Panorama

In this post I'm going to being giving you a step by step guide on how to create your own panoramic, through looking at one (with screenshots) that I made earlier!

What is a panoramic: A panoramic is basically a series of images that are manipulated in such a way as to make them seamless to create a long/large, continuous image to show a wide amount of a scene that couldn't usually be captured in the same way using any kind of lens.

 Below is a contact sheet of the images that I am going to transform into a panoramic.

 Firstly, before I start I would like to say that I could've manually done everything to transform these images into a panoramic, which would've included lots of cropping, fine tuning (including colours and contrast etc), stitching and blending but this stuff takes time and as we live in a fast paced society, with everything changing so fast I decided to experiment with the faster alternative. Also, Photoshop costs so much money you might as well let it work some of it's own magic, let it earn it's money! Right here's my step by step guide (I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS3 by the way.)

Before you start anything make sure that you have all of the images you want to include into the finished panoramic saved into one folder -as this makes things easier in a minute.

 ONE

 

So as you can see in the screenshot above you open Photoshop (and if you don't know how to do that it's not worth you looking on as this would be way over your head at this moment in time!) next you click on File, then go down to 'Automate' then select 'Photomerge'

TWO

Once you're in you click on the Browse button to select all of the files you want (which will all be conveniently in the same folder, if you followed my first instruction!) 

THREE

Once you have all of the files selected you can choose the 'Layout' which is basically telling Photoshop how to put the images together (in the screenshot above I have chosen 'Auto') once you are happy click on the OK button.

Photoshop will then run through the process automatically, you can sit and watch this if you like but it takes a while sometimes so I suggest a nice cup of tea and a digestive biscuit.

FOUR

Once Photoshop has finished doing it's thing you'll find Photoshop's 'finished document' opened in Photoshop, just like when you import images to photoshop yourself. The image will ususally look quite rough and need some cropping, just like the image in the screenshot above.

FIVE

At the end I always suggest zooming in and doing some last tweaks as the automatic process isn't as good as our eyes, especially when it comes to panoramics! I usually use the following tools to do this: Clone, Dodge, Burn, Spot Heal and Patch tool. In this screenshot I am using the Spot Heal tool.

 So that's the faster way of making a panoramic using Photoshop, don't forget to save at the end!

Here is my final panoramic, it looks a little crazy with half of a tree in one place and the bottom in the other, I've also lost a bench but this was down to selecting the wrong 'Layout' back before Photoshop did it's thing, I quite like the image like this as instead of being a true likeness of the area I photographed it has turnt into something new!

I did however go back and start the process from the beginning again to select a different 'layout' (this time I chose perspective) just to illustrate the difference between certain settings, my final image is below.

A panoramic that  is a true likeness of the area that I photographed, just so you can see it does work!

Below are some other panoramics that I've found on flickr that I just thought I'd share with you so you can get the full impact of what can be achieved.

Panoramic by Cory Lum

Panoramic by Dibyendu Das Photography 

Panoramic by ragega!!ery™

Final Major Project: New Parents

FMP: 'New Parents' Project Proposal

My new project theme is going to be about becoming and being a parent, I don't intend to do this in the conventional way of sharing family snapshots I intend to do this by taking still life images of objects that I can associate with the theme. I would like to print the images at 6x4 print size (as this has a family photo album feel to it for me) and I would like to frame my work ready for display in the end of year exhibition,
which also happens to be the last ever college photography exhibition that I will be taking part in as this is my final year of doing photography in education.

To be honest my inspiration for this project is my son and my desire to capture every moment photographically, it hasn't come from looking at anyone elses work and no photographers immediately spring to mind when I visualise my project.


