Remember the future
Welcome to my webpage for unit 3 A2 Photography. I have chosen to use a webpage as my main display of final images/ explanation of each photo-shoot because it is the highest quality and easily shared/ viewed. There are two supporting sketchbooks; The A3 size one will contain all the contact sheets related to this study, with the technical details of how I made my images including the cameras settings, and the A4 size one contains all other work that I've chosen/ been commissioned to do which does not related to this study. These will be clearly labelled.
Image ideas
I just want to be alone
When I was taking this set of photos, I just wanted to be alone and photography being a good outlet for expressing that. I was trying to show by having a blank/ glazed over/ stressed look that I was upset and needed alone time. I took these in a play park to deliberately contrast my expressions and feelings. I then combined the images to prove how I was wondering within my own mind and it was something I needed to figure out myself.
La Jetée
To expand our knowledge and outlook on the starting point Remember the Future we watched La Jetée. It was a short movie made in 1962 and comprised mainly of still photographs with only one short section capturing motion. It was a low budget movie that was based on time travels post world war three where due to radioactivity on the earths surface people are having to live underground. It follows a prisoner who unknowingly watches himself die after being forced to travel both forwards and backwards in time by his captors. Whilst time traveling he is constantly after a woman, but after his captures decide to kill him he travels back to find him juvenile self on La Jetée, he fails and is killed in front of himself; fixing him to that same point in time. This movie made me rethink my initial ideas of remember the future and expand my horizons of what the past, present and future represent. After a long reflection this movie, to me, represents our lives and how we chase our dream through the future whilst always looking at our past but being unsure on the future.
Studio experimentation
After my write up of La Jetée I was inspired to try Studio photography and setting up the composition of photos with lights as they would of for each other the images in La Jetée. I had to draw on my previous studio experience and experimented with a double lighting set-up and a pin-point flash set-up. The set-up pictured below is Double lighting and allowed a bright full light filling effect on the subject.. ISO 100, 1/250. F7.1
Below is the pin-point flash set-up where the was a ambient flash fill from the right and a strong point of flash light, focused by a cone on the flash gun. This created a very strong and vibrant lighting on certain parts of the image creating the effect of being scary.
New Equipment
As an investment I purchased a new Nikon 50mm 1.8G lens on top of the equipment I have amassed, mentioned in Unit 1. I choose the 35mm lens over the 50mm lens because portraits are sharper and reviews claim for it to have superior Bokeh. I also purchased a remote wireless flash with two receiver, two colour changing bulbs and two Daylight white bulbs to give me more control of the limited equipment we currently had in our studio.
JPEG Vs RAW
Watching a recent youtuber, Jared Polin. He had an interesting discussion on his view about JPEG Vs RAW. After doing some research myself I found that RAW files are the only file type allowed in the UK court of law as acceptable because they cannot be edited without being saved as JPEG or similar. I shall be experimenting myself to see if I can use RAW and what I feel is it's good/bad points.
Linus Lohoff - Personal possessions
Whilst doing this I learnt allot. The strangest part was getting used to knowing I have at most a 1/250 sync speed for the flash so having to correct exposure mainly through through the aperture or physically changing the lighting to be less bright. I shoot all of these photos on manual and was allot of experimentation, light meters were useless because of the additional flashes. It is evident in some of the contact sheets that I put the shutter speed higher than 1/250 because half of the photo is completely black or not visible.
Post editing of the photos was mainly to make the backgrounds completely white, I have shown an example of this below. Overall I am pleased with the results and although not like Linus Lohoffe's surreal build structure I have achieved a pleasing effect.
Post editing of the photos was mainly to make the backgrounds completely white, I have shown an example of this below. Overall I am pleased with the results and although not like Linus Lohoffe's surreal build structure I have achieved a pleasing effect.
Portrait attempt - 1
Based on what I learnt during my last photo-shoot in the studio I wanted to focus on a portrait session and specifically trying a black background. I will use what I learnt about lighting and experiment further.
After this photo-shoot I am a little disappointed with the results, I wanted the subject to merge into the background but this didn't happen well in the photographs but might still be possible in post editing of the photos. After some further research I found that many photographers set up with a flash dedicated to blowing out the background. I need to try this next time
After this photo-shoot I am a little disappointed with the results, I wanted the subject to merge into the background but this didn't happen well in the photographs but might still be possible in post editing of the photos. After some further research I found that many photographers set up with a flash dedicated to blowing out the background. I need to try this next time
Portrait attempt 2- Sonya Nowkowiak
Based on what I have been researching about the f.64 group I have decided to take portraits in the style of Sonya Noskowiak. These were mainly taken on film to experience what it would have been like for them. I used my camera as an accurate light meter taking the photos on digital and once I was happy with the exposure transferring those setting to the film camera because I could not afford to buy and process another film. I practiced using a flash and light dedicated to blowing out the background but I don't think this was a strong enough light source to have the desired effect. Trying to persevere the truth of the portraits. The film versions and finals are within my sketchbook.
Still Life 1 - Edward Weston
Taken after researching Edward Weston. They have been edited to get the background as white as possible, This was done mostly by dodging and Burning which could be done in a darkroom and something Edward Weston would have done in his images.
My final, above, shows both the color and black and white image
Portrait attempt 3- Rembrandt lighting
After studying the work of Imogen Cunningham, I conducted this photo-shoot in order to create a single image of my model that holds the truth about him. The light areas getting dark representing the way he is happy and sad, symbolism how there are at least two different sides to every photograph and every person.
JPEG Vs RAW Conclusion
My Nikon D7100 captures images in NEF(RAW) and Jpeg. The NEF files are aprox 40MB each and the JPEG 9MB each. This was the first thing I noticed when doing my first photo-shoot in RAW, the memory card(32GB!) filled up before I was finished and I had to stop and empty it before finishing the shoot. The second thing I noticed was how annoying it was to just view the images, I had to let Lightroom(my editing program) load them all just to see what they were and so I resorted to using JPEG basic and RAW files so that I could identify the image with the JPEG and then edit the RAW. In general terms of Image quality there was not a massively noticeable difference if the exposure was correct but the RAW images became massively useful if there was a wrong setting on the camera or if my white-balance was off. The final thing I noticed was the time it took to handle and process images and this is what swayed me to keep using JPEG for majority of photo-shoots. The process of RAW files on the computers was too long and often Crashed them but if I am going into a situation where I'm unsure of what might be needed of my camera and me then I will defiantly use RAW because of its versatility of editing without compromising quality.
Portrait attempt 4
I was approached by a teacher within the school to create the image for a poster for an upcoming play. These were my results, I attempted to utilize what I have learnt and because it was suppose to be a scary play implemented Rembrandt lighting. The results were gruesome but pleasing.
Final
It was during my study of Imogen Cunningham’s work that I had a eureka moment. It marked the turning of my project from creating a very aesthetical truthful image to an emotionally truthful image, after my Rembrandt lighting photo-shoot the idea of my final started to form. The final required me to draw on all the studio knowledge I had gained over unit three and the Stop-frame editing I have done in unit one and two. The final Movie is a story about me, the overall effect creates a sense of understanding the truth about me and to me symbolises so much more; it is the first time in eight years I have voluntarily taken photographs of myself. I choose to have a slide between each person with their relation to me, this was always ‘My …’ this was to reinforce the meaning of the movie and to ensure the truth is conveyed which I believe it is. I will be dispalying this movie alongside some of the still images from this project so that when viewing the exhibit you can observe the quality of stills.
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