BA4 Self Evaluation

Quotes

Normally i'm not a big fan of quotes as I feel they're overused and just someones silly opinions of peoples but this one jumped out to me. It sums up this project to me, how we have to think creatively, not only to create something stunning, but also think strategically to create something with meaning, to think of what context it would fall into.

Something to think about

I saw this on the internet the other day on a newspapers website about a girl who is cross-eyed who is getting modelling jobs. I'm all for this as I feel the fashion industry are far too worried about looks and its refreshing to see someone different being given a chance. I for one would much rather photograph this girl instead of another model who looks like every other girl. Thats why I think with my models I look outside the box, I go for girls who dress a bit quirky or who has a particular style that they are proud of, a different haircut or a personality that shines through them.

Techniques in the studio

In the studio I used quite a few different lights and light adaptors…. here are some of them…



Soft boxes- they created the lighting effect I wanted, an all over even light that wasn't too harsh

The photo I took using soft boxes.

Ring flash- I experiment with a ring flash to get strong directed light

The photo I took using a ring flash.

Beauty dish- this helped me to create a more stronger directed light onto my models

The photo I took using a beauty dish.

I could experiment even more in the studio in the future to broaden my knowledge, with things such as diffusers, shoots, more reflectors etc.

Market research

I had looked at market research for all my portrait, still life and landscape photos, especially at possible magazines in which my work could be shown in.


For my portraits it was magazines such as Wonderland and I-D.

Because of my fashion influences and use of negative space and lighting I  can see my photos fitting in with these  photos I saw in the magazine…

Also there was a Chanel advert in the magazine..

I could imagine my Chanel still life photos to fit in well in this magazine as its mostly about the photo, not the text on the photo (but mine won't work as a double spread)

One of my final still life photos.

I also looked at the National Geographic magazine as a place that my landscape photos could be placed..

It was good as this particular issue was a photography issue and so there was lots of photos from the past, I saw quite a lot of black and white landscapes using negative space, and so I thought my landscapes would fit in with the National Geographic Magazine very well, and then my work would reach a wider target audience.

One of my final Landscape photos.

Potential career routes

During this project I was considering possible career routes after I did certain jobs to do with the photographic industry.

After completing all my work I decided on potential career routes that I would like to go into…

• Cinematographer (because I likened my landscapes to film sets/locations and film stills)
• Stylist (because I enjoyed styling my models and doing their make-up etc)
• Location scout (because I liked finding the locations for my photo shoots- I found this website on the Guild of location managers- http://www.golm.org.uk/index.php  but they had moved on elsewhere- http://www.productionguild.com 

I can relate...

Other work

This is just a quick post to show other work I have been doing over the course of this BA4 brief…

Being a MUA for my portrait shoots

Actually being behind the lens for a change, modelling for my friends Gabby's portrait photos

Assisting my friend Gabby on one of her location landscape photo shoots- From doing this and having to carry around equipment and walk quite far i'm not sure if i'm cut out to be an assistant.

Being the person who took light meter readings (someones got to do it)

Taking the light meter readings for myself when no one was able to help (was difficult but I managed)

As well as taking the photos at photo shoots I also was documenting some of my shoots for future reference to see past lighting set-ups or locations used etc.

Taking these sorts of photos gave me the idea of a possible job of being a person who photo documents photo shoots to perhaps be used in magazines or newspapers or websites to show behind the scenes. As I know a lot of photographers may start off with jobs like this before they really get noticed in the industry.

Models

One of my models I used for my portraits didn't go to my university so I had to bring her to Francis house to fill out a model form for health and safety purposes and so I could find out all the rules of bringing someone outside of the university into the studio. I felt all professional doing this because it was being done properly like in the fashion industry and my model (my good friend Rhea) felt all professional having the pass as well. If in the future I will ask models from actual modelling companies to model for me I will know what to do without hesitation.

Thinking about future careers I realised I could be doing this a lot, I like fashion photography and I could imagine myself working in that industry, so I would be organising models and sorting paper work to do with health and safety.

Workshop- Balancing ambient light with flash

Firstly you take a light meter reading in the right direction.

We got that the ambient light reading was 1/60 F2.8 ISO 100





Using then the lights (in our case the ranger kits) we used the same settings but changed the shutter speed- this case it was 1/30 F2.8  ISO 100, which made the ambient light lighter (look in background)







We then changed the shutter speed again so the settings were 1/180 F2.8  ISO 100, which made the ambient light darker (look in background)




From this we learnt that changing the shutter speed controls the ambient light, and that most cameras can't go over 1/250 shutter speed or the flash starts to go out of sync.

Just some experimenting we done moving to different places to get different ambient light readings and then playing about with the placement of the lights.

This workshop really helped me as I wasn't overly confident with this before but not I feel as though I understand and would feel ok with doing a photo shoot in the new daylight studio.

Flesh Love

I came across something that really caught my eye on Facebook, a friend who studies fine art had posted this link about this photographer and his project titled 'Flesh Love'. He would find couples and ask them to pose in a vacuum sealed bag- like meat. His photos are bizarre yet there is something beautiful and loving about how intimately close the couples are.


The Huffington Post article wrote- "Though the images are radically strange, there is a sense of sweetness to them. They are, at their core, images of love, and what is ultimately stranger and crazier than love?"

I think just if the image looks a bit out of the ordinary, it doesn't mean it doesn't have a story or better  meaning and understanding behind it.

LONDON continued...

Other galleries I visited on the day that inspired me were in the Science Museum (which I had never gone in before so that was interesting) there was a show showing Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr's work.