Project update

I've decided to make my still lifes represent the realities of becoming and being a parent and after talking through my ideas with other members of the class to have my work decribed as 'shock art' I now have some ideas of artists that I can take a look at, if you don't know what shock art is then here is quote about it:

"Shock art is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents to create a shocking experience."  -  Extracted from the Wikipedia entry, to find out more see Shock art
 
  
Research

Damien Hirst 

Ok, so it's more of an extreme than my project but both projects have that shock aspect to them. This art installment by Hirst is titled "Away from the Flock" and is from Hirst's 'Natural History' collection. It's a dead lamb that has (although Hirst would protest against this statement!) been preserved. He has used a formaldehyde solution. Hirst talks of the connection of the Lamb and Jesus Christ creating meaning.

 Oliviero Toscani

Oliviero Toscani is famous for his controversial campaigns for the clothes company Benetton, I feel that the two images above are the closest in relation to what I anticipate to achieve. Toscani says that his images are related to topical issues and that he puts his shocking images out there, using Benetton as a platform, to start discussions between the viewers. I believe that the issues that Toscani raised whilst advertising for Benetton were valid but it was wrong for them to be used as an advertising campaign just for clothes.

 

The image above is of a deceased soldier's uniform, again it's another extreme case but this image has influenced how I imagine setting up and capturing one of my own images.

 Marcel Duchamp

This image by Duchamp is one of the earliest that I know of that is considered shock art, although it doesn't seem to be that shocking nowadays. It is of an old urinal that appears to have been turned upside down. To be honest, it doesn't have much of a connection to my project photographically, the only link I can make between our work is the categories in which they fall.

  Vooah on Flickr

Here's a still life image by Vooah on Flickr, The rotting fruit representing death and decay, two opposites of what I'm going for but they are also another factor of reality, life and death. I've mainly included this image as it has the kind of framing that I am hoping to achieve, macro style shots up close.

The Shoot

Since the birth of my son River, I've found myself doing more and more at home -including college work and I am fortunate enough to have a set of Interfit studio photographic flashes with a limited amount of attachments, including some spill kills, a white umberella and a softbox (as seen in the image below.)
 

My shoot took place on the front room sofa. My backgroud was a water proof bed sheet that was given to us during Kat's pregnancy so this adds to the personal meaning of the project, it was also very useful as it had elasticated edges so it sort of 'fit' around the sofa. 

As you can see I had limited space that I had to make the most of which did cause some limitation of how I could position and pose my chosen objects but I overcame this by doing some interesting folding of cloth based objects, which really brought out the parts that I was intending to photograph so I'm happy with that!

I don't have a lightmeter or a flashmeter so I estimated the exposure, as I know the shutter sync speed on my camera (Canon 40D) is 1/250 or a 250th of a second I only had to estimate the aperture and I was only 1 stop out with my initial guess!

After setting up and organising everything the actual shoot was pretty methodical, it was just a case of getting objects positioned right for what I wanted to capture, taking the photo and then swapping for the next object to repeat the process as I didn't want to alter the exposure or the way the flash was set up to keep things semi-consistent for the final images.

I believe that the shoot went really well, it was pretty fast considering I kept having to break to help sort River out! I captured all of my photographs in this one shoot and straight away I was on to the download, selection and editing process and the photos were printed by the next morning.

Final Prints

Below are my final prints, complete with titles and a short description.

FMP: New Parents: Bloody Sheet

 My first chosen image is of a bloody sheet that my son was born on at the hospital, the texture of the dried blood was what attracted me to using this image.

FMP: New Parents: Bloody TShirt

 This is the t-shirt that I was wearing during the birth and when my son was first passed to me, that's how it ended up blood stained. Again the blood assisted me in choosing this image.

FMP: New Parents: Used Nappy

The title says it all, it is a used nappy that was actually freshly changed just before this image was taken, the colour of the poo is near enough just right for a breastfed baby, just incase you wanted to know. Nothing visually represents the reality quite as much as this image as most of your time is spent changing nappies and inspecting baby waste! 

FMP: New Parents: Hospital Bracelets

These are my son's hospital bracelets, he had one for each ankle - I just wanted a still life image of these for myself but when I saw the gunky stuff on one I decided to re-position them and include this into the final project  too.

