College Exam

Well, we have reached the last stage of the AS Photography course, the exam question.

I have decided to do the question on portrait, god only knows why, it is probably my weakest area in photography. Actually, I do know why. Prior to seeing the exam question, I had booked the studio and arranged with my neice to shoot her in several of her dance outfits as a 'padding' to the first unit of work we completed.

Having discussed ideas with her, and worked out a time scale for costume changes etc, I knew there would be enough to enter as a whole unit, so when the portrait question came up on the exam paper I was chuffed.

At college, the tutor will always help you set up the studio, lights, backdrop etc and make sure you take the light meter reading correctly and accurately transfer it to your camera.

On the night in question my tutor put on one softbox, and took a light reading.

"Do I not need a second softbox on a lower setting on the other side of the model"? I asked.

"No, one will be fine, we've taken the light reading and the aperture will control how much light enters the camera" he said.

Me, thinking this was strange, but heck, he's the tutor asked,

"Should I use a reflector on the other side to bounce some light back in then"?

"You can do if you like" was his reply.

My brain is working overtime, how the hell will light from one side only be enough? Sure, you can do it with a model who sits and poses, but for a dancer, moving, jumping, twirling???

I decided not to go with my instincts and trust the tutor. I shot for almost 3 hours, with my neice doing costume changes quicker than superman in his telephone box, and we managed to use 6 different ones. The poses, leaps, twirls and smiles were awesome, and on the back of the camera they looked great. 284 photos later, I set off home. It was nearly 10pm by the time I got in, and the nights shoot had taken it's toll, but I was desperate to see the images on screen so I shoved my card in the slot and downloaded them all.

Shite.

Should have gone with my own instincts.

The shots were all really dark on one side, well when I say dark, I mean just about black. The only shots that really worked were the last costume she wore, which goes by the name of 'zombie'. For this outfit, I had decided that I would turn the modelling light down low and use a really bright torch stood on the floor to illuminate her face in a ghostly glow. The ones I took without the torch and with the studio light turned up worked quite well too because the lighting was what I had planned.

Downhearted, but not yet beaten, I booked the studio for two days later and we went back on the Thursday afternoon and did it all again. Because this was not my tutorage time, I had to set the studio up on my own, but for that I was actually grateful. One softbox on full power to the left, one softbox on half power to the right and another light with barn doors to illuminate the background. Perfect.

200 shots, and almost everyone totally adorable.

This is one of the zombie photos from the first shoot.




It is so hard to pick a favourite from the second shoot as there are so many really lovely shots, but I think this is right up there. It captures the movement I was striving for beautifully and I took it at exactly the right moment to catch her arms and her leg in the perfect position. The fact that she is so photogenic helps of course.





OK, so if you all club together, you could buy me a studio for christmas, and I could do this for a living!! What do you reckon?

Another London Shot

This shot, inspired by one of my friends who had seen a similar photograph during his research, worked perfectly. We had taken some during daylight to get the feel for the right angle, but by the time dusk arrived it was raining so there weren't many people around. I think it works well as it is though.

St Paul's Cathedral, via the Millennium Bridge

Catch Up

In an effort to put some posts up on my blog, which have been sadly lacking of late, I thought I'd share some of my photographs with you that I have taken for my AS Course.

For the environment unit, we had to research and then photograph different aspects of the environment. My final images are all of the shoreline, but working through the unit, I also photographed other environments.

This is one that I took in London on a trip I made with 3 of my college friends. Being a Sunday, I expected it to be busy and had to wait patiently for quite a while to get this shot, still it gave me time to set my camera up to capture the movement just the way I wanted it.

It's all in the Title

Now that Christmas and the New Year breaks are out of the way, I am again concentrating on college work.

I saw an image which inspired the beginnings of my current work, but I evolved it considerably to end up with the image below, which I think will be the last image I need for my current unit of work.

My idea was to create an image of a woman, something fairly strong but very simple and to portray the woman's character without photographing a whole person. Two parts of the image are self portraits and one is my daughter.