This particular photo stood out to me-called 'beachy head boat trip'- a couple connected surrounded by unconnected people.

He also took photos in yarmouth which I thought was cool as we are so close to it.
Martin Parr said how Tony Ray-Jones probably didn't realise how well he was spacing out the people in his photographs and how even though there was space it still manages to draw itself back into the photograph- this links with my photos for the BA4 brief and how i'm trying different spacing in my own photos, especially concentrating on negative space.
I like how Tony Ray-Jones uses people as layers, building depth in the photo.

We also went to the Victoria & Albert museum (another one I hadn't been to) and looked around there at a photography exhibit which I did find interesting but I was more inspired by the 'Club to catwalk' exhibit they had which was about London fashion in the 1980's. I'm a big fan of the 80's and I found it quite fascinating and much more inspirational when it came to my portraits what with the striking make-up etc.

What I got from today was the drive to go visit more galleries in London, whether they're showing really well known photographers work or up and coming photographers. Also I got more ideas for BA4- not only from the galleries and photography work but from walking about the busy culture filled streets of London.

LONDON

The yearly trip to London with the Uni and I was excited to visit galleries that I wouldn't usually think to go to..
I had seen this particular photographers show advertised on the magazine website- Dazed Digital
.http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/17319/1/corinne-day-may-the-circle-remain-unbroken

To my surprise and delight we went to this gallery show first and I was impressed by the realism and stark view of her photos, you know she has gotten to know these people over time, the way she has delved into their personal lives is portrayed through the raw and intimate photos. I usually struggle to enjoy looking at candid photos but there was something different about these, more intriguing than anything.

From looking at them I knew I wanted to take more photos of my friends in relaxed situations, as this is initially what she done.

<---  The screenshot I took to remind myself to look into going to the particular gallery.








In the Michael Hoppen gallery I wasn't so interested in the work by Miyako Ishiuchi but more by a magazine style book there was. It was called Acne Paper and after coming home I researched it and found out it was a culture magazine that mainly showed the fashion label Acne (Ambition to create novel expression). Interestingly, the paper chooses a key theme for each of its issues and then it represents history, journalism, science, philosophy and others things such as arts and photography.
 http://www.acnepaper.com
This particular issue was titled 'The Actress' and from some of the photography I found in there you could tell why.
Benjamin Alexander Husebys work really stood out to me, annoyingly I can't find any of his photos online that I saw but I know I can describe them well as being vibrant with the colours having a techno  feel to them. His portraits were very strong in the sense of his models having a clear personality being portrayed, as though they were acting their own stories out in the photos. I want to make sure I do this with my own portraits, to ensure my models aren't just stiff and awkward, but have that sense of a real persons character about them.
Aswell as this, Daniel Jacksons work also stood out to me, like Husebys work, it had a strong sense of creating a fantasy world to place the portraits of the people.

Nadav Kander

On the intranet there was a link to a youtube film of an interview with Nadav Kander. This instantly caught my attention as I love his work but never really researched into him as a person.

I always find it interesting when I see what the photographer really looks like and how their personality is as usually it's no where near what you imagine. Take for example when I first saw Martin Parr in an interview I was surprised as I imagined him to be far more striking looking.

In this particular interview I found out a few interesting things and tips that can help me. Firstly that he doesn't really get to know his model before photographing them, as he finds the tension helps to bring the personality out of the model. Like me, he feels black and white portraits have an iconic status feel to them. He also tries to communicate to a wide audience with his work.

1st November Group Crit

After looking at some of my work that I had been producing my group helped me to gain some inspiration to further my work and ideas….

Firstly for still life they said about looking into more advertising photographers that are also fashion related, and they said about Benoît Audureau


I actually really liked his work and found myself being inspired by his use of white negative space so the items the photo is advertising look much more appealing and stand out from the page, the products also look beautiful which is what I want to do with my Chanel bottle.

Next we went onto landscape and I was explaining my ideas of negative space and simplicity, something stunning to look at and someone mentioned William Egglestons landscapes.

Even though his work is in colour it is very similar to what I want to eventually achieve- the negative and positive space, leading lines, quite stylistic… I could imagine these portraits to look just as good in black and white as well.

They also said about playing around with the exposure offset on photoshop.

Bracketing

Also because of todays workshop I learnt more about bracketing…

I had not looked into bracketing much in the past but found it useful to learn more about it…

Bracketing is when you take several shots of the same subject using different camera settings.

This is useful especially in still life photo shoots as even when a small difference of exposure occurs it can change the photo completely. It is good to practise doing this as its good to see how the different settings of your camera changes the photos lighting, exposure and because of this, the mood of the photo.

AutoBracketing is when you use a setting on your camera that takes several bracketed shots for you, instead of you changing the settings by hand between each shot.

Histograms

An example of examples of photos and their histograms.

I found it useful learning about histograms, it was good that I would know what I was looking at when it came to future photo shoots.

Workshop- doing my own thing

In this workshop only 3 of us turned up….. as every one thought that it was cancelled because of the bad storm we were having.
But that was a good thing as it meant we were being taught more things, as though we were having a one to one.

In this particular workshop we were taught about histograms (I am going to put information on that in a later post) and were given objects to photograph experimenting with different light set ups and also tethering as we needed to see close up on a bigger screen if the lighting was working effectively.

Quick photo showing the lighting

Lighting set up

First photo we took

This was the lighting set up to create this photo…

Second photo we took

This was the lighting set up I used to create this photo…

We also looked at a shiny surface to take a photo of...

The idea of this workshop was to work with objects that had different surfaces- shiny, glass, plastic, matte etc. This was useful to learn as lighting changes all the time on different surfaes.