I have received my assessment review from the Art of Photography module and one of the criticisms is that I don't appear to a developed a creative vision, therefore for this assignment I am asking myself some questions and hopefully by conveying my thoughts I will be able to achieve this.
Q Why do we take photographs?
A we take photographs for a variety of reasons, family snaps, reportage, record work to name but a few.
Q Who do we take them for?
A This can be a number of answers, firstly for ourselves to record something that is happening in our life or something we like the look of maybe a beautiful flower or landscape has caught our eye and we want to remember it.
They can also be taken for a 'client' i.e someone how wants our services and is maybe prepared to pay for them, in this instance the client has to like what we have produced.
They can also be taken to fit a brief for course work which is the reason I take the photographs on this course however I still need to like them.
Q Can photography be classed as art?
A If you read the book 'the photograph as contemporary art' by C Cotton more details about this book are reference under my books I have read section, then the answer is yes, this book explores how photography became part of the arts and often shows how ordinary everyday objects can be used to create and image, In 1917 Marcel Duchamp produced an image of a urinal which was rotated from its normal vertical position to the horizontal one, he submitted this to the Armory show and had it rejected.
So where does all this lead me? There are many things you can adjust to get the correct exposure white balance shutter speed iso and f stop are the four main things used to do this, all of these can be adjusted my first choice would probably be either shutter speed or F stop with F Stop being slightly in the front for choice, The one I would adjust would be the iso as if you adjust it too much you can get a lot of noise in the photograph which does not all ways look right. White balance is also very important to get correct however it is possible to change this in camera raw if you do forget to do this.
There are eight situations and I need to choose a minimum of four, am going to link the photographs in each section rather than just taking random photographs.
I must admit it has taken me longer than I had hoped to reach and I can also admit to having more than a few nerves about this particular one buts here's hoping it works out ok.
I have started to plan and take the photographs for the my four situations, I have chosen to do:
1. Street scene in the middle of the day with high buildings and narrow streets
2. Indoor space with strong natural light as the only available light source.
3 Indoor scene illuminated by a single source of light for example a desk lamp
4 A scene with dappled light.
For my first choice of the street scene I have chosen to go to Canterbury which has a beautiful cathedral and narrow streets leading down to it.
I thought it could prove to be challenging to get the exposure right as a lot of the building have white or light colours on them and I wanted to try to make sure that some detail was kept in this.
Photograph one I used a shady white balance working on the theory that most of the picture was in the shade, I also spot metered the light area as I think if I had matrix metered or sot metered on the dark area I would have lost the detail on the lest hand side of the picture.
Photographs two and three were taken on two different days, again I used the shady white balance for both but photograph two I chose to matrix meter and photograph three was spot metered on the brightest area.
photograph three has a lot more darker areas, the day was cloudy with sunny intervals and I think it is noticeable in the front of the photograph making the woman in the foreground difficult to see.
Photograph two is more balance the shadow detail is almost more defined. If I was taking these photographs again in the same sort of conditions I would use some flash to bring out the shadows.
my Second choice of an indoor space with strong natural light came out by a fluke I had gone into a church, (somewhere I don't go to very often) hoping to find it lit by a single light, what I actually ended up with was some photographs with strong natural light.
I spot metered this with an f stop of 16 and a shutter speed of 1 second I used an iso of 400, this was still fairly dark but I didn't want to make the aperture any larger as I wanted to get as much of the scene as sharp as possible, I was also aware that the white on the walls could cause a problem.
the second shot was again spot metered I kept the iso at 400 but used a 2 second shutter speed with a aperture of F13, again the difficulty was keeping some detail in the white walls I was also aware that it would be easy to loose the detail in the lectern and the organ pipes which I really didn't want to happen.
It was an interesting challenge photographing some where I am not normally comfortable in but over all I ended up spending a pleasant time there.