FMP: New Parents: Umbilical Clamp

 This is the umbilical clamp, with a little bit of dead flesh from the umbilical cord, this was the object that inspired me to take still life images of objects to portray the realities of parenting.

FMP: New Parents: Milk Pot and Syringe

Finally we have a pot and syringe given to us by the hospital for the purpose of feeding our son, if you look closely you can still see some milk residue, I think this was the trickiest image to capture as the pot sort of blends with the background but I balanced this by having the numbers on the syringe facing towards the camera.

 Just for the purposes of health and safety I just thought I'd add that I disposed of the syringe, nappy and other potentially harmful things in the correct manner.



  Presentation

As this is my final ever college photography project and it's going into the college photography exhibiton I decided that it was time that I actually spent some cash on this project to buy some frames for these prints, just as I said in my proposal. So I went shopping for some good deals in different shops around Brighton and in the end I purchased two long frames with an inlay to fit three 6x4 prints, perfect for what I wanted! They only cost £20 in the end so my bank account is happy!

Above is an image of the two frames containing my final prints as they will be displayed in the exhibition.

Final Conclusion

So that's it, my last ever college photography project, I feel I've used most of my technical knowledge with lighting and cameras and in my opinion this project contains the most meaning, both to me and the wider audience. I feel this balance has assisted me in creating a coherent and thought provoking series of images and artwork. This coupled with my presentation style really pulls the project together and seriously does do it justice, it is even better than I imagined, I found myself looking at the final framed prints over and over again! The end of my college life, as it is, had been inevitably lurking in the background for a while and I am very pleased to have thought of, developed and produced this project as my signing off piece that will be on display.

I've shared my work to others and I think that it'll only be fitting to include some quotes from them:

"Your work is nearly always brilliant, but this goes beyond even what you're capable of in terms of brilliance!"

"Wow mike, these are great! Refreshing to see some reality in documenting birth. Great use of (lack of) colour too. Well done :)"

"Fantastic photos Mike. A very different take on photographing birth -not exactly romantised images but definitely powerful, linked by the white and bodily function theme running through the series."

  "This is brilliant, exactly what I wasn't expecting!" 

"A true visual representation of the realities."

"That's going to put some people off of their breakfast." 

In my own opinion (and as you can tell from my paragraph above) I am sure that this project has been a success but even projects that I feel are a success still have room for some improvement and here's mine for this project: I could've done with some more space to set up and photograph in, an example of when this would've been usefeul is for an image I'd planned for the t-shirt, I couldn't flatten the t-shirt out to take a photograph of the whole thing (an idea I had, inspired by Toscani's image of a deceased soldier's uniform for a Benetton campaign.) however looking upon the final results this lack of space forced me to explore alternative ways of positioning objects. So if I was given the chance to re-visit this project I don't think I'd change much, maybe print larger prints?

I'm going to stop writing now as I feel a song coming on... 

__________________________________________________________________

 Please be aware that the planning and research below was for the original project I proposed to fulfil however I postponed that project and have completed the project you have read about above to fulfil the Final Major Project brief. 

Here's why: I changed my idea as I became inspired by the birth and impact of my son and this gave me the idea for the project above, which has more personal meaning to me. Also learning and having to adapt to being a parent and having a newborn baby was very time consuming and tiring at first so this rendered me unable to complete the below project before expiring the deadline. 

I intend to complete the below project outside of college in the near future, if you would like to be a part of the project below named  "Project Fishfingers" please email me at: mike@mikeaddison.com 

The Planning and research for my original project idea:

The Original Project Proposal

My theme for my final project is to comment on the ever increase of our dependence on digital technology and suggest that it is slowly consuming us. I would like to produce a maximum of four darkroom prints that I will frame – I’m going old style you see!

My early influence for this project is Michael Tompert, the French photographer who destroyed apple products.

I have two ideas that I could follow both contain portraits.

