was a bit darker like the photo above. To fix this I just had to make the light that I used a bit darker, although I could've also changed the camera settings as well.

This is the lighting diagram for my shoot, I decided to only use one light because I think that it creates a much more shadowy effect on the photograph. I also didn't want the background lit up so that the photograph stayed quite dark.

Shoot Two - Work Diary

Aperture: 5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/3200

ISO: 400

This image is probably my favourite from the shoot, I think that it is good because of the composition of the image, the subject is at the left side of the photograph rather than in the centre, this looks good because she is looking over to the side, if she was looking to the other side I think that this photograph would look quite weird. I love how the weather was in this photograph as the whole image is very bright, the lighting makes the subjects face entirely visible, rather than a large shadow being on the face.

Aperture: 4.5

Shutter Speed: 1/3200

ISO: 400

This is the worst photograph from the shoot, there is too much going on in the image, furthermore the subject isn't even facing the camera. There is also another person in the side of the image which doesn't look good, the image just looks cluttered, in addition, there is a shadow on the subject which doesn't look very good, I think that it makes the photograph look badly composed.

Progression:

Next time I would like to think about the composition of my images more, instead of taking photographs of people without preparing for it first, I should've asked people to pose as well as taking candid photographs as these are less dependable, it is less likely to go well if it is a candid photograph.

Shoot Six - Work Diary

Aperture: 20

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 200

This image is probably my favourite from this shoot, the lighting worked really well because the background is dark as well as the clothing so we don't see a sharp difference between the two. I also edited this image because I wanted to show it with a higher contrast like Chuck Close's images. The subjects hair has a bit of light reflecting off of it which I like because it adds an extra bit of texture to the photograph.

Aperture: 20

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 200

I also like this photograph, however the clothing is less inconspicuous due to the the fact that some of it is a lot lighter than the rest, the shoulder area is black, but the front is very light so it draws attention to it. I think this photograph would work better if he was wearing a plain black top as it would bring all the attention back to his face. There is quite a lot of shadowing on his face because  

Aperture: 20
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
This photograph is incredibly overexposed, which is why I didn't use it, firstly, the background is too light and you can see a shadow on the background, in addition, the clothing is a lot brighter than I wanted and the facial features are very washed out, I wanted to do the shoot similar to Chuck Close's daguerreotypes, they are very dark and the clothing isn't in focus as much as the rest of the face as he uses a very small depth of field; as you can see in the photograph above.

If I was to re-do this shoot, I think that I would use more subjects, however this took quite a long time to set up which made it difficult as once I had set everything up, I didn't have time to do that many photographs, however, overall, I think I am happy with the photographs that I did do. The technique worked really well and although it isn't exactly the same as Chuck Close's, I think it worked well.

Lighting diagram:

This lighting diagram shows the position of my models, I used a snoot on the light and directed it at the models face on the right side of the face, this meant that the light didn't hit the other side of the face as much, causing shadowing on that side. 

Shoot Ten - Work Dairy

Aperture: 5.6

Shutter Speed: 2 seconds

ISO: 400

I really like this image because the colour is so cold and it makes the subject look quite distant, the connotation of this photograph is that the subject is upset or annoyed, I think that it looks this way because of the colour used, it is a very cold blue as it is so light. I am very happy with this image because of this and because the framing is so well done, I wanted the subject to be in the centre of the photo, however I didn't want it to be too zoomed into her face as I liked the composition like this, it shows a lot of the background as well as the subject and it also isn't too close to the subject.

Aperture: 5.6

Shutter Speed: 2 seconds

ISO: 400

This is another example that I liked, although some of the colours seem to have worked differently than others. The warmer colours like red and purple were difficult to focus on, and although I took them one after the other with no change, it is less focused on the subject in the warmer images, I don't know if I did something wrong with the camera settings. But overall, I think that this image is good because it shows a completely different connotation to the blue tone one, it looks a lot warmer, although still not happy, this is because the red is so intense that it looks quite angry.

Aperture: 5.6

Shutter Speed: 2.5 seconds

ISO: 400

This is a bad photograph from this shoot, the subject isn't in deadpan which is what I wanted for every image so that they worked together, I wanted the colour to give connotation to how the subject felt, not actual facial expression. Furthermore, the image isn't framed like the others, it is a lot more zoomed in, and although I don't dislike it, I don't think that it works with the rest of the photographs. 

If I were to re-do this shoot, I would probably explore different subjects of different ages, because although I wanted to focus on youth, I can still look at other ages alongside and I think that this could work well with other ages.

