Researching Artists

There are four artists that I came across in my research stage and I thought it was important to look at their work before I went out and took my own images.

The criteria of my brief? A collection of images that equally promoted the old and the new around Hull. Something that could be used in marketing of thew freedom festival in 2017. I was interested in black and white photography of architecture because by removing the colour there is instantly more focus on situations, sceneries, objects and people.

Ellen Fisch was the first person I came across during my research. Her compositions are interesting as they use leading lines to make the user look at the focus of the image, which was generally not shown in the image, this was interesting as it attracted the viewer to something that isn’t visible in the image. You can see this in these three images below. This is something I believed was worthwhile noting for my photo shoots.

Joel Tjintjelaar images are really good, I found them a very helpful part of my research and you will see very clearly how he has effected my work. The images were shot in a way that they became abstract due to the fact that they have been taken in an unusual way. Joel is also another photographer who presents his images in a square format. So the lessons I have learn’t from Joel is that taking abstract and unusual images using depth of field and leading lines pays off, and that presenting your images in a square format works well.

David Gutierrez was next with a mix of styles. While choosing not to create square photos, there are clear depths of field in these images. Two of the images use leading lines to create interest while the other focuses more on framing the image. You can see them below.

Kelly McCann chose to mix between landscape and square format images, she uses framing in the shot of chapel, and she also uses the rule of thirds in the images to allow the viewer to get a sense of perspective when looking at the images. These images work really well and will influence my work.

Cameron Nielson has an interesting take on his architecture which he has branded as ‘straight up’ where his signature is that he just points the camera straight up and shoots. He ends up getting some interesting photos that show the the skyline of the building whilst also capturing the sense of scale with field of depth and leading lines, as we all stand street side look up, this is something every viewer can relate too.

I believe using leading lines to draw attention to the focus point of the image works well, so I will be using this technique, I also like the images being square as I think it allows for a constant size, which is the same for all images, making it more about the content than the shape.

References:

http://www.kellymccann.co.uk

Joel Tjintjelaar – http://www.bwvision.com/

David Gutierrez – http://www.davidgutierrez.co.uk/london-photographer–black-and-white-photography.html

http://www.ellenfisch.com

http://straightup.co/portfolio/san-francisco/

Advertisement

Hull Open Day

Hull College had an open day for potential students and asked me to take some photographs of the day for the student union to use in advertising, below is the contact sheet:

CONTACT SHEET

I selected a couple of the images that worked well and used the techniques I have previously used, I ended up with a total of three quality images.

The first one was a shot of the classroom, I weaned to focus on the boys looking forward as if they are concentrating, a crop of the image fixed this. I also noticed there were a few ‘distracting’ elements to the image, the boy forefront in the image had a black eye which I was able to lighten up and made the area look a bit healthier, there is a lot of noise out the window so I was able to remove a lot of unnecessary items out side to tidy it up, then i tidied the room up inside by removing sockets on the wall and loose wires which made the image look a lot cleaner and allowed the viewer to focus on the people. The last adjustment I made was to play with the levels of the image, this allowed me to change the lighting to brighter the image as a whole. You can see the original and edited versions below:

The second image was of the Hull College logo printed on a window with a reflection of the church behind it. It was a nice image to begin with but a fees adjustments made it a whole lot  better. Firstly I removed the dirt from the glass, lights behind the glass and unnecessary reflections. Next I played with the levels to allow the logo to stand out even more, and then finally I selected everything but the logo and filled a layer with black, then brought the transparency down to 10% to make the background darker and again to make the logo stand out more.You can see the original and edited versions below:

The last image I edited was of the front of the building with the logo on it, again the image didn’t look right so I edited it in photoshop. In this image i removed lights within the building and the used the clone tool to clone closed windows onto open windows making all the windows closed, I straightened the image, cropped it then changed levels on the image to make sure the colours looked right. You can see the original and edited versions below:

Shutter Speed

The aim of this experiment was to put what I had learn’t about shutter speeds into practise. I was to create a set of three images with a variation of the shutter speed. This meant I had an image for the slow shutter speed, fast shutter speed and also a panning shot. We shot all the images at the roadside with the cars travelling past.Here is the contact sheet for the shoot:

CONTACT SHEET
The slow shutter speed shot was done easily by setting the exposure time to 1/8s and the iso speed to 100, this results in a image where the background is completely still while the object becomes blurred. You can see the best example of this here;

The fast shutter speed shot was really simple, all I did was set the exposure time to 1/125s and the iso speed to 160, this results in a image where the background and the object are completely still. The object looks completely frozen because it is captured at 125th of a second.You can see the best example of this here;

The final example I have is of a panning shot,  this basically is where the camera follows the object. This means that the object stays in focus but the background becomes blurred, it works really well to show off motion. You can see the best example of this here;

Exposure and Field of depth

The aim of this experiment was to put what I had learn’t about aperture and field of depth into practise. I took a few photos to practise using the techniques needed and here is the contact sheet for the shoot:

CONTACT SHEET

The aperture is the main focus of what I was doing in this shoot. The bigger the aperture the more light is let in and the more the background is blurred while the opposite is also possible where the smaller the aperture, the less light meaning more in focus the image is. Here you see two images, one is with a smaller aperture and the other with a large aperture.