The first idea is to set up, in a controlled situation the piece of technology and then let my models, who will be chosen very carefully and briefed beforehand, choose a tool and destroy the technology in whatever way they feel necessary, it’ll be almost therapeutic! I will photograph this process for my workbook and for possible prints. After we’ve been through this process I’m going to take a portrait of the model with the ‘dead’ technology that they’ve destroyed.

The second idea is to shoot everything in the studio and use cables and computer parts to smother the model as a metaphor of ‘plugging’ them in to the technology.

For my project I intend to only use analog photographic equipment such as 35mm film cameras and the 5x4 large format camera. It is important that I don’t use digital photographic equipment so this means whatever I produce in the darkroom is what I will use, or I will just have to shoot again on film. The downside to this is that this will cost more money and take more time but I feel it is an important factor of the project. The majority of my work will either be in the darkroom or in my workbook, maybe at the end of the project I will scan everything in and put it on my blog in a book style for a wider audience to read.

To evaluate my work I will first make my own review and conclusion of the project, I will then ask others to look at and review my work. I will also get the models to write me a statement after they do the shoot and to give me a review when they see the finished product.

Research

Michael Tompert

Famous for destroying apple products.

His project was born out of him losing his temper when his two children fought over an iPod Touch where Tompert stamped on it and then took a photo.

  

Tompert links:
 http://www.freshnessmag.com/2010/11/19/michael-tompert-x-paul-fairchild-destroyed-apple-products/

http://www.cultofmac.com/68997/artist-pays-homage-to-apple-by-destroying-its-products/



Yousef Karsh

Winston Churchill, 1941

Karsh would do certain things to get the desired reaction from the people he was photographing.
 In the image of Churchill he had already taken him by surprise by switching his lights on as he was passing, when churchill agreed that Karsh could take 1 photograph he lit up a cigar, to get the reaction Karsh wanted he took the cigar from Churchill's mouth and the look that churchill gave was what Karsh was looking for.  


In the image of Marian Anderson, an african-american singer. When Anderson's accompanist had come to rehearse with her Karsh got them to play some of Anderson's favourite song and she started to hum this was when he chose to capture this moment.

Marian Anderson, 1945

Project Updates: Changing the project, it's now titled "Project Fishfingers"


My idea has adapted slightly, we are still smashing things up but I've decided to open the project up and make it more about the therapy side of things. I intend to find out what annoys my models and somehow visualise that thing so they can destory it, with a time limit of two minutes, after a few encouraging words from me!

I intend to photograph the destruction of the object and then straight after set up a portrait shot of the model with their object and ask one simple question: "How do you feel now?" there answer will then somehow be transferred into the project or final image.

I am going to be using a Digital SLR now as they are quicker, I have more technical experience with them and this process is more cost effective as I don't have much cash at the moment!

 The only set back I can think of is thinking of where to set up these shoots as there may be some health and safety issues if I were to do them in the college studio.




Research 


 Bettina Von-Zwehl

Von-Zwehl is another photographer who plays a massive part in capturing her desired image, in an almost experimental way. She is looking to find the 'natural' portrait of a person so she puts her models into different situations and doesn't tell them what is going to happen, in the image above Von-Zwehl had left this lady in a dark room for an un-disclosed amount of time before taking the photograph when the model is completelly unaware.

In this image the model has had water tipped over her to gain Von-Zwehl's desired outcome.

Project Update


I have released some adverts on various social media sites for people who would be willing to be involved in the project.

This is a screenshot of one of the less formal adverts, this one had a response from two people who would like to be involved.

***Please note this is planning and research for a project that I have postponed, for more information and to read about the new/submitted project scroll up. Thank you.***

Unit 18

Outside of college I work as a Youth Worker in a variety of areas around the city, I work with young people aged between 13 and 19 (upto 21 if they have special needs)

As part of my job I contribute to the planning and delivery of projects for the young people, although I'm involved in many of these I am going to write about one particular project that I planned, delivered and reviewed recently.

