When I started this project, I decided that I wanted to focus on the idea of showing clear contrasts between urban environments and rural environments, mainly through animation, documentary and landscape photography. My plan for a final outcome was to create a short film consisting of animation sequences and images that I had taken throughout my shoots. Since I have started the project, my focus has shifted from showing the contrast between showing the contrast between rural and urban to focusing on urban, due to both it being easier as I live in an urban area, and I realised I found rural landscape photography to be something I don't enjoy doing. I still hope to make a short video, however, It will have far less animation in it than I originally intended it to have, as I am focusing on experimenting with different shooting styles within an urban environments than shooting lots of animations, as I felt this would make my shoots repetitive and mean my project overall lacks experimentation.
I feel that so far, my shoots have mostly been successful. My first two shoots have been animation shoots, in which I positioned my camera in one position, set it to continual shoot mode then moved around. My first one was taken from the passenger seat from a moving car, and the second, from the deck of a moving boat. Since I had no tripod to hand when I shot these, I had to shoot freehand, which in my first shoot, in which I had nothing to lean on, meant that I got some camera shake would could have been prevented by either shooting using a faster shutter speed or by using some kind of camera stabiliser. My second shoot however, was an improvement as I had the railing of the boat to lean on, meaning there was significantly less camera shake. These shoots were both taken in a rural environment, so I decided my third shoot would take place in an urban environment. My third shoot was focused on urban architecture, which I wanted to portray as being very methodical and repetitive, link to the idea of Brutalism. I feel this shoot went better than the animation shoot, as it allowed me to experiment with different shooting styles and methods, such as multiple exposure. While this shoot was successful in that it created a different style to that of my animation shoots, some of the images were noticeably not level, as a result of not using a tripod, which definitely takes away from it being in an architectural photography style, as it often is very neat and perfectly framed. For my fourth shoot, which my most recent, I decided to people within an urban environment in a street photography style. I went out with a tripod and mounted it in two different locations, taking long exposure images in each. The idea for the shoot was to try and capture the pace of living in a urban environment and the busyness of the people who live there. While this shoot was successful in capturing this as a subject matter, and my technique of motion blur was successfully executed, there were some things that I could have improved. Although I shot using a tripod, some of the images were still not stable due to the tripod legs not being quite at the same level as each other. Also, due to shooting using exposures of around 1 second in broad daylight, some of the images came out overexposed.
I feel that there is definitely room for improvement in the remainder of the this project. One of the things I feel I could improve on is techniques; there are times where I could have used a tripod to get much steadier images, especially during animation shoots and architecture shoots. I also feel that there has been a lack of experimenting with different techniques. Most of my shoots have been heavily location based and with little editing, so I could try to plan shoots that focus more on advanced Photoshop techniques. I also feel that some of my previous shoots could be re attempted, especially the architecture shoot, as I would try to capture more stable images using a tripod.
I definitely think that my project is going lean towards experimenting with shooting styles and editing techniques rather than the focus on street and documentary photography that my project is currently leaning towards. For my second half, I would definitely like to go back to architectural photography in different urban locations with a tripod, as I feel this concept I can get more out of than I already have. Additionally, I would like to try some more technically demanding shoots such as High Dynamic Range, as well as shooting natural light trails at night and using multiple flash.
Thursday, 1 December 2016
Tuesday, 22 November 2016
Monday, 21 November 2016
Shoot Three - Work Diary
For my third shoot, I decided it was time to move away from the subject of stop motion animation in favour of a shoot of still images that will have a contact sheet and straight images as a result. I also moved from a rural location to shoot in a very urban location, as this is what I want my project to focus on. I tried to focus my shoot on Capturing urban architecture and urban decay.
Here is one of my favourite images from my shoot. This image is one of my final straight images, therefore it has been edited. I decided that my straight images should have the effect of looking like an old film photograph. To create this effect, first of all, I converted them to black and white. Then, I added a brightness/contrast layer, in which I moved the contrast to around -20, giving the image a washed out appearance. The final stage in editing the photo into look like a black and white film photograph was to add noise to the image. I did this by going to the filter drop menu, and selecting "add noise", in which i set the noise percentage to around 30%. This finalised the editing on the photos, which meant I could flatten the image and save it as a JPEG.
