Work record 6

Plan

My plan was to capture the sunset in a dramatic way by underexposing the image and shooting directly at it. This wold allow me to achieve a perfect sunset shot the would I feel look very good in contrast with the black of the surrounding underexposed areas.  This would allow me to develop the techniques of  exposure control and composition.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

Research:

I was inspired by the photographer Paul Reiffer who  has many photographic series on  sunsets, however i was mainly influenced by his Sydney series. 

In the series Paul captured the sun setting behind Sydney's famous opera house using it as a primary subject. The images all have a warm welcoming tone as a result of the yellow and orange hues produced by the light of the sun.

 The silhouette produced by photographic this way to me is very striking, as a clear and hard outline of the famous landmark is created centrally in the composition that pleases the eye and supports the surrounds foreground and background well.

By reviewing this image I will attempt to carry out my sunset using the natural landscape as my focus object with the sun in the background.

contact sheets:

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

camera settings:

For this shoot i had to rush out and take my images therefore i didn't prepare very well in terms of the hardware with would be using when photographing. 

I wasn't equipped with a tripod which was at first a concern as images where coming out jittery and blurred however after lowering the f stop to 16 from 32 and being able to increase shutter speed I got to the values above which enabled me to capture the style of image in the way I wanted it without the dreaded camera shake. In the future I should plan a a head and be prepared when going to to take images.

The settings above gave the images high contrast which is felt mimicked Reiffers work well as well c the face that all the images where very visually pleasing to the eye.

the 300mm focal length of the lens allowed me to frame the sun in conjunction with other surrounding objects but still was enough so that the sun was able to look large and prominent n the composition. If a wider angle lens had been chosen I feel the sun would've looked too small and the images would've therefore lacked string focus.

 The framing changed with having trees top and bottom of the frame so that the eyes of the audience would be drawn straight to the primary subject. the sun; the trees surrounding giving a almost black bar  media production feel.

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

I did try to experiment with the images in the style to the right, however the composition elements with the sun and the pylon didn't work for me and therefore I feel that these are my worst images in this shoot, not due to the photographic quality but the positioning of the subjects lacked a clear coherent focus and the eye was all over the place when trying to deduce the images meaning.
For me the rest of the images that I have put n my A04 didn't need editing as I felt I had obtained my desired images just with my camera therefore there is no editing for this shoot and as a result of this I feel that this shoot has produced some of my personal best photographs.
However after the images below where taken i decided  to move onto just focusing on the sun as a primary subject.
Also when taking the 3 bottom images i tried to use a technique that i studied that involves making a circular shape with some card board around the lens.  This gave the image a natural vignette and I feel that was a technique that I developed greatly when shooting these images.







AO4
best images:

Work Record 5

Plan 

the plan for this shoot was to experiment the idea of using time lapse photography to create a time lapse stitched together in Photoshop of the movement of the moon.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

Research:

I was heavily influenced by Dan Marker-Moor and his "time slice" art of photography especially this image below.

 The technique he uses is taking images remotely triggered at set times intervals which he further creates a collage from that give almost a time line of a scene such as the rising blood moon below.

I wanted to replicate this style in a shorter time frame but just of the moon itself.

contact sheets:

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

camera settings:

The settings where as listed as I wanted a perfect exposure with the detailed features of the moon to be visible as well. The shoot took place in my garden with a tripod setup and the moon positioned in  the bottom left of the frame.Ii gave it roughly 5 minutes before each shot and the distance it travelled with the single frame {frame was not moved} was recorded in a set of images below. 

The images did have to be retaken after the first attempt as the exposure values and colour was not correct for the style of image I was going for therefore I re took the images on the same day. this is what the previous images looked like with the previous exposure values. 

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

After the retake I put all the images together in Photoshop and layers them on top on each other using the slice tool. I marked the position of each lunar sphere via the ruler function and snipped strips which where then put into a seamless collage all together that is present in my AO4

AO4

Work Record 4

Plan 

for this shoot my plan was to conduct a night-scape photography of my road on a long exposure o create and eerie dystopian feel to the street with the sky in hues of purple and orange created by the light pollution.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

Camera settings

This shoot as you may be able to tell by the images above didn't go to plan due to the excess light and difficulty of exposing the images properly as a result I was forced to rethink for the next shoot and dis guard plans of night-scape city photography. the images where underexposed so that the light would blowout out however then the image became too grainy and dark therefore I increased the exposure. however this yielded in the overexposing o street lights. 

in the future when planning to conduct a shoot like this is should use neutral density filters that reduce exposure massively to ensure that the exposure of the overall image is properly done.

I used a tripod to negate camera shake of the long exposure as it was at 20 seconds this in theory would've allowed me to get crisp clear shots .

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

 However even thought the images didn't turn out great at all i managed to salvage a few and by inverting bnw images in Photoshop and using levels and curves.  I focus on dulling extreme highlights by burning and dodging the details of the clouds and sky to replicate the eeriness of Fukase's work in the Ravens of solitude series which I was heavily influenced by. I do like the eerie feel of the series. the bleak monotone nature of the inversions allow for inferences about the modern world to be made suggesting it is a mundane place to be.

If I was to redo the shoot it would be in an area where light pollution was low and to have a set o filters I can use on at all times.

 I have achieved the images present in my AO4

AO4

These are my best edited images

Work Record 3

Shoot 3:

Plan:

My aim of this shoot was to photograph the clouds on a tripod, to produce strong individual images of abstract compositions that will allow me to produce a series of composite images in Photoshop.
This is the main style I would like to focus on for my exam pieces.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

Research:

I have taken inspiration from the portrait artist Amanda Clyne who paints portraits as a part of a composite image predominantly in strips.  By using the same technique of separating the image into different styles of stripes and shape I would like to achieve a similar effect as Clyne's portraits that give an eerie ambiguous feel about the identity of the people in her art works, where as i decided to contrast that theme but with the use of clouds.
This is a painting of hers and this style of image with slight variations such as inverting I will use to try and replicate in my own style with clouds.

contact sheets:

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

Camera settings:

The focus of this shoot was the extract the details of the clouds and pick up highlights on the feathers edges. as i was shooting into the sun to get highlights the ISO and exposure time had to be increase to 1600 ISO and 1/125s respectively. this is so that i could avoid much o the highlights and pick up the finer detail of the clouds whisky edges.  

the high f stop of 32 was present as i wanted to capture the full detail the the clouds-scape and ensure no part was out of focus.

these setting allowed me to capture clear crisp images which i further developed by putting them into Photoshop.

I was using a tripod so motion blur of any sort wouldn't occur as well as a lens shade that help to cancel out glare and sun marks on the images as I was shooting on a bright sunny day. However if redoing the shoot i would use a polariser and UV filter so manipulate the blue and haze the sky as some fuzzy images where taken where haze was corrupting the image. 

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

after taking the images I began the meticulous task of editing them in the slice format that Amanda Clyneuses throughout her work. The ruler function helped me to mark out all the thin strips as you can see below and i selected then using the select tool, which then led me to inverting alternate sections. After doing this in the ao4 my final images have a 3d feel to them although they are flat images. This was a discovery I made after completing the edit below and I feel these would work well on a large scale gallery setting.

Similarly i created then other images using the same slicing technique in both strips and boxes for different effects.

I am very happy with the development of the images and feel that this is one of the main areas i will incorporate into my exam pieces specifically with the technique of inversion contrast at the for front.

AO4

These are my best edited images