Intro Info

The project was to be delivered to a targetted group of young people who were already in an established art group, the majority of the young people involved had special needs. Although I had been working with the group for a while before the project this was the first time that I had taken the lead role. The final product of the project was to be displayed in an exhibition as part of the Youth Arts Festival of this year.

Before planning I knew that I wanted to come up  with a photography based project, as this is my speciality, and it was something the group hadn't done before. I decided that I would create a stop frame animation of some kind with the group, I then planned a skeleton outline of what the project would consist of, sort of like a rough proposal to take to my supervisor.

After these rough decisions were made by me I had a planning meeting to collaborate with the youth worker incharge of the art group (who also happens to be my supervisor!) to discuss the needs of the group and to better shape the project around an issue or topic that they would benefit exploring and learning about through informal education (in this case art!) in this meeting we discussed the behaviour within the group and decided that teamwork would be a major aspect of the project, so for the project to succeed the group would have to work together, we then wrote up a provisional schedule together.

The next step was to present the idea to the group and get their ideas and input into the project to make it the most enjoyable experience for them. The collaborative chosen theme for the project was the consequences of lying and it was agreed that the project would be a combination of the group's traditional art based skills (like cutting, sticking and drawing) as well as learning new photography skills and using DSLR cameras. In this same session I facilitated the creation of a storyline for the project and took down a list of things the group thought that they might need (it was all manageable stuff that was easy to get hold of, which was handy as I had no cash budget for the project!)

After this session I went away and put together a session plan for me to work to and to present to any other workers who needed to know what I was upto! The project was scheduled to last about 6 weeks from start to finish and included some traditional group art in the form of creating all characters and 'sets' for the animation out of different papers and materials, which was discussed and organised within the group in the presentation session I wrote about above -I paired the young people up for this one!


The Sessions

I found out that the lead worker, that all of the young people were more familiar with, was away for training for some of the sessions that I would be working on and that she couldn't find anyone to cover for her and support me in the delivery of the certain session but I decided that I would give working as the only worker  with this group a trial, something that I'd never done before so I found this very exciting and I knew that it would be challenging! There's always other staff in the building that could support me if needs be, like security.

On the artistic front it was aimed that in the first session that the group would have a hands on demonstration of basic operations of the cameras we would be using and then start the collaborative production of the characters and 'sets' for the final animation. On the underlying youth work front I was going to use this artwork as a prompt to start a discussion with the group about when people lie and why they choose to do so.

I taught one young person who has an interest in cameras how the ones they would be using worked and asked her to assist me in teaching the wider group, this went well and the group all took some photos on the cameras, whilst doing this the group took it in turns to tell the rest of the group one lie that they had told in the past.

By the second half of this session an arguement had broken out over who could play music from their phone, this put an atmosphere onto the session and caused the discussion I had started to break down and the group started to bicker at eachother, which spiralled and dragged in every possible topic to argue about imaginable! I did everything I could to calm things down, taking individuals to one side, addressing the whole group but by now everyone had got so worked up I thought it would be best to close the session early to let emotions die down, the production of the 'sets' had started so I was pretty happy with the outcome of the session regardless of the early closure.

After the session I spoke with my supervisor about what had happened in the session and why I had closed it early and she agreed that I had done the right thing and also suggested some other approaches and techniques that I could try out to challenge these kinds of situations. I was also told that these kinds of situations happen alot at first and that you have to find alternative ways to deal with them. The result of this was me saying that I'd give independently working with the group another couple of weeks!     

In reflection of the last session I realised that having a strict schedule wouldn't work with this group so I decided that from now on my aims for certian sessions would just be a guideline to allow room for solving group problems that would arise.