This image has a wide tonal range; half of the image displays dark tones, as this was taken in a multi-storey car park, in which there was little lighting. However, the lights on the ceiling and the small opening to the sky to the right create some lighter tones, particularly on the pillars to the right. Since the image is in black and white, the colours in the image are varying muted shades of black or white, giving the photo a very dark mood and creating connotations of evil. The shapes formed in this image are mainly made of sharp corners, with there being very little curves in the architecture, which is very urban and reminiscent to the Brutalist architecture of the 1950s-1970s. Due to the editing I have done to the final version of this photo, the image appears to have a slightly bumpy texture, which was created from the noise I added to the photo. Before the edit, the majority of the image was smooth textures, and I feel that the noise I added means the image contains darker connotations now, with the bumpy textures creating connotations of the busyness of living in an urban environment. This, however, is contrasted by the fact the image portrays an almost empty car park.
Above is another of my favourite edited images. This has been edited in the same way as the previous image, being desaturated, converted to black and white then noise being added. This image is much tonally lighter than the previous image, meaning when the use of undersaturation and black and white makes the image look particularly washed out. The sky in the background looks like it's more cloudy than it is, and in areas it looks like there is a smog in the sky, which creates a sense of urban environments being very pollutive. The use of noise in this image creates a rough texture, particularly on the building in the foreground, which creates connotations of the rough side of urban life, which links well with the architecture in the image; it is that that is typically seen a poorer urban area as opposed to a rich one such as central London. I have composed this image using the rule of thirds composition rule; the point of interest is the building in the foreground, which I have positioned on along the left horizontal line of the rule of thirds grid, which means your eyes are immediately drawn to it. The building in the background has also been positioned on the grid, meaning it is also is positioned in a point where your eyes are drawn to it. However, this photo was taken freehand therefore it's slightly at an angle; I could improve this by either correcting in Photoshop or by re-shooting the image.
This is the image I have straightened in Photoshop. I did this by using the crop tool and selecting "straighten" on the toolbar along the top. it then prompts you to draw a line at what angle you want it to skew the image. I adjusted mine by about 2° downwards from the left to the right. As you can see, the resultant image is stabilised and appears as if it had been taken with a tripod.
Wednesday, 9 November 2016
Essay bibliography
Sources
(2015), Urbanisation, [https://21stcenturychallenges.org/urbanisation-2/] (Accessed 16th November 2016)
(2012), Calotype, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calotype] (Accessed 16th November 2016)
(2016), Lalock Abbey, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacock_Abbey] (Accessed 17th November 2016)
(2016), Street Photography, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_photography] (Accessed 17th November 2016)
(2010), Colour Photography,[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_photography#Color_film_since_the_1930s] (Accessed 17th November 2016)
(2006), Ferenc Berko Photography, [http://www.berkophoto.com] (Accessed 17th November 2016)
(2009), Photography, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography] (Accessed 17th November 2016)
Ashley-Cound, S , From the streets of London, [http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/picture-galleries/2011/february/18/from-the-streets-of-london/?idx=4&idx=4] (Accessed 21st November 2016)
(2006), Henri Cartier-Bresson, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson] (Accessed 21st November 2016)
Kim, E , (2007), Eric Kim Photography, [http://erickimphotography.com/] (Accessed 21st November 2016)
(2005), Bas Losekoot Photography, [http://www.baslosekoot.com] (Accessed 21st November 2016)
(2010), Wall Street, [http://www.baslosekoot.com/index.php?/projects/wallstreet/] (Accessed 21st November 2016)
(2010), Eadweard Muybridge: Defining Modernities, [http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/muybridge_image_and_context/animal_in_motion/] (Accessed 21st November 2016)
male lion walking, [http://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/270947] (Accessed 21st November 2016)
(2012), The Future of Photography: A Look at the Latest Trends in Camera Technology, [http://www.popphoto.com/gear/2012/05/future-photography-now-look-latest-trends-camera-technology] (Accessed 5th December 2016)
P, Ryan, (2015), 3 Ways Science is Advancing Photography Right Now, [http://www.digitalrev.com/article/3-ways-science-is-advancing-photography-right-now] (Accessed 5th December 2016)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)