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Final Evaluation

This whole project has been a really good experience. Over the year, in the studio I have learnt new skills, lighting techniques and gained confidence in working collaboratively with models and other photographers to create new ideas, concepts and ways of working. I've learnt how to communicate with my model in order for them to understand what I want to produce. As well as making sure they are comfortable when I am photographing them, techniques such as play some background music, and letting them see the photos I am taking. Photographically I have taken some great photographs and have been able to use the skills in other projects. Things like working with models to create effective and productive photoshoots, but iconically, working with studio lighting and different ways I can use the studio.

The Big Sell

Ebay Imagery

THE GOOD

THE BAD

Competency Test

There is a lot of little things in photography where, if you don't know what the terminology means then you won't be able to some particular photographs. In order to make sure I had the competence to take photographs with simple and basic techniques I took a 'Competency Test'. Below is an image of the test.

I completed each task. It was fairly simple and easy for me because I am confident with my camera skills and knowledge. 

My Photographs

Photograph an object using shallow depth of field:

Photograph the same object using deep depth of field:

An image that freezes motion:

An image that demonstrates camera shake:

An image with a high ISO:

I used ISO 800

Same image with low ISO:

I used ISO 100

3 different photos of the same subject showing different colour temperature (white balance):

Fluorescence

Cloudy

Tungsten

Take a photo using a tripod:

Take a photo using an external flash:

Take the same photo using on-camera flash:

And again using no flash:

Take a photograph using a wide angle lens (around 18-20mm):

Take the same using a telephoto lens (around 200mm):

Take two photos, one with a high vantage point and one with a low vantage point:

Take a high key and low key portrait:

Take a photo that demonstrates the rule of thirds:

The other two tasks that I cant show visually is to safely change a lens and to correctly put a reflector back in it's bag. I did do these correctly and effectively.

John Lewis

In this task the idea was to take the John Lewis Christmas catalog of 2014 and choose 3 photos from inside to 'recreate'. I teamed up with Danny Woodhouse and chose three images. We chose fashion photographs because we thought we could create this the best.

 These are the three images we chose.

There were other images we could have recreated, however these were our favourites, also we chose them because we noticed that we had the correct resources and similar clothing that we could use. These are our own recreations of the John Lewis images.

I feel like they have worked really well and that me and Danny have collaborated effectively and assisted each other in creating what you could call a Fashion shoot. We worked together to try and get the best out of our photographs and make them look as much like the original photos as possible. From the lighting to the framing and the outfits, we thought about how we could recreate these photos from the catalog but also use our own styles.

Light Painting

In this session we used the studio in a different way. We gathered together some fairy lights and torches   to create some light painting. The mini assignment was about using light in other ways. In the studio, you use artificial light such as soft boxes and flash to create well exposed and professional looking images. However there are different lights you can use in more creative ways. Using fairy lights, combined with slow shutter speeds can create some really interesting photos. Equipped with a tripod a camera and some lights we started to shoot our light experimental photos. Here are some of my own.

Not only did we use fairy lights and torches, we also came up with the idea of using flash guns. This technique is called 'Multi-Flash' and consists of holding the flash gun and blasting it multiple times during the long shutter speed. The effect can create some really strange images, but that also look really cool.

I really like all of my photos that I have taken during this assignment. They are all quite different and show good versatility in photographing under different lightings and conditions. For this last photo just above, I used two flash guns and some coloured gels. I placed the gels over the flashes. This created a mutli-coloured colour cast and also created a split lighting effect.

Alamy Session (wk 2)

Studio Shoot

For this session we were able to create further images for our Alamy brief. I chose to use art as an inspiration for this shoot. I thought about paint stained pallets and easels, brushes and pencils in a paint ridden jar. I used the studio lighting as a light source and set up a little scene. 

This is the set-up I created to generate my photos. (the flowers represent the paint jar and pallets)

It worked really well. At first I had my jar quite close to the backdrop, and with an aperture of f.5., this meant that the backdrop was pretty much in focus. I then thought that if I moved the jar forwards, the backdrop would be completely out of focus. This worked because the distance between the subject and background was greater. Here are the images that I took. I have edited them slightly in Lightroom, adding a little contrast and creating a little more saturation to bring out the colours.

They are really strong images with sharp focus. My ideas behind these photographs was the thought of advertising Art. Art companies could use these photographs to advertise what they are about. They could use these photos for things like business cards, websites, etc. I thought about how I could portray art and painting in a very obvious way.