Semester One Photography

Photography Brief

Can be found Here (will be opened in a new tab)

My Proposal:

Although the brief stated the 3 portraits should be of another student we were allowed flexibility with this which i was much happier with as my plans were to capture some random photos in different styles really without the subject knowing ive taken them.

I prefer this style of photography as im not really a fan of set up photographs where the subject is aware and the lighting conditions are set up to achieve the best possible picture, i prefer more natural style where nothing is staged and most of my pictures were taken off the top of my head where i saw something that i thought might look interesting, especially when i put some different effects into the photo.

Research:

To help me in this subject i attended all lectures to get some tips on how to use a camera and what settings did what as until this id never even used a camera before.

I also scanned through various sites whilst looking for a style i liked aswell checking other students work to see if they had done any sort of effect i had wanted to achieve but was having trouble with.

Planning:

For this module i went out and bought myself a Fujifilm F40 digital camera my intention was id be able to get any sort of effect i wanted with it as i didnt currently own a proper camera but once id purchased it and tried experimenting with it i realised it was very hard to change settings manually infact you could only really change the ISO yourself the flash and shutter speeds where all done automatically or with a few preset options which wasnt really the sort of control i wanted.

I then intended to borrow 1 of the uni's cameras but i always seemed to go at the wrong time when there was none in which left me with some trouble as i didnt know where i would go from here.

Eventually i remembered my phone had a camera on it i always considered it rubbish but when i went through some of the options i found i could get some quite crazy effects with it which i was pleased to see as this was the kind of style i wanted to achieve and although its only a 2mp camera i think the photos have turned out well, better than i thought.

The Portraits:

Yes i know this isnt a "person" but it still has something to focus on even though its just a toy, this was more of an experimental photo when i first got my camera and i was trying to swing the camera round fast to see what effects i could achieve and i managed to get the lights on my speaker volume box to almost look like they was blurring round the toys head this obviously would be better on a human but due to the position of my desk and speaker control there was no way i could have got the same sort of effect ive achieved here with a human model

This photo was taken at the train station and i liked having the pillar in the background running throughout the picture unfortunately the seating isnt properly aligned up which is the effect i was hoping for to give it a sort of symmetrical look but i still think its quite a tidy photo. There was some alarm or something sticking out further up the pillar which made it look quite ugly so ive cropped the photo down to just keep it quite minimalist.

My 3rd photo was something a little different again i was playing around with my camera at different angles and i found i could get a nice looking effect with the lines of pillars with numbers above them running into the distance. However it was around 5pm and it was very busy and i didnt think it would make a good portrait as there would be about 20+ visible people so i thought of a way to attract the eye from everyone else.

I originally considered blurring out the background in photoshop but then playing around with inverting the colours i found this effect which i really like, i havent blurred out anyone and if u focus on the photo you still seem to be attracted to that one person in the centre, im very pleased with this photograph.

Self Portrait:

After spending a lot of time thinking what represented my personality i realised that if im not asleep im usually on my computer so i decided to attempt to have a photo of myself hidden away in my sheets with maybe an arm sticking out or something, quite a scruffy looking photo, but it was too hard to set up the camera exactly where i wanted it as i wanted some sun light coming through my window to give the impression i was still in bed even though it was middle of the afternoon when i shouldnt really be.

So in the end i went for my other decision, something related to me and my computer, a simple photo of me sat at the computer seemed boring so i decided on:

Basically what i did here was take the photo using my fuji F40 this time, opened it in photoshop copied the whole image as a new layer then i inverted the top layer and erased the bits i didnt want to be inverted.

My reason for doing this was in my mind computers and technology in general are "cool colours" silvers..and blues and inverting the colours to me gave it a techy, sort of look so i inverted my hand as well so it looked like i was sort of part of technology while keeping all the background like the wooden desk and bits around this there natural colours.

A portrait in the style of another photographer:

I had a lot of trouble deciding on this as i dont really know any photographers at all so my research was leading me in circles and it was getting quite frustrating. After a lot of searching i was wondering if i could find a photographer that used some of the styling ive used before (inverting the colours) and i came across one piece of work by Melvin Strawn. In the article here. one of his pieces of works further down is a picture of a crack in the wall which looks like a crucifix he then inverts the colours to give it a moody tone, so what i did was take some photos and tried inverting them to give a very interesting effect. the initial image itself looks rather plain and boring but when i inverted the picture i was quite surprised how it looked:

i think its very interesting how the background in the inverted is darkened out and it almost looks like a block of sky scrapers during the night and the subject almost has a ghostly look. My intention was to have the stop button pole as almost a border down one side of the photo so this was cropped a little and i think it works well.

Evaluation:

Overall im quite pleased with my photos, i feel i could have spent more time on them to make them look more professional but i dont class myself to have a very designy mind at the moment so i usually struggle to have ideas or if i do i can never get them exactly how i want them. If i was to do this again i would have tried to find better resources for my chosen photographer as i feel this was a weak point of my assignment as i found myself seeing photographs as "just photographs" and never seeing a different style within them and finding them quite boring in a way.

I also wish id found a better seating area for my subject in my 2nd portrait as the more i look at it the more im starting to dislike the fact that the subject cant be in line with the pillar and i obviously would have liked to retake the first one with a proper subject but i really wouldnt know where to start to get the same sort of effect.

 

NAvigation

 

Copyright John Ezard - Venom 2008