Week 6 - Mess about/experimenting

The first thing this week that I was experimenting with was HDR. I took 3 pictures of McDonalds using a Canon 400d and a tripod and then I merged them together in photoshop.

I am fairly happy with the result however I think it could have been better.

This photograph is for the theme of "colour" and "land."

The second thing that I experimented with was joiners. Again, with this image I used a Canon 400D.

I took lots of different photographs and then put them all together. This picture is for the theme of "colour."

 

This next image is a photo that I took in the studio. This wasn't based around anything in particular as we were just messing around. However I think that it is just a fun picture.

This picture was based around the themes of "studio" and "people."#

This image was taken for the same reason as the previous image and was also based around the themes of "people" and "studio" and also "black and white".

Week 5 - Sweet tooth

For this weeks images I wanted to go with the theme of Colour. I decided to try and do macro again this week and carry on with the "romantic" kind of theme.

I chose to use love heart sweets as I love the little messages on them.

This is my favourite image out of the shoot as I am really pleased with the depth of field. I like how "for" is out of focus and "ever" is in focus as I think that this makes the image interesting.

I played about with this one a lot more and thought that I would make the image a lot more blue. I think that this worked well for this image in particular because athough it is still a "romantic" image, the blue colour suggests loneliness and calmness.

I think that this image is ok, however it is not my favourite out of the shoot.

I prefer the closer up images but I am still pleased with it.

I thought that I would try and make my next two pictures multiple objects rather than single objects. I hope to keep the shallow depth of field.

I would say that I prefer the pictures of the single love hearts, however I do like the depth of field on this one.

This is probably my least favourite out of the five, and I think that I would prefer it if it was maybe a bit more colourful.

Week 4 - All the pretty things

This week was based around "colour".

For this week I didn't really have a plan of what to take photo's of. I took some macro pictures in lecture of my necklace (the first 3 images below), then I thought about extending my shoot and taking some pictures at home of some other jewellry, however not in macro.

I think that this is my favourite picture out of the three, however I would have preffered to have got the centre of the swallow in focus and the wings and the rest out of focus.

I don't think that these macro images are very good, but for my first attempt I am quite happy with them.

I am not entirely happy with this picture as I think that it could have been a lot better. When taking the image I found it very hard to get the lighting right.

From looking at all the above pictures I noticed how they were all typical shots of jewellry, for example some very sharp focus, or a mixture of the two. I then thought about how I could make my last image a bit different from the other photo's. I decided to take a photo close up of the clock face of my necklace however without a macro lens, therefore making the whole picture out of focus.

I actually really liked this image and I think that the style I used works very well as it gives it a very romanticised feel.

I also de-saturated the photo and softened it to add to this feel of "romance" and to make the vintage look of the necklace show through the photo.

Week 3 - Who we are

This week was based around the theme of "people" and I decided to change the type of camera and technique that I was using, and I thought that I would try using a film camera with colour film. Due to lack of resources/money I have had to change these photo's to black and white to fulfil the black and white film part of the brief.

I decided to ask a few people if they could draw a picture of themself, therefore showing how they feel about themselves, and I then wanted to take my photo's from chin downwards so that you can't see their face. I thought that this would be interesting as it would be fun to see how much their pictures actually look like them (or don't).

The main, original thought behind this was "people as they see themselves" and who they want to be rather than who they are. I thought that it would be interesting to see what other people come up with.

Jade Baker

Harriet Collins

Summer Caine

Ryan Tippett

Dave Rolls

If I was to do this shoot again I think that I would have found a better place to shoot each of my subjects and I would have made sure that the pictures were all clearer.

Week 2 - Beauty

I just noticed that when I click on my pictures the quality of the images has dramatically dropped since I changed the image size for the web.

Bare this in mind when looking at them ;)

This week was based around "studio" and "people".

For this set of images I wanted to try 2 things. Firstly I wanted to try using a fan with a very brightly coloured lipstick (blue) and then I wanted to try having a different brightly coloured lipstick (red), but instead of using a fan with the red lipstick I wanted to use black lace over her eyes as I thought that the contrast would make it look better.

I wanted to give the idea of the images being beauty shots, but the model is kind of hiding her face (with the lace and fans). I thought that this would look interesting as unlike a typical beauty shot, the whole face isn't showing. It kind of gives the feel of "hidden beauty."

For this set of images I chose Jamie Nelson as inspiration. I was inspired by his range of beauty images, and thought that I would take his idea of using bright lipsticks in different colours to make my photo's really stand out. The main thing that interests me about his work is the close ups of the eyes or lips depending on what dramatic effect he is using.

Ideas for the next shoot for this week:

1. Try make up on the eyes and close ups on certain parts of the face.

2. Edit the photo so that I can make the skin perfect with no blemishes.

3. Try to set up the studio better. (High key set up)

4. Take some of Jamie Nelsons pictures with me for inspiration.

For this image I used a low key set up in the studio. I wanted to make the lip colour as bright as possible, therefore I decided to use face paint instead of lipstick.

When editing the picture I decided to make the skin as perfect as possible by using the spot healing tool.

I also changed the exposure and de saturated it slightly to make the skin paler. I thought that this would really make the lipstick and fan stand out.

I am quite happy with this picture as I really liked the romantic feel to it. I got this effect from very slightly blurring it. I was inspired by a beauty ad I saw for Chanel where they covered the eyes in lace. To change it and make the picture my own I decided to use a lace that I found  with spots on it. I thought that this would make it more fun.

I cropped this image slightly to get rid of the excess background in it.

This is the first image that I chose out of the shoot to use. I kind of wanted to make the skin really pale to emphasise the colours in the picture, so I de-saturated it.

This looked a lot better as the skin isn't as orange/yellow as before.

However if I was to do this shoot again I think that I would have spent a lot longer on the make up trying to make it neater. One of the things that I really struggled with when editing this image was editing out all the single strands of hair over her eyes and face.

This is my 4th image for this week, again based on the theme "studio" and "beauty".

I decided to try this shoot with a more natural feel to it, I wanted to make an interesting contrast between this photo and the previous 3.

The idea behind this picture was to do "natural beauty" so that it looks like she isn't wearing any/much make up, although she is infact wearing quite a lot.

I think that the close up composition makes the image look like a successful beauty shot, therefore I am very happy with this result.

My last image of the 5 for this week. I thought that I would try and leave this image unedited.

I don't think that this picture goes with the rest of the images for this week, mainly because the model used doesn't wear make up and the shot isn't particularly a good beauty shot, although I do think that it works well as a portraiture photo.

Week 1 - Padstow day and night

For these photo's I wanted to shoot the image at night as it was a clear sky and I thought that this would look quite interesting and vacant like Padstow at night compared to Padstow in the day, where it is very busy (like the lights in the image.) I thought that this gave the pictures quite a city like feel, although you can tell from looking at the picture that Padstow doesn't really have a night life. Unlike places like Newquay, where a photo at night would be very busy.
I went out into Padstow at about 11 o clock at night and took photos of the harbour. I used a Canon 450D, a tripod and a shutter release cable. I was originally going to take slow exposure pictures but then as Padstow is very bright, my pictures would have come out very over exposed, so I therefore decided to take pictures at a normal shutter speed. I also noticed that the picture appears to be slanted, however this is because Padstow is on a slope.

For these images I was inspired by a photographer named Dan Holdsworth who does slow exposures.

In the future I would like to re shoot and possibly try a different method. For example, Colour film.

This photo was my 3rd photo of this series of images. As I liked the first photo that I took, I thought that I would take more pictures of Padstow Harbour at night, and then I thought I would take some in the day and compare the two. This image and the previous image were taken with slow exposures, of about 15-30 seconds each. I used a Canon 450D, a tripod and a shutter release cable.

Inspiration for these images was from a website called Lost America, where photo's have been taken at night and slow exposures have been used. The images of petrol stations at night inspired me because of the colours in the pictures and because of the lights.

I decided to re shoot the harbour however this time in the day. I chose not to use a tripod or any other accessories. All I used was a Canon 400D.

I am quite happy with the 2 pictures that I came out of the shoot with however I would have preferred it if the sky wasn't so cloudy, so that I would have got a really nice blue sky. I think that this would have made the picture stand out better.

 

This is my other image from my 2nd Padstow shoot. I decided to take a picture in the harbour of a boat that was on it's own. I wanted to centre the boat when taking the photo so that all the focus would be on this rather than everything else around it.

This is my favourite image of the 2 Padstow shoots.

 

Evaluation of my first week:

Overall I feel that this shoot went OK and I think that I got a few good images. Looking back on the Padstow at night photo's and comparing them to the day time ones, I think I prefer the ones in the daytime as I like that there is more of a range of colours than in the night time photo's.

In my next shoot I plan on using the theme "studio".