Seeing in Black and White.

Until today I thought that I "understood" photography... mostly everything you look at on a day to day basis is colour and until you view things in Black and white I do not think you will understand the concept properly. Although you see Shadows, Contrast, Depth of field, Texture and others things in Colour you definitely see them better in Black and White. 

During the Mini workshop that I completed today whilst taking my photographs of flowers/leaves I really thought about my aperture settings, I set this low due to wanting my background to be out of focus and my subject in focus. Composition was a massive thing that I thought about as well because photographing at different angles and distances can change your image completely. 

Here is a series of images that I created today from the workshop, I used Camera RAW, Photoshop and Silver Efex pro 2.

Firstly I could improve this series by choosing two other flower images to add to the bottom left and the bottom right to make this look semetrical. This workshop has really made me realise that you should always think about everything carefully and a series is not a series if they do not work together. 

I really enjoyed this work shop and I believe that this will make me a better photographer in the long run, I have a few beautiful shots from today but all I can do now is improve. 

HOW TO IMPORT IMAGES INTO LIGHT ROOM

• Firstly open up light room and go to the library 

• Secondly press the “import” button that is on the left hand side of the page

• Select the images that you would like to import 

• At the top of the page there is options of what you would like it to save as, press the “add” option and then press import. 

Light room has a lot of advantages compared to Photoshop, However I do still much prefer Photoshop due to using it for several years now. I can not get my head around using light room. 

• Editing is not destructive; no editing that you do is changed on the image until the photograph has been exported. This means you can keep making adjustments to images and absolutely no quality will be lost. 

• In light room there is something called ‘collections’ and ‘Smart collections’ these tools are great if you have a selection of images that are going to a series or you just genuinely want them in the same folder. You could put your photos in a collection and then you can open up light room on another day and they will still be in the collection folder. 

• In photo shop if you wanted to move from Levels to hue/saturation you would have to open and close the adjustment layers which takes a little bit of time. However on light room you can use them all at the same time, which saves time. 

• The history stays all the time on light room, however with Photoshop as soon as you close it down it completely gone. 

Advantages of light room :

Also in light room you can put a star rating on your photographs with the ones that you like and you can also add ‘tags’ to them which makes it easier in the future to find them. 

Overall I do think light room has some great features and I think that you can do some interesting things on their but I do much Prefer photo shop simply because I have a lot more experience with it. 

What is Adobe Photo shop (camera raw)? 

Adobe Camera Raw is a tool that is used before you open your raw photograph up into Photo shop. This program allows you to make any camera corrections, which may have changed whilst you have imported your images to the computer. This program makes it easier to retouch your image, rather than doing it all through the main photo shop program. 

I always shoot my photographs in Camera raw because it gives an over all better quality, I always use photo shop to edit my photos and I never fail to use Adobe Camera Raw before hand because it makes a massive difference in time I spend editing. I think this is a great tool to use due to being able to change basic things on your image using the side bar (as shown above), you can correct your lens for any shaking that may of occurred while taking the image. You can make changes to pretty much anything on camera raw which ensures your editing process in Photoshop will be quicker, if you need to do any further editing that is. 

Scanography

Scanography is form of photography using a photo scanner instead of a camera, it is classed as photography however can be seen very different to photography to some people. 

I found these images here and I find them extremely interesting! It is amazing what can happen from just using a scanner. I love how the images are not crisp clear or "in focus" but they take you in to another world!

Above is the contact sheet from the scans I have created. I added a lot of motion into my scans and was not completely still while scanning.

Self portraiture project

Plan for photoshoot 1: 

To start of my self portraiture project I will be using my Instax Mini 8 Fujifilm camera, I would like to have 8 images from this photoshoot which will take place at home. The images I will be taking are going to be “everything that I hate about myself” The camera I will be using is pretty basic with only 5 settings to choose from, these include : home, daylight, sun, cloudy and high definition.  

https://fogandflare.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/img_1099.jpg

The reason I would like to do this photoshoot at home is because that is where I am most “myself” and can show the true me, I aim to visually communicate to the ages from 13-25 that everyone has things which they hate about themselves but that does not make them a bad person, and it does not mean other people wont think they are beautiful any way. 