This is what I came up with, but I need your help. I think I managed to get the character into the image; a bit of fun, sexyness and maybe a little bit risque. Or can you see something else in the image? My problem is that I need an appropriate title. It needs to be something that defines the woman and/or the image but at the same time adds something to it... does that make sense?

Anyway, I thought I would turn it into a little caption competition for you all.....

So....

What's the title???

The 'How To' guide

Lots of you wanted to know how the images in my last post were created, so this post will give you all the information you need, not only to understand how they were created, but to have a go yourself. It really is simple.

The images were created from nothing more than smoke. Yep, really. The clue was in the title folks!!

I was going to write up a brief description on how to do it, but thought it would be easier to follow the original instructions instead of my ramblings, so what follows are photo's of the magazine pages which tell you everything you need to know from what equipment, how to set it up, right through to how to process and colour them in Photoshop.

I hope that if you click on the images they will be sufficiently large for you all to read the instructions.

Happy Snapping to you all, and if any of you create your own pictures, please drop by and let me know how you got on, I would love to see them.

Smoke Signals

Some of you may remember the photo I posted of bubbles, a very creative shot I produced after reading 'how to' in my camera magazine. For those of you that haven't been visiting since 2006, you can find it in my post 26things January 2006 . The only equipment needed to produce the picture was a pint glass, straw, washing up liquid and a bit of time.

Well, this month's magazine provided another of these gems. Something so simple you could do it at home with minimum kit and even better, with minimum time. The completed images they showed in the magazine were so fantastic I couldn't see how I could photograph something so beautiful, let alone reproduce them, but it gave all the 'need to know' info...

... so I just had to have a go and here are some of the results:


















I hope you enjoyed looking at these as much as I enjoyed producing them.

Merry Christmas everyone. x

Photographic work

I know, I know, you're all fed up with seeing those damn fireworks on here... or maybe no-one is visiting anymore cos it's been so long since I posted!!!

As I don't have the energy to blog, but am missing you all so much I thought I would share a couple of pieces I have been working on for the current unit of portraiture and the human form in my AS course. If you haven't already guessed, this is where my limited energy is being spent!

After researching other photographers and/or artists we are meant to try to replicate at least one piece and also to show that our own photographic work has been directly influenced by what we have researched.

With this in mind, whilst conducting my research I came across this composite photograph by the great Jerry Uelsmann. It touched me instantly, being such a strong image I knew it would be the one I would recreate.

This is Uelsmann work, entitled 'Symbolic Mutation', produced in 1961

This is my reproduction with my own photo's which I have titled "Wife Beater"



I was also influenced by some of his other work. Many of his images involve hands, often with the sea or a landscape in them and figures of some description.

The following, although not a copy of his work was influenced by it, and is a piece that I am really pleased with.

I entitled it "In God's Hands"

Fireworks

A few photo's from a firework party I went to last weekend.

The Wedding

These are a few of the photo's from last weeks wedding shoot, as promised. As you can see, the shots at the reception, in very low light, leave a lot to be desired, but it was the beginning of a very steep learning curve for me!!

Catch Up

Health:
Up and down, changing day to day. On Friday I had the best day I'd had in ages, and was feeling quite positive that I would be able to start my return to work in a fortnights time when I see my GP again. Then Saturday I had the worst day I'd had in several weeks. It's so bloody frustrating, I just wish I knew how much longer it's gonna take to recover. This is seriously doing my head in! A trip away tomorrow I suspect will leave me with more frustrations, as it is way more than I should be doing, but unavoidable... such is life.

Travel:
Tomorrow I am driving 330 miles from home to Middlesbrough. To be precise, to Teeside University. My daughter is hoping to attend the Uni next year after the completion of her Access course and they have an open day, which will provide her with a real insight into the course, the campus and the area. We are travelling up by car, and I am driving. The AA travel planner logs the route at 5 hours 50 minutes, but I'm sure I can knock a bit off that, traffic conditions permitting. We are staying overnight, and then spending Wednesday at the University.

Unfortunately, due to work commitments, she is not able to stop for 2 nights, as this would have given us the ideal opportunity to visit the moors and the local area in more detail. It would also have meant that I didn't have to do the return drive after a full days activity. Is such a shame, we both wanted to venture onto the moors, and I was hoping to take my SLR camera for the obligatory shots!!

