Photography - Richard - Task 1

Workshop - Studio

When we first got introduced to the task, we were confronted with new types of techniques in photography.

Key Light - The main light in the studio. Aimed at a 45 degree angle and kept to one side. Mostly has a natural density filter

Back Light - Placed behind the subject that you're taking a photo of.

FIll Light - It fills the shadows from the main key light

Side Light - Puts half of a persons fax win a shadow. Angled at 90 degrees.

Bottom Light / High Light - Lights lowered/extended to create a shadow of the person depending on the area

We were then told to use these techniques in the studio and create several portrait photos showing the body language and facial expression of our person who was going to be shot in the studio.
Put into several groups, we experimented with low-key lighting and normal lighting.

Here is the setup of what it looked like. We had all the lights functioning and set them up against the wall. Adjusting the light brightness each time we took a photo.

This was my first photo. Tanaka was my subject. We told him to act surpassed. This gives the shadow more of a feature as a shadow. We had no issues capturing this photo. All we had to do was adjust the lighting height each time we took a photo of him because this gave us a range of shadows and shots to pick from. 

Here, I changed the hue & saturation in the photo with the blue effect. It's only a minor change because having too many effects ruins the photo's atmosphere. I also changed Tanaka and his clothing into a bright pink substance. I thought I'd just do this as I can get familiar with the photoshop tools. 

Personally, I think the original photo stands out the most due to the originality. If I were to change this, I'd make everything in a monochrome colour to give the feeling of emptiness towards the audience.

We then switched to low key lighting. This was more difficult because we didn't know what type of portrait photo to select. We finally positioned the low key light at a very low angle pointing up to a 45 degree angle. I was the shadow in this picture with the light pointing with Emily being the centre of the image. This gives the mood that someone is always watching and gives the viewer an unnatural feeling of feeling uncomfortable

I didn't give much effect to this photo. I changed it to a monochrome image because the feeling of black and white gives the audience a perspective of horror.  I prefer the edit to the original photo. It gives it that old horror film feeling. For example, Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock.  If I were to improve this I would enhance myself a little bit in the facial area.

For our next shoot, we were told to 'think outside the box' to build upon our knowledge. We went out of the college to take several JPEG images using landscape terms like " conventional " and " abstract ". The four themes of the photos were : Glass; Time; Heavy & Space. The image had to either be abstract or conventional.

I went to the local university round the corner from our campus. This photo was located by some stairs and I thought I could use the exposure of the weather and the subject to really capture a good photo. My settings were :
Shutter Speed - 1/640   ISO - 6400    F - 11
I managed to use the manual focus to my advantage and focus on the railing and wall on the right side. It took me several shots to get this right

Here, I managed to change the saturation of the image without affecting the railing. I thought this was both conventional and abstract as it focuses on the detail of the railing, while giving it a weird feeling with everything else being red. I prefer this photo to the original as the original looked dull and boring. I didn't have any issues on photoshop. It just took time to colour it in red by using the magnetic lasso tool to carefully highlight the wall and floor etc