In light of the early closure of the last session I decided that before starting the next session I would have a sit down chat with the group to discuss what had happened last week and what would happen if those things were to continue into this week. I did this and then, to address the issues of last week and to explore other issues that could arise, I facilitated creating some group rules with the group, seperate from the general rules that had been discussed with them before, these rules were agreed by everyone and were only to be put into practice when I ran the group independently, this went well, working on the group members personal development in problem solving! I also got every group member that attended to think about why they come to the group and write it down so that it could be shared with the group, this highlighted how much they value coming to the group.

To sort out the music problem it was agreed that I would bring down the stereo from upstairs and choose the radio station myself.

After these initial hiccups the sessions ran relatively smoothly, with issues cropping up here and there but everything manageable down to the group rules, agreed and signed by the group, discussions and regular meetings between me and my supervisor. The group completed creating all of the sets, props and characters collaboratively and worked on the photographing of the animation in threes. Discussions on lying and it's consequences really worked too and it was obvious that they were thought provoking for the young people to explore, think about and empathise with, this improving personal development in empathy and promoting think before you speak, all valuable skills!

Some members of the group were not confident with having their voices recorded for the animation so I asked them to think of something arty that they could  do that would still fit with our theme, they chose posters -which I thought was great so I let them work on that idea, aslong as they had a go at being recorded, even if they decided their recordings were not to be used!

The final stop frame was put together by the young people, facilitated by me, it was just down to me to tweak small edits that the group wanted and to convert the animation to a movie format ready for display, the animation was now completed by the group, so I then took the finished product away ready for submission to the exhibition show reel, which resulted in me doing some online work to submit to the person who was making the show reel, this causing some emails to let me know how to submit things!

The final major part of the project was reviewing it with the group - I was going to do this by video recording them but after working closely, both independently and with the lead worker there, I decided that the confidence issues from within the group would cause my method of evaluation to be more of a distraction and a chore for the group instead of it being enjoyable so in the end I spoke to the lead worker and arranged for one of the sessions to be the screening of the final film, which would then turn into going around the group and asking them to tell the group what they thought of the project, what their favourite part was and what they didn't like, this worked.
 
Below is a testimonial about my collaboration and the project from my supervisor.

The group titled their stop frame "Why Lie?" and it was a success in the festival, I have planned more issue based photography projects that I am aiming to deliver to other groups in the near future.

Studio Portraiture

My Introduction to 5x4 cameras (large format photography)

For this project I could use a new format, one that I haven't used before 5x4 or large format photography if you prefer!

On the right is an image of a large format camera, as you can see it already appears very different from the digital cameras that we are used to using today.

The 5x4 camera is made up of a front standard (the bit at the front with the lens on) a rear standard (the one with the focusing screen and grid) a bellows focusing system (that's in the middle) a rail at the bottom and loads of different knobs, switches and sliders that are for an array of different things.

I've had a hands on introduction to the camera and it's workings and have had time to have a little mess around to get used to it's features and it takes no time at all to realise that large format cameras are much more hands on than today's digital compacts and SLRs.






This type of camera uses slide film that you have to insert into a light tight holder (as seen to the left)

When composing and focusing on a large format camera you have to be in relative darkness by throwing some kind of dark sheet over your head and the back of the camera, you'll notice that the image seen on the rear standard is upside down. It isn't until you've achieved the results that you want in your image do you insert the film holder as you will no longer be able to see what the camera sees!

 Here's an image I found on flickr of a 5x4 negative, click on the image to be taken to the photographer's Photostream on Flickr

The main advantage of using a 5x4 camera, other than the high quality photographs, are the 'movements' Slide, Tilt, Swing/Swivel, Rise & Fall and this effects the image in different ways when using front standard and the rear standard. Basically the front standard controls focus be it everything in focus from horizontal and vertical bands of focus, something which is unique to this type of camera. The rear standard controls the shape of the resulting image as well as part of the focus.


Research

     Richard Avedon

Below are some 5x4 images that were taken by Richard Avedon, they are from two different projects of his.  