Scene three, an indoor scene lit by a single strong light, this time I wanted to try something a bit different, I wanted to try taking a photograph of the inside by from the outside. I pass a wedding shop and they always have a stunning display and this is where I got the idea from, having spoken to the shop owner and got their permission my thinking on this was a decent camera on a tripod outside a shop in the semi dark might lead to questions being asked, and having checked the window on the Saturday morning I persuade my husband to come with me that evening. When we reached the shop the display had been changed from a bride and groom to shoes, well what woman can resist shoes.
I set the tripod up and spot metered at F14 with a shutter speed of 1.6 the white balance was incandescent., I took my first photograph and the first thing I observed was my own reflection, I then had to try to figure out how to take the photograph with out getting either my or the tripod's reflections in the picture, after many attempts I managed it.
I decided to keep to this theme for the other two photographs and go for glitzy objects as I knew these could be challenging to get right. The photograph above is not as good as the print in that some of the items are not as clear I wanted to set up a treasure box in two main colours and see how a single light would work to show the objects up. I used a slow shutter speed of 5 seconds but kept the aperture at F16 and the iso at 200 as I didn't want to introduce any noise into the picture. It was difficult to get the richness of the fabric right which is why I ended up with such a slow shutter speed.
The final set of four photographs took me a while to decide on, finally I decided to do the dappled light, and that's where the fun started! Once again the weather seemed to not be on my side and it took a few visits and attempted visits to finally take the photographs I wanted.
This time I am going to talk about the photographs as a group rather than individually, I tried shady and daylight white balances, when taking these photographs also photograph one was spot metered and the other two were was centre or matrix metered., I kept the aperture fairly large for this as I liked the effect of having some softness to the photograph,, the technically challenged were not over great this time it was really just a case of getting the metering correct and making sure there was somewhere level to put the tripod.
It would have been nice if the bluebells were out a little bit more giving some more colour to the scene but overall i am happy with these photographs, I wanted to include a couple that were more of a close up of the flowers and tree roots, as I want to start trying to develop my own style and I don't consider it necessary to always show the whole thing.
It was interesting to notice how I saw a scene and how the camera saw it, particularly on the shadow's and darker areas, I appear to see it much brighter and at times was really disappointed when looking back at the photographs through the screen on the back of the camera and seeing just how dark they were, this is noticeable in the photographs of Canterbury the last one to me was a lot brighter in the foreground than it actually was, however I rather liked the almost silhouette at the front.
The second part of the exercise was to re visit the scenes and see how you could improve on the lighting conditions from the first time round, as it was not possible for me to re visit most of these I am having to write my thoughts in the blog instead and just re photograph one picture.
The first set could have been improved if that is the correct word if some fill in flash had been used to light the deep shadow, but it could be argued that the atmosphere would be lost if the scene is too bright.
The second set may have been better if a faster shutter speed was used again with some flash used this would help with any darker areas.
The third set of photographs I wanted to re take two of the shots but the shop had changed its window again, there for I didn't think it would be right as it would be two totally different scenes. I would use a second light for the treasure chest shot and maybe a reflector to reflect the light onto the scene being carefully not to have any bright areas.
I took the photograph of the necklace again this time I used a second light I had one to the side and a second one more towards the back, as I said my choice for this sort of photography would be a light tent but I wasn't sure if that would be allowed.
The final set of photographs would need to be taken on a much duller day to make them low contrast in fact I did take plenty of those a couple of days before taking the dappled light ones but as they were not taken in the same area again I am unsure whether to put any one here or not, I will see what my tutor has to say and decide from there.
It was interesting having to use J Pegs and not raw files, I always shoot in both, this time I used the J Pegs for this assignment but I also have the raw files which I can work on at a later date if I want too, just to see how the pictures can be adjusted to 'improve' the picture.
My favourite set of photographs are the dappled light ones but my favourite photograph of the assignment is the shoes partly I think because it was a difficult one to take.
Well that's the second assignment completed I just need to wait for the prints to arrive from the printers and then send them off for comment, always the scary part, i am however glad to have reached the end of this part and i am looking forwards to progressing the next section looks like it could be fun.
Well the results are back and I must say I was pleasantly surprised, overall I had done fine, the main down fall still seems to be the blog, in particular making errors something I hope has now been addressed.
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