Live On Location 2

Live On Location Part 2

For my second shoot I am going to Lickey Hills Country Park as I am familiar with this Park and I am aware that the vast majority of it is forest/ wooded area. I'll be doing this shoot on September 24th, where there are highs of 19 degrees. Again I am using the same equipment as I did in my first shoot, and I am also going to be taking an umbrella in case of rain, however this time I do not have someone to assist me and hold the umbrella if it does rain. If it does rain I might be shielded by the trees and may be able to carry on taking photographs, if not I'll put my camera away and wait for the rain to stop, I also do not need permission as it is a public park. I am planning to go in the afternoon because if it is sunny then I'll be able to catch the sun lower down through the trees, as it will be starting to set. Again I will be wearing sensible clothes and shoes, I am also taking a coat with me to this shoot as I am going later in the day and it is getting colder. 

I am more happy with these outcomes than my first shoot. It was again very overcast but this didn't matter as much as this was a more wooded area, however the sun did start to come towards the end of shoot. I managed to get a few photos with the sun shining onto the trees, as you can see in the first photograph. Again I edited the photographs in the same was by changing the levels and curves to add more contrast and upping the vibrance to make the photographs seem warm and bright. 

Live on Location 1

Live On Location Part 1

My plan for the summer project is to take photographs of woodland areas. 

My plan for my first shoot is to go to a local farm, called Wast Hills Farm, where there is a wooded area nearby. I will be doing this shoot on the 31st of August, it is supposed to be highs of 22 degrees. I am going to use my digital camera with my kit lens and my zoom lens. I do not need to ask permission to take my photographs as the area near by is a public footpath. I am also going to take an umbrella with me as it has rained in the past week and I am going with someone who can assist me and hold the umbrella if it does rain. I am going to take my photographs in the morning/midday as the sun will be at it's highest and will shine through the tree tops. I have also planned to wear suitable clothes and shoes as this is a potential health and safety issue. 

The photos I took are not as good as I previously imagined whilst planning. The day I went the sky was extremely overcast and did not change throughout the day, as I waited until the afternoon to take photographs as I thought the weather might be better by then. I had walked there beforehand earlier in the year and thought that the forest and fields were more exciting than they actually were, so when I got back and looked at the photographs I had took I wasn't as pleased with the outcomes as I thought I'd be, maybe if it had been sunny and brighter the photographs would have looked better. When editing my photographs I changed the levels to give more contrast and texture. I also added a bit of clarity and vibrance. 

Fashion on Location

Model On Location 

In this workshop a former student, Talia White, who has gained publicity due to her fashion photography and has had her photographs printed in popular fashion magazines, such as Vogue, came to teach us for this workshop. The workshop was called Fashion on Location, Talia talked to us a bit beforehand about what she does and how she started doing this. Afterwards she took us out in 3 groups of 4-6. The first group photographed the model in a t shirt and flowing skirt in an area where there were flowers. The second group photographed the model in a dress whilst she was sitting on a bench. Finally the third group, which I was in, photographed her in jeans and a leather jacket whilst on stairs and in front of a cracked painted wall. Before this workshop I had thought briefly about a models clothing and scenery and that they should go together, but after this workshop I feel as though I'd feel more confident in the future about matching clothing and locations.

I narrowed down the photographs I took down to these four as I think they work well together as a series, with two being landscape and two being portraiture and each of them being different angles and poses and also for a pair having the same background. They also work because there's a range of full body shots, which shows off the clothing - what the shoot is about, and there's a close up head shot. The weather that day was overcast and not sunny at all, which works in my favour as the clouds act as a diffuser. All we used was one reflector which one person would hold as we were taking photographs. I think I was fairly confident in this workshop as we all talked with Talia and the Model whilst taking the photographs which didn't make the workshop awkward or uncomfortable and which led us to ask the model to do different poses and ask her to sit on the stairs, I am pleased with the photographs that I took. I think when I was taking the photographs I thought about them quite carefully, and took my time to get the composition that I wanted, instead taking loads without thinking about composition. 

I edited the photographs on Photoshop. I added actions when editing these photographs as our tutor was showing us how to edit the photographs in similar ways to make the photographs work as a series, using actions also helps with precision and timing as it is quicker to use actions then go through 5+ different stages on each and every photograph. I used the action Honeysuckle on all of the photographs but adjusted the opacity differently on each of them. I also used skin smoothing to remove any spots and blemishes and on the first photo I used the clone tool on the door in the background to remove a sign that wasn't very appealing. Overall I am happy with how this workshop was put together and went. I am also happy with the outcome of my photographs and think they work well as a series, which is what I was looking for.   

Witley Court and Gardens

Witley Court

In June we were given the task of photographing a stately home in Worcestershire called Witley Court. We were given a brief which stated we had to photograph the house for a client, in this case it was English Heritage. The brief said that the photographs we took needed to appeal to 20-30 year olds. In retrospect I think this was a harder task than it seemed. I thought about taking pictures through my phone but the photos would be really overexposed, so that wouldn't look nice on a website advertising for this house.

In the editing process I upped the vibrance on all of the photographs to appear more vivid and colourful. I thought that I could crop all of the photos into a square shape to seem like they had been posted on Instagram which all 20-30 year olds are familiar with. I realised that some of my chosen finals would not look right cropped into a square format i.e.- the 4th photo down as it is quite close to the building anyway and if cropped it would cut out half of the columns and would not look as satisfying as it does un-cropped.