With the lack of time, I don't think I will have the chance for much in the way of photography, but I will take my little point and shoot in case I get the chance for a couple of shots!

Anniversaries:
I have let 2 anniversaries slip by unnoticed too, for one reason or another. The first was my 1st anniversary here in blogland, which was way back at the beginning of September. What a long time ago that seems now! The second was my 21st. No, not my birthday, I wish, but my wedding anniversary last Thursday.

Photography:
I am continuing the enjoyment the Camera Club provides with regards to learning about photography in more detail, and also in being very critical about my own photographs that I produce to enter into the regular competitions they hold.

I have participated in the first 2 digital image comps already, and last week I entered the 1st print competition of the season. I spent ages trawling through my photo's, finding a very good reason why each would not quite cut the mustard so to speak! Having by that time, already sat through the judging session of the 1st digital comp, I had the judges comments ringing in my ears!!!

Not happy with any I had, I went out to shoot for the 'perfect' shot. It will be a long time before I produce such an image..lol ... but this was the second photograph I took that day, and the one I entered into the competition. I'll let you know how many holes the judge picks in it when the competition is judged later this month.

One of the categories they have for the digital competitions is 'Creative'. This is meant to be more than just taking a photograph and applying a filter in photoshop.

This is what I entered in Digital 1, which was judged at 18 pts. (The marks are always out of 20)

... and this is what I entered in Digital 2 ...

... in preparation for the third entry, this is the beginnings of an idea for Digital 3. The sharpness of this image is not right, I need a much greater DOP, but I was playing with the idea, and will hopefully shoot the eye again to create the image I enter. Each entry has to be titled, and after much deliberation, I think I found a fitting title for this effort. You may need to click on the image to really see what's going on:

Sight Seeing

Bins and Boreds

I'm bored as hell. Stuck at home, 'resting' on doctors orders, trying to recover from a 'viral' infection. Most days I am just too knackered to sit here for more than half an hour and have let the housework slip!

I thought yesterday, I would donate a couple of hours to it during the morning and see how I felt later in the day... big mistake! Anyhow, whilst tackling my kitchen floor, I moved my waste bin into the hallway to leave the floor clear for washing. As I placed the bin down the reflection of the hardwood floor caught my eye. The bin is stainless steel, and was nice and shiny 'cos I had just cleaned it. The floorboards reflections were warped around the circular bin and it fascinated me... told you I was bored!!




See how bored I was, I even placed it in different spots and directions, which completely changed the reflected image!






Are you bored too yet? No?

Well today, as I came back from the path lab (don't ask, more vampires), there were a group of little sparrows feeding on the lawn infront of the patio doors, I couldn't resist taking some shots of them.

Fun at the Fair

As promised, here are a couple more of the photos I took on my travels last weekend for Wednesdays 'F' word, that I won't now need either!!

I am putting them up, not because they are technical works of art but for no other reason than I think they are fun! Ooh, another 'F'!!!!






So remember people, when you're on a ride, be careful whose pointing a camera at you!!!


Something a little light-hearted to go with it...

Irish Diet

An Irishman was terribly overweight, so his doctor put him on a diet.

"I want you to eat regularly for 2 days, then skip a day, and repeat this procedure for 2 weeks. The next time I see you, you should have lost at least 5 pounds."

When the Irishman returned, he shocked the doctor by having lost nearly 60 POUNDS!

"Why, that's amazing!" the doctor said, "Did you follow my instructions?"

The Irishman nodded..."I'll tell you though, by jaesuz, I t'aut I were going to drop dead on dat 3rd day."

"From the hunger, you mean?"

"No, from the f**kin' skippin", the Irishman said.

Bath Time

Following on from yesterdays post, here are a few of the photos I took at the Hythe Canal. There are a lot of ducks there, and as I was walking back towards the car, the sound of splashing caught my attention. Apparently, it was bath time in Duckland!














One of my favourites:



Tomorrow I will post a few photo's that I took at the 'F'air on the green near the canal.