Macro - Work Diary

This is my best photograph of the macro shoot, I really like how the eye is in focus when the rest of the photograph isn't. This brings attention to the eye rather than the rest of the face.  The glasses frame the eye especially and draw all of the attention to that part of the face.

This is my worst photograph from the macro shoot. I think that the lighting isn't very good as it darkens one side a lot, whereas the other photographs only have this a little bit.

Progression:

If I was to redo this shoot I would probably take photographs of something different, not people, as although it worked, I don't think that it looked that good. In addition, I think that if I was to do this again I would set the lighting up better as it was quite dark and I don't think that this looks good.

Shoot Five - Work Diary

This shoot stretched over two different days, firstly, I went to a nearby park and took photographs of my mum's friends children, this turned out quite well and I got some good photographs, however I didn't think it was enough photos to make a complete shoot, so when I went to my grandmothers house, I took photographs of my cousins as well.

Aperture: 5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/250

ISO: 100

This is my best photograph from the shoot because it shows childlike fun, it was a very cold day but they didn't really care and grabbed the metal bar anyway, whereas if it was me at my age, I wouldn't have done that, I want to stay warm. The contrast between children and adults is quite large, children are quite carefree whereas I always think about what I'm doing first. 

Aperture: 13

Shutter Speed: 1/8

ISO: 100

This photograph is probably my worst because it is so overexposed, it is way too bright because I tried to use a longer shutter speed and I didn't make the aperture smaller so too much light was let into the camera. Furthermore, the camera also seems to be slightly wonky which ruins the composition of the image

Progression:

If I was to reshoot this, I would like to use more subjects, I would also like to go to more locations as I think that it would be nice to get some more variety. 

Overall, I don't think that this shoot worked very well, I probably won't re-do it as I want to focus on teenagers and young adults more then children.

Shoot Seven - work diary

For this shoot, I went to London with a friend to take photographs in Brick Lane, I wanted to do this because I know that Brick Lane has a lot of locations with graffiti on the walls, I thought that this would look good as the background for my photographs because it is more interesting than just a plain wall. I took photographs like this in my hometown the day before, however I struggled to find places that were interesting that I could take a photograph with.

Aperture: 11

Shutter Speed: 1/40

ISO: 400

I really like this photograph because it has a really good focus, for this photograph I used f11 so that I could keep everything in focus, however because I used manual focus, I found it difficult to know if the focus was perfect so sometimes the background was slightly more in focus than the subject. Although in this photograph, this didn't happen. I also like the lighting in this photograph, in some of my other photographs from this shoot, the lighting doesn't look that good and there are large shadows on the models face, however this photograph has quite light shadows and I personally think that they look good.

Aperture: 11
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 400
I dislike this photograph because it has incorrect lighting, although I had no control over how bright it was, I made the model stand in a location that wasn't very bright, this created this effect where the model has excessive shadows on her face. Furthermore, it is also framed slightly different. The model is closer to the camera so it doesn't really fit in with my other images on this shoot.

Overall, I really enjoyed this shoot, however if I was to re-do it, I would definitely spend longer looking at different locations to take photographs in. A lot of this was on a whim because I don't know the area that well and was exploring as I was taking photographs.
I used natural light for this shoot and although this worked, it made it difficult for all of the images to look similar as they might have had buildings blocking out some of the light etc.

Shoot Four - Work Diary

In this shoot I went to Norwich to visit my grandparents, I took photographs out in Norwich near a church and in a garden

Aperture: 5.6

Shutter Speed: 1/125

ISO: 100

This is my best photograph, I think that it is framed really well, as it shows the head and shoulders of the subject, without cutting out too much. I also really like the location of the photograph as it looks very pretty and different from a lot of the photographs I already have. A majority of my photographs have a plainer background like just the sky. This is different because it has other people in it as well.

Aperture: 4.5

Shutter Speed: 1/80

ISO: 400

This is my worst photograph because of the lighting, the photograph is very dark and it means the subject looks quite hidden, in addition to this, the photograph isn't framed very well, it has a chair in the corner which just clutters the photograph in my opinion. I am not pleased with this photograph which is why I decided not to use it in my straight images.

Progression:

Overall, I think this shoot worked quite well, I was able to get some well shot photographs, however I don't think it worked as well as some of my other shoots so I may reshoot or try a different shoot. I think in future shoots I will probably focus on youth more than elderly people because I can experiment with more techniques in my future shoots.

Shoot Three - Work Diary

This shoot consists of 2 photographs of three boys and three girls, I wanted one of everyone deadpan, and one of everybody smiling. 

I was inspired by Thomas Ruff for this shoot, he does a deadpan style for all of his portraits, and although I like this style, I wanted to see the contrast between both deadpan and smiling for my shoot.

Exposure: 1/125 seconds, F stop: f/8, ISO: 200

This is the worst photograph I took during the shoot, the camera settings weren't right due to me not using the light meter straight away, the vignette effect isn't very subtle which ruins the effect of the photograph. Furthermore, the light was hitting the side of the subjects face caused a lot of shadows to show up on the models face and shirt. Overall, I am not very happy with this photograph and I will probably recreate this shoot at a later date.

Exposure: 1/125 seconds, F stop: f/13, ISO: 200

This is the best photograph I took during the shoot, I had used the light meter which told me what to put the camera settings as. In addition, I had moved the model position forwards so that the light wasn't hitting the models face. This improved the photographs immensely. I was very happy with how this turned out as I had to do minimal editing on it to be completely happy, all I did was change the colour balance on the photographs so that there was less redness.

Progression:

During the shoot I didn't place the lights in the right position, this meant that the light was slightly hitting the subjects face, this caused a vignette, I think that this looked quite good at first, however on the third model, I realised that it wasn't coming out as well as I had hoped. I decided to move the seat forwards, this got rid of the vignette effect as well as the lighting on the models faces. Although I liked this shoot, I would like to redo it, checking that the lighting is perfect before I start. In my next shoot I will compare my lighting to a previous high key lighting shoot, this way I will know if anything is wrong before I properly start the shoot. The last three photographs were quite good and you don't see the light shining on the models face like you could in the first three. 

Overall, I think the shoot was a good learning experience, however it didn't come out as planned, so I would like to do this again.

Multiple Flash - Work Diary

For this technique we used a tripod, a snoot (which focuses the light straight onto the subject), we also used a light meter (this was used to tell us what to put our camera settings to). My group experimented with different poses, including just moving around freely and also staying in one position to create an image similar to the one below.

I think this is my best photograph from the shoot. Originally I wanted the subject to move about more however staying still for some of the image ended up looking really good, this photograph actually really reminded me of a photograph of the beatles that I have seen. However I do think that the image is over exposed in places. We used a light meter to make sure we were using the right camera settings, but there was some natural light that got in after that must've affected the final images. 

This photograph is my worst from the shoot because the subject didn't move around the studio space enough and the layers ended up getting really bright. It seemed like a really good idea but when we actually did it, it didn't work well. We did quite a bit of experimenting in this shoot as we didn't know what would work well, this happened not to. However I really enjoyed this technique.

Progression:

Although I really like this technique, I don't think I will be using it for my project because it doesn't work well for what I'm doing. However I do like how candid the subjects look in these photographs. In addition, the equipment to take photographs like this outside of the studio is quite expensive and I don't think I would use it much.

Blur - Work Diary

This is my best photograph from the blur shoot, I really like how this turned out because one of the subjects is in focus whilst the other is very blurred, I like this because it has such a contrast, it shows how some people are in such a rush while others are content and don't have to do things as quickly, however this is showing the opposite to what people would usually think, the woman that is blurred is actually an old person, when usually it is the younger people that are in a rush.

This is my worst photograph from the shoot, because the subject had moved out of frame, although there are people in the background of the photograph, it is mostly a very plain photograph, it doesn't catch your eye as much as the other photographs that I used. In addition, this photograph looks like it was slightly slanted, I used a tripod as this type of image needs a tripod for it to be good.

Progression:

I really like this kind of photography, I like the idea of going to London and having the background full of people walking in a rush, whilst the camera is focused on the subject who is completely still. I think this would create a very good and possibly symbolic effect. Showing how life can rush past you if you aren't careful.

Slow Sync - Work Diary

ISO - 200

F stop - 5.6

Shutter Speed - 1.6 seconds

This photo is my best from the shoot, it really shows slow sync very well, we can see where she has moved but we can also see her in very sharp quality. I really like this effect because it could be used very symbolically, it looks like the soul is leaving the body, especially in this photograph where it is still connected. I think I would like to try this effect in one of my shoots to explore the effect a bit more, although I will do it out of the studio at night. I would like to see how it will work out of the studio because it is quite plain in the studio. To make sure we used the right F stop and ISO we used a light meter, this accurately shows us what the camera settings should be.

ISO - 200

F stop - 5.6

Shutter Speed - 1.6 seconds

This is my worst photograph from the shoot, although it does show slow sync, it doesn't show it very well, in addition the subject isn't in very sharp quality like most of the others that I did. Also the subject isn't filling enough of the frame, one side of it is completely black and very boring to look at, whereas my best photograph there is the slow sync effect on both sides which makes the photograph much more appealing to look at.

Progression:

Next time I will spend longer taking these photographs as I didn't get as many as I hoped I would. Furthermore I think it would look better with a nicer background, these don't have a very good contrast as the background looks grey. I would prefer it to be a much darker black, although this is fixable through editing I don't want to change it too much because the subject is wearing black and this mightn't look very good.

This is the example of slow sync photography that we were shown in class, I really like this because even in the slow sync you can still see the facial features of the subject. I think the photographer probably used a faster shutter speed than me to get this effect. 

Shoot One - Work Diary

For this shoot, me and my friends went to London to go to the Great British Summer Time festival, I thought that this would be a great opportunity to take photographs of my friends.

Aperture: 5

Shutter Speed: 1/1000

ISO: 200

This is my best photograph from the shoot, I think I framed it really well and the background is quite interesting, I am glad I decided not to use a smaller depth of field because I really think that the background adds to the photo. The subject of this photograph is laughing and I am very happy that I caught this because it makes the photograph a lot more interesting than if the subject was deadpan.

Aperture: 5

Shutter Speed: 1/500

ISO: 200

This is the worst photo that I took whilst out. I don't like the background of the photograph because it is just a fence, I think it is incredibly boring, I also don't like the cloudy sky because the other photographs have a much clearer sky. 

Progression:

I am really happy with this shoot, but next time I would like to take photographs of more people, I only really got photographs of two people, so next time I want some more variety. Also I would like to look at taking photographs in pretty locations like this.

Location Portraiture - Work Diary

This is my best photograph, I really like the candid moment that I caught in this image, even though it isn't very flattering to the subject of the photo. I think that it is very well lit unlike some of my other images, I would definitely like to re-do this shoot because I didn't get to go to different places like I wanted due to time constraints. Next time I will go to both urban and rural places to get a larger variety of photos.

This is my worst photograph from the shoot, it is way to overexposed and the subject: George, is mid movement so it doesn't look good at all, I did notice that it was overexposed so I did get quite a few good images from this shoot, however I would like to go out and do this shoot again because I don't feel like I got enough time, I didn't do many photos in different places. 

Progression:

Next time I will go out with a few friends around my hometown as there is a much larger contrast between urban and rural areas.

I didn't use the tripod for every single photograph which may have affected the final images as it meant they weren't straight. I want to go to at least 5 different places for my shoot as I believe that these images are all too similar. They were taken around the same area and I don't think you can tell that they are different really. 

Wide Angle and Close Up - Technique & Work Diary

Wide Angle and Close Up:

Wide angle: A wide angle lens is a lens which has a small focal-length compared to the focal length of a normal lens.Close up: A photograph taken at close range or with a long focal-length lens. Usually close up photographs only focus on one thing.

This is an example of the technique, you can do it on anything, people, animals, or plants and objects, though personally I think it works best on people because you can see much better how it has distorted it.14mm, 20mm 24mm, 28mm, and 35mm are good lengths for wide angle close up photography

When I took photographs using wide angle, we used our normal cameras and just experimented using the camera settings on the smallest focal length, this didn't work very well but the photograph I took of Ellie is quite good and I'd like to experiment with this technique again as it was quite interesting, I would like to use an actual wide angle lens and take photographs of people to see how much it distorts them.

This is the best photograph from the wide angle shoot, I think that it definitely shows wide angle, the subjects face is slightly distorted but not as much as the example photograph at the top of this post.

This is my worst photo from this shoot, it doesn't show any distortion and it just looks like I was practising depth of field, I think that this is a very boring photo and it probably doesn't help that the object I took the photo of is see through.

If I was to do this again I would use an actual wide angle lens because I don't think that this lens worked very well, although I did the best I could with what I had in the lesson.

Animated Gif - Work Diary

How to make a GIF:

• Upload all images to photoshop
• Put all of the photographs I wanted to use to make the gif into one file
• Click the window tab at the top of the screen
• Choose timeline
• Click create video timeline
• Change the time to 5fps (or however long you want)

Camera settings:

1/290 seconds

f/2.8

ISO: 100

We went to Harlow Park to take photographs for our sequencing shoot, we had to use the photographs to create both a sequencing photograph and a gif, I really enjoyed this because I hadn't learnt these skills on photoshop before. I did use a tripod for this task although I didn't keep it steady so the photographs aren't in the same place, although this can create a nice effect for gifs, I would like to re-do this with a steady camera because I think it would look better, in addition there is a blur on the top of the screen, I obviously didn't check the camera lens before I started taking photographs, this looks quite bad and draws your eye towards it which is a shame because I think the gif is quite good. 

Progression:
Next time I will take longer making sure my camera is set up well and that the tripod is working and is steady.