I feel that photoshoot went really well! It did feel extremely awkward due to never taking photographs of body parts that I hate on my Instax camera before, I had no idea where to point the camera and to be honest some images did show more background than I expected. To over come this I decided to use an old mascara to scribble around the out corners of the prints. I feel that this has made the photographs look much more professional due to only being able to see the the parts that I hate about myself and not the background. I do not think that this completed visually communicated to the age range I wanted it to, however I do think it has some sort of communication. On the camera I used the home setting with the built in flash and It has worked extremely well. If I was to re take these photographs I would definitely try and aim the camera closer to the parts I wanted to photograph. 

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Plan for photoshoot 2: 

When I was back in secondary school some people used to bully me and call me "four eyed freak" "wonk" "spotty", for this photoshoot I aim to recreate what people used to say to me, using a harsh focus on each image ( I will do this using photoshop) I also want these images to be dull and prehaps black and white to show the dullness in the words used towards me. This photoshoot will be another one from home in my bedroom, I will be using my Canon 600D DSLR Camera, my 18-55mm lens and a tripod. 

                                 

 

Final 2 images from this shoot 

This photoshoot was actually extremely hard for me to because It brought back so many memories from when people had upset me and made me feel very insecure. I have chosen 2 images from the shoot and using photoshop made them black&white, I also used levels to add a little contrast. The reason behind me taking the colour away is because I do not feel colour shows the real meaning of the images, colour just makes them look like a big joke. Although when images are B+W they look a lot darker and make people read into a story. As you can see I have only focused the camera on the foreground and not the back ground so that the images appear more sharp. 

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Plan for photoshoot 3: 

Continuing on from Photoshoot number 2, I aim to focus more on the "dot to dot spots" section, This will be another home shoot, using my canon 600D camera and a 18-55mm lens. I will be using a tripod for this shoot with a remote shutter control. 

        

             

Above are the contact sheets for the shoot and also my final image, to be completely honest I do not feel that I have gave my full potential into the shoot because I did not really think about it as such or come up with a proper plan I just went ahead and did it. The image I have chosen as my final image I feel is extremely effective and sharp. This image reminds me of some of Nan Goldin's work, not the best quality image or the best crop, however a real story. 

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Plan for photoshoot 4: 

This photoshoot will be influenced by Cindy Sherman, I aim to create images stereo typing what people expect of young ladies in this century! My target audience will be aimed towards 16yrs-25yrs.

I plan to use a white wig because most people expect girls to have this sort of colour hair or they are seen to not be good enough or not beautiful. I also plan to wear lots of makeup. I will be using my Canon 600D camera to shoot this. 

 

This shoot went quite well to be honest considering all I was using for this photoshoot was natural lighting and it was quite dark out side, I have a lot of yellow casts through out the images but with photoshop I think I have saved my final image. I added contrast on to the image and some vibrance. This photoshoot I aimed to create "beauty" in the way people see it in this society. I was extremely influenced by Cindy Sherman for this photoshoot because she looks at identity and how people portray themselves. I feel that I have communicated what I wanted to really well, I feel that the final image is bright and vibrant enough for it to be a typical society beauty image, typical makeup and typical hair.

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Plan for photoshoot 5:
The aim for this photoshoot is for me to visually communicate naturalness in people vs how people think they are expected to portray themselves.

The equipment I aim to use will be me shutter release button, Canon 600D camera, Tripod, A paper mask and makeup to make a stereotype of the "norm" of society.
I will be using a high key lighting set up in the studio for this photoshoot to illuminate my facial features.

 

 

Final images from the "real vs fake" photoshoot : 

This photoshoot went really well and I believe that I got my full potential out of it. I found it extremely hard for the first half an hour in the studio due to not being able to focus the camera on my face, in the end I asked a class mate to make sure I was in the camera frame and in focus. Once I was in focus I had to adjust it slightly each photograph I took but it all went a lot better. I think that using a high key background enhanced what I was aiming to visually communicate due to it being easier to see all my facial features.

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Plan for photoshoot 6:


"Putting on my beautiful face"

The majority of the society in the 21st century do not feel beautiful without makeup or surgery and if they have to go a day with out makeup for some reason they feel ashamed and really un comfortable. I aim for this photoshoot to be the steps to making myself beautiful and feeling "myself" wether thats being fake.
I will be using the studio for this photoshoot with low key lighting. I will be using my tripod, my canon 600D camera and my shutter release button.

                                               















 





















So for my final photoshoot it was the best one I did throughout the project I am very happy with my outcome, I think my images are very effective and show what people automatically expect to see (makeup on girls). I feel my images are very strong towards what I hoped to communicate.