Ronald Fischer 1981 Richard Avedon

This image is from his "In The American West" series where Avdeon travelled around the USA photographing different people using a large format camera, he just positioned a white sheet behind the person he was photographing. The image I have chosen is my favourite from the series the one of Ronald Fischer a beekeeper I really like the way that Avedon has titled each image with the person's name, what they do and where and when it was taken.

Andy Warhol 1969 Richard Avedon

Here's another 5x4 image by Avedon, I'm not really sure which collection this is from but I know the story behind what is going on here. Avedon had this habit of getting the model in front of the camera (in this case it's Andy Warhol, the artist!) and start saying and doing things to get the reaction that he desired for his shot, in this example he has said/done something that has clearly shocked Warhol and caused him to experience some discomfort. Avedon believed that by catching someone off guard or taking them out of their comfort zone he could capture a true representation of that person.

     Martin Schoeller 

 Below are two portraits by the portraiture photographer Martin Schoeller.
I first found Schoeller's work in his book 'Martin Schoeller Close Up' that was full of larger than A3 images of celebrities and well known people's faces with incredible focus and detail!
 

Jack Nicholson, 2002 Martin Schoeller

  These two images are Digital C prints -I've looked into this and I can only describe them as digital images that are exposed through a digital head enlarger onto photographic paper.

Cindy Sherman, 2000 Martin Schoeller

Schoeller used Kino Flo lamps for this project, Kino Flo lamps are a fluorescent tube based system that have been set up for the colour temerature of film. These kinds of lamps are generally used for motion picture lighting as they are reasonably portable and let off less heat than other systems. In the series above Shoeller has used two lamps, one at either side of the model's face.

These images are very predetermined in the way that they are taken, almost like a passport photo I like the way that the people he has photographed are very famous although are not smiling or posing in any way for any of the images.

My Project Plan 

As this is more of a technical project my idea is simple, to obtain two relaxed / semi relaxed portraits of two different people as I believe that the meaning is in the eyes of the beholder.

It is a requirement that one image is in black and white and the other in colour as well as this I would like to add my own twist of taking my portraits in a landscape orientation as I feel that this contributes to the final portrait. I'm going to have one shoot only to capture every image for this project so this ensures fast thinking for ideas, set up and actually doing it instead of thinking about it, although I have basic ideas like having a black background and fairly low key lighting - although this is down to personal preference.

The Shoot
21st March 2012, afternoon.

So today was the day of the shoot and I am pretty happy with the results, my models were Helena and Katrina. I tried to keep the studio of an energetic but relaxed atmosphere -this was helped by the use of a chair at one point. The chair was also handy as Katrina is pregnant so she needed to sit down a lot!

Below are three images from the one and only shoot - with lighting diagrams that I have drawn and scanned in.

So this is my first image of my girlfriend Katrina (A.K.A. The Wife) in this image I wanted to capture both her and our unborn son (a.k.a. The Bump) However my preference for a black background clashed with her chosen clothing and she merged in making it difficult to distinguish her from the background I got around this by introducing another light into the equation - which I have now nicknamed 'The Bump Light.' The light was lowered down to the height of the bump and set to a lower power level than the primary light by almost half, below is my full lighting diagram for this image.

Katrina & Bump lighting diagram
*Please note that I have this annoying habit of calling the spill kill a reflector, just like in the diagram above.

Helena Burrough

My next image is a portrait of Helena, in this image she is actually sitting down and leaning on the back of a chair. I believe that the chair was the main source of calming during the shoot as it allows the model to be seated and by looking back at the images of the models both sitting and standing there's definitely a more relaxed calmer expression and posture going on. Below is the lighting diagram for this shot.

Helena Burrough Lighting Diagram

Katrina Harmer

My final image is a portrait of Katrina, this shot captures her natural expession as she was not aware that the photo was being taken at the time as we were between shots. Below is the lighting diagram for this shot.

Final Images

I have chosen these two as my final images as I feel they fit together best from the images that I had taken as they are the same orientation. The compositions I have chosen for each shot allow for the spaces in each image to be filled, they only other way I can describe what I mean is by saying they are like bookends and can be put together easily.

I chose to have Katrina in colour because her red lipstick was complimentary to the blackness of the image, the image of Helena in black and white almost reminds me of the type of portrait that you would find of an author in a book. 


Rounding it up

 I think that doing everything in one shoot was a good idea for this particular project plus it also fits well with how I work - less planning and more on location! The shoot was a success.

If I  were to improve the shoot I might have got myself a studio assistant as it took time moving the lights around then having to keep going back to the camera to see if it looked right for the shot but other than that it was good. I showed the models the images and they are very happy and although there was some clear scepticism about the use of the black background they both agreed that the images look great as they are.
 I could also say that I need to improve on my time management as I didn't actually get around to printing my images before the deadline but this is because of other  issues seperate from my college work.
Never the less I have images that I am very happy with and that respond to the brief!

Environmental Portraiture

Project Plan

For this project I am going to explore new areas and meet new people in surroundings that are already familiar to me, I have chosen to make my environmental portraits about the workers of City College, I intend on visiting every occupied office and workplace in the college buildings on Pelham Street - minimising disruption levels by using common sense!
I am going to do this in a one off shoot, borrowing the college's 24-105mm f4 L series canon lens to achieve wide angle results, as I only have a 50mm f1.8 prime lens which could potentially cause some problems as I don't actually know how much space I will have available and I want to capture both the person in the portrait and their working background, I will take a flashgun for the use of fill in flash in areas where it is too dark! 


Research



Daniel Meadows, "The Shop on Greame Street" 1972

I first came across Daniel Meadows through looking at The Bus Project, it is a project that i am really interested in but I noticed that most of his portraits were done against plain backgrounds - like brick walls or garages so in the end I had a look at some of his other projects and really liked them too!

1

In 1972 Meadows rented a disused barber's shop in the Moss Side District of Manchester whilst he studied at the Manchester Polytechnic. He set up a free portrait studio in the barber's shop but the images I have chosen to look at are the ones from on location on the street.

I find these interesting because of the inclusion of the environment of which the subject is in, it is almost of a world that I can't imagine - of a time before I was born it also really puts the person in the image into a context of their own time

2

and also prompts the viewer to open up
their mind and ask themselves
"I wonder where that person is now"


I love the composition in image 5, I can only say that it was deliberate to capture the street.

The framing in image 2 is really interesting and I love the way that the two boys are such a small part of image 3, but at the same time it is a portrait of them and there time.

3

I would like to consider these images as documentary environmental portraits as not only
does it capture the person it captures that
moment of their life.

4

Technically, I think that these images were shot on a 35mm film SLR camera and I love the old look to them. I know that I could pull this off but for my own project I feel that I need to bring things up to date to comment on the modernness of our times now compared to times back then.

 

5

Images from:
http://www.photobus.co.uk/?id=539

 Anna Fox, Workstations, 1987-1988

I have also looked at Anna Fox's work titled 'Workstations' as this is more relevant to my own work in a sense that Fox has photographed workers in their own environment although I would consider it documentary photography instead of an environmental portrait.

Workstations was commissioned by Camerawork and The Museum of London and her website the text accompanying this project reads:

"A study of London office life in the late 80’s, a critical observation of the highly competitive character of working life in Thatcher’s Britain."

Her work consists of colour images with captions underneath.

I literally looked at these images just to get an idea of how I could photograph office workers at the college, our projects don't particularly have any more in common than that.

I find it interesting that Fox's work has political meaning to the times and in the centre of the top image there are three balloons, one of each colour of the major political parties.

 Images from: 

http://www.annafox.co.uk/work/workstations/

 
Project Update & Images

It took me the whole morning to get through the college, one of the lifts was broken and the other took ages to arrive so in the end I used the stairs!

I borrowed one of the college full frame sensor DSLR  cameras, a Canