Assignment progress.

I feel like I have been making much more progress in the last couple of weeks and feel much happier with how I have been doing. I have always had the final assignment in the back of my mind and make sure I have a notebook and pen to hand, as I never know when inspiration may strike. This last weekend I have started to shoot it. Using my mum and her Dementia has been a lot harder than anticipated. I think I thought that as long as everything was well planned and thought out then that would see me through. Unfortunately this has not been the case. Because of the stage her Dementia is at it means that I cannot give her instructions and it is impossible to get her to sit or stand still when required. I have been lucky that I have had my sister over to be my assistant and also star in some of the photos. To try and be in them myself, I quickly realised, would make the whole situation way too stressful for mum and also myself. The theme is to be 'a day in the life' showing some of the things I do on a daily basis to care for mum.

Another thing I have found quite difficult is showing many of the techniques I have learn throughout the course, so I have been referring back to the course material quite a lot.

In some ways I feel as though the subject may be too personal to use for the assignment as I tend not to tell people much about my private life and what I do at home. I did obviously speak to my sister, as I needed her to be involved, but also to my dad. I did not want to feel like I was doing this behind his back, let alone have him think that I was in anyway 'using' mum. He actually made me feel better and said that he understood how the subject could be of interest to other people. I am a little concerned that people will look at my shots and be bored, they are not visually exciting; they show exactly what I do day to day. I guess in that respect I have achieved what I had set out to do.

London.

I had a trip to London last weekend (a very belated birthday present from February!) to see Shrek the Musical and see Covent Garden. I decided to take my camera along and get some practice in. I chose to take my Fuji instead of the Nikon I now tend to use. This was mainly because the Fuji is quite a bit smaller and lighter than the Nikon and I thought it would be easier to carry around with me. I obviously got the Nikon because a setting on the Fuji does not work properly but I thought if I just avoided that then it would be ok.

The day turned out to be a bit of a disaster, photography wise. Whilst I do love the Fuji it is just not up to the same standard as the Nikon and I have to say I did struggle with it a bit. I think this is because for about eight months I have been continuously using the Nikon and I found it hard to switch back to the Fuji. Obviously using the Nikon has become second nature to me which is one of the things I hoped would happen when I first started this course. The quality of the images produced was just not up to scratch either, I just could not seem to get the focus right on it. The images at the time were crystal clear as far as I could see, but once on the laptop they were distinctly blurred. Maybe this was down to feeling under pressure to shoot quickly or does the camera now have a problem with the focus also? I am hoping that it is the former and will be properly testing it out.

I think that this was a valuable experience even though things did not turn out as I hoped they would. I have realised that I am more in tune with my camera than I had previously thought, which has given me more confidence. However, it would be nice to be able to switch effortlessly between cameras!

These are only a few of the images I took, I wanted to show an overview as some are fairly similar. Also as I used the Fuji it does not tell me the settings I have not shown them here.



Exercise: Rain

"Imagine a magazine cover on one subject: rain. You have the entire cover space to work in, and you should produce a single, strong, attractive photograph that leaves no one in any doubt about the subject."

1/200 f5.6 ISO 640 58mm WB auto

I have been waiting a while to shoot this project. I had tried to complete it a while ago but it was so nice and sunny it would of meant 'faking' rain with something like a watering can, or being a bit more adventurous. I wanted to produce something more genuine. I decided to take advantage of the awful weather we have been having and go out into the garden the next time it rained (although this has been pretty continuous!) I tried photographing some flowers being showered with rain but the images were not coming out as clear as I had hoped. While looking for inspiration I looked down at the ground and saw this maple leaf with droplets of rain on it. I actually really like it and it makes me immediately think of rain.

The Shooting Gallery Series 1

Whilst looking on 4OD I came across the art, design and literature section. I investigated further and found The Shooting Gallery which is a "collection of original material, award-winning shorts and Internet hits focusing on still image and photography.

I decided to take a look at Series 1, Episode 9 ( there appears to be only one episode available for watch series) called 'Caught on Camera' a collection of short films.

1. Back to the Future: A profile on Irina Werning who travels the world recreating photographs from peoples childhoods. I particularly liked this idea and am actually quite keen on giving it a go myself. She says that she will only work on 10 pictures at a time. There are stories behind why each person wishes to have their image recreated which she learns as she works on each one. She believes that the details in each photo are very important as they can distract you from the person shown.

2. The Neglected: UNESCO award winning photographer David Gillanders followed young drug addicts of Odessa, Ukraine for three years. These children live underground and are forgotten by society. many of the images show children coming up out of man hole covers and other tightly cramped places. This to me represented how they are trapped in their situation and are desperate to escape. Many of the children shown in the images actually died.

3. In Focus: shows blind photographer Pete Eckert, who calls himself a blind visual artist, and an unexpected exhibition of his work in New York City. His work was amazing and shows there is no limit to what you can do and as he put it himself "blindness is no barrier to seeing things clearly".

4. Dark Clouds: Chinese- British photographer Ian Teh highlights China's industry, showing coal fields and the hidden side of the economy. It showed a glimpse of another life and world that is rarely seen. China is the biggest producer of CO2, ruining people's health. Thousands of miners are killed each year in the most dangerous job. These images really do show a dark side to life.

5. Caracas: A portrait of life in the slums of Caracas and and the people who live their.

6: A Life Alone: New York photographer Maisie Crow follows Tom Rose, who after 63 years of married life finds himself alone for the first time after his wife's death. This video was actually quite upsetting as Tom admits that he no longer sleeps upstairs in the bed he shared with his wife as he can't bear to go up there alone.

7. The Stolen Scream: About Noam Golai who had posted photos of himself screaming on flickr and then found that the images had been used on tshirts, magazine covers and even on walls in Iran as a sign of protest. This had all been done without his knowledge! I myself would probably be furious that my work had been used without my permission but Golai sees it that people all around the world have still viewed his work.

I have enjoyed watching snap shots of other photographers work and have found some to be inspiring. I think that coming across The Shooting gallery has been worthwhile and I shall continue to watch other episodes. I think that if you can take something away from each persons work you view, even if it is deciding what you do and don't like then it has been a positive experience. 

Duxford Flying Legends Airshow.

Leading up to the final assignment I have been thinking about various ideas, one of which is having my subject as the Flying Legends Airshow at Duxford. After discussion with my tutor I decided not to use this idea, as my tutor put it, it will look like I have photographed my family day out. This is a very valid point! I therefore decided to go along and use it as further practice for the assignment. I took around 300 photos and found the whole day to be a great experience.

Before the day I produced a story/ideas board of various things I could photograph there in the hope that there would be more structure to my day.

When choosing which images to include here I had kept in my mind that the final assignment requires 6-12 images. I was also conscious of showing a wide variety of images to portray the day but they must still all link together.

1/30 f4.5 ISO 250 28mm WB AUTO



1/200 f4.5 ISO 250 32mm WB AUTO

1/30 F4.5 ISO 250 34mm WB AUTO

This image shows a Liberty V12 aero engine from the first world war and is actually my favourite image from the whole set. I particularly like the composition which i have really tried hard with to produce something visually interesting.

1/20 f4.5 ISO 250 35mm WB AUTO

Using photoshop I have made this image slightly underexposed as I was trying to recreate a slightly dark image. I have also photographed with the camera slightly out of focus because I was trying to make it look as though this had just happened and there was a lot of dust. I kept thinking that if you were there at the time you would maybe lose the ability to focus yourself as you tried to work out what had just happened.

1/4000 f7.1 ISO 250 105mm WB AUTO

1/640 f7.1 ISO 250 70mm WB daylight.

The day all of a sudden got brighter, it had been threatening to rain on and off which is when I took the opportunity to visit the hangers. This gentleman had walked passed while I was watching the airshow. His outfit had immediately caught my eye as he paused near to me. I thought I would take the chance to photograph him as he too watched the show, but just as I had got in position he turned to face the camera. Afterwards he was actually rather pleased I had photographed him.

1/800 f5.6 ISO 250 105mm WB AUTO

1/4000 f5.6 ISO 250 105mm WB daylight

Here I wanted to concentrate on the lines produced by the planes as opposed to the actual planes themselves. I wanted the plane to appear almost like a silhouette.

1/4000 f5.6 ISO 250 105mm WB daylight.

1/4000 f5.6 ISO 250 105mm WB AUTO

The sky had started to darken again which was unfortunate. I have filled the light in slightly using photoshop. I think that this image captures the day as a whole.

Conclusion.

Using this day as a 'practice' for the final assignment has given me a lot to think about. I have had to deal with things that have been out of my control such as the weather. I have had to think about composition a lot more than I have previously. I have also had to think about settings as well as change them quite quickly. I got much better at this as the day went on and it became almost second nature. Shutter speed has also been an issue as the planes all travel at different speeds so I have also had to practice a bit with these settings. I could of really done with a longer lens at times, to be able to produce the images I had in my mind but I am happy with what I have produced. I feel like this has really been a worthwhile exercise.



Recommended websites.

In my feedback for assignment four my tutor gave me two websites to take a look at. The first was www.dg28.com, a site by Neil Turner who is a UK based editorial and commercial photographer with over 20 years experience. I was to mainly look at the education section of the site which gave me a large quantity of posts showing various techniques. My tutor suggested I look at "studio light/flash outdoors to complement natural/ambient light" which would be relevant to the comments that he made.

While I took a look at the majority if not all of the techniques I could see I was particularly drawn to 'adding to the ambient light' - using the flash to supplement the ambient light without replacing it, 'why we use lights' - the difference between with and without flash on a cloudy day, and 'back on the beach' - proving that you do not need brilliant sunshine for an image (too bright, gives unattractive shadows etc) instead and overcast day makes for much more interesting lighting.

Another I was given was http://strobist.blogspot.com. The Lighting 101 section was useful and I particularly liked the analogy that was given that lighting was like cooking, "you work with one ingredient at a time, and adjust to taste". I love how this has been put and it actually does make sense to me. A lot of the posts to start with are all based around the equipment involved, as well as the cost. I did skip through these a bit to get to the more 'technique' based posts. I have to say that I was drawn to the post on hard light. I found it interesting as often hard light is seem as 'bad' and we tend to focus on diffusing shadows, hard lighting really worked well with the image shown. Another post that caught my eye was untitled 'don't let good light ruin a photo', particularly the line "don't just walk in with your lighting technique set in stone". We should all be able to adapt easily to circumstances beyond our control,such as lighting, and still be able to produce an interesting and attractive image.

Assignment 4 - feedback.

I have just realised that I have not posted anything in nearly 3 weeks! In that time I have been on three courses for work, two of which have been in my own time - and I also have an assignment to complete on the most recent course. This is something that may take me a while to complete and is eating into my amount of free time. I have however just treated myself to an ipad which I am hoping will allow me to update my blog on the go, particularly when I am out shooting.

I have just this second received a letter for the OCA about applying for formal assessment as I am "either working on or have now completed your penultimate course assignment". I cannot believe how quickly this has come round, and in many ways still think of myself as very much a beginner. Reaching this point makes me feel as though I should be much further ahead in terms of knowledge and technique.

Anyway, back to the subject of this post - assignment 4. I think I felt at the time that I was progressing well. My tutor felt that I should of built a story around the shoes, and to be honest I had considered this but felt that I was straying from what I should of been doing. I have now realised that I should of taken the risk and just done it instead of worrying what is 'right' or wrong.

I did do one thing that I am particularly annoyed with myself about and that is not re size the images. I think that I just became so focused on the assignment that I am always in such a rush to get it on the webserver (the bit that generally goes wrong) that it completely slipped my mind. The webserver was set up for me at the beginning of this course as I have no idea how you go about something like that. Unfortunately when it came to me putting my assignment on the webserver something had gone wrong and a whole new one had to be set up. I am hoping that when it comes to posting the next assignment, I have no problems.

Regarding the actual assignment I must really concentrate on a running theme and "try to tell a story with the images rather than just photograph exactly for the assignment". I think that in a way I have taken a bit of a backward step from assignment 3 as I seemed to of gone from starting to develop more creativity with the assignments to taking the brief too literally.

I must definitely show more of the processes I have gone through to reach my final images so with the final assignment I need to be much more through and take my time to show how my ideas and thoughts have developed.

I feel before the next assignment I must again go through all of the work I have done so far so that previous lessons can be combined to produced my final assignment.

I must also talk about why I have selected certain images , particularly if I have shot more than the required number.

I still keep shooting with the ISO way too high generally because I have not checked the setting before shooting. I also keep doing this with the f number so I shall be researching this further so that I can make better selections. I still need to state why I have made technical decisions regarding settings. I must also go through focal length again. My tutor has also provided me with links to other sites that will be particularly useful.

I feel that from this assignment I can take all of what has been said and use it to hopefully produce an assignment that can show how much I have learnt through the whole of The Art of Photography and take away skills and techniques that will provide a good base for future work.