In the end I framed the photographs into circles as I thought that it would be more appealing than square cropping and they still relate to social media as Instagram has circle profile photos. It also relates to Impossible Polaroid film that has round frames (see link). I think the main buyer/audience for Polaroid/Instax is young adults. I also edited the photographs by downloading Instagram actions for photoshop, I used the action Valencia on all of the photographs so they work collectively. 

https://uk.impossible-project.com/collections/film/products/round-frame-color-film-for-polaroid-600-cameras

Camera-less photography

cameraless photography

In today's session we tried Cyanotypes, Gum Bicromate and Lumen's which are all forms of camera-less photography.  The two above are a Lumen, the left unedited and the right edited. To create this Lumen I collected leaves and flowers that I thought would work well when light shone through them. Next I placed them all on a piece of photographic paper and went and placed them in the sun for 30 minutes and then 10 more minutes as the sun had gone in. After leaving them for this amount of time the leaves and flowers had left their mark on the paper. All that was left to do was to scan the photo in. I think the lumen print worked really well, mainly because I used a variety of different leaves and I like how you can see the different details of each leave imprinted onto the paper.

Cyanotypes are like photograms using the sun as the enlarger and in this case and a digital negative as the print. The Cyanotype is achieved by applying a chemical to paper or in our case a piece of canvas and then putting objects or negatives atop and leaving them to expose in the sunlight. we left the Cyanotypes in direct sunlight for 8 minutes and then took them inside and washed off the access chemicals. I do like the outcome of this Cyanotype but if I was going to this technique again I would use a photograph that is less silhouette like as this photograph is.

Gum Bichromate is a lot like Cyanotypes. You apply a chemical to paper and then leave it to dry for 5 minutes in the dark. After that you take the paper outside and place objects on top of the paper and then leave in the sun for 15 minutes. Again like the cyanotype I used a digital negative to make the print. After the 15 minutes I took the print back inside and washed off the chemicals so the print was more visible. Looking back on this image I think if I had left my print outside for another 10 minutes the image would have been a lot more clearer, although I still believe this is a good first attempt at Gum Bichromate printing.

Pinhole photograhy

Pinhole Photography

In today's workshop we learnt about pinhole photography and camera obscures. We had a range of pinhole cameras we could use; box pinhole, beer cans, baby formula tubs and the Harman Titan camera. I used the baby formula tubs. I had used beer cans before in previous years and liked the fish eye effect to the photographs, so I thought I'd try out the baby formula tubs as it is essentially a larger beer can, so I'm getting a bigger photograph which means better quality and less of a fish eye effect. I also wanted to test the camera as it was going to expose exactly what was in front of me and no fish eye effect.

I was very pleased with the outcomes that I got today by testing out different pinhole cameras. I will in the next few days try out some more pinhole cameras and hopefully make one myself which I would very much like to do. I also feel like I have learnt a lot in this workshop even though I didn't think I would as I've done pinhole photography a couple of times before. I feel like I appreciate and respect pinhole photography more and I hope I'll use it more in the future as I now I know how creative you can be in making a pinhole camera and how successful your photographs can be. I really hope I can do a pinhole for a very long amount of time I.e.- months at a time and it work out successfully.

Seeing In Black and White

In yesterdays session we had a workshop called "Seeing In Black and White" which was about learning to look through our lens in Black and White. I used my Sony A58 with my 18mm-55mm Kit lens, although on my camera I couldn't shoot in monochrome as I was shooting in RAW. Whilst taking the photographs I had to take into account what would be darker tones and lighter tones when editing the photos. I also had to take into account that the photos had to be cropped into a square and that all of the 9 final photographs had to work together as a series. 

After taking the photographs, we opened them in RAW in photoshop and adjusted the contrast and clarity. Still using photoshop we changed our photographs into black and white. We also used a program in photoshop called Silver Effects where we could create a template and add it to all our photographs which is great because then we have all the same tones on each individual photograph.

I also tried to focus on what flowers had better textures as the different textures would look nicer with the tones of the blacks and whites, I think the tulip is the best example of this as the darker markings on the flower really adds to the photo and gives it substance.

If I did this series again I wouldn't use the top right photo or the bottom right as I think the flowers are too light compared to the rest of the flowers in this series. I would also lighten the top left photo as it clashes with the background too much. Other than that I think the photos work well together and I am pleased with the outcome I have achieved. 

Pentax 67

Using a Pentax 67

Today I used a Pentax 6 7 camera, which looks like a regular Pentax 35mm camera, although this camera takes 120 films. The camera was easy to use once I started using it. It was easy to focus, easy to change to aperture and easy to wind onto the next photograph. However it has no built in light meter, so I guessed what my aperture on all the photographs that I took with this camera and it was quite heavy for me to hold with one hand and focus with the other, so I had to balance and hold the camera whilst focusing on what I wanted to take photographs of.  The reason why we were using these cameras was that we had to take photographs that we would be able to get the best prints out of. We could certainly do that with these cameras as they have great tonal range and the photos have a lot of detail in them.  I looked at a photographer called Beth Moon as inspiration for the photographs that I took, as she takes black and white photographs of unusual trees. After looking at this photographer I went and took my own photographs of trees.

www.bethmoon.com/

I had some trouble loading my film onto the spiral, which resulted in my film sticking together, and not being properly developed in areas. Aside from this the photographs came out well, with sharp detail and lots of different tones. I decided to use these as my final photographs. When printing these photographs the detail is sharp and in focus and you can not see where the film has stuck together in most of the photographs which is good. 

Final Studio Photographs

Final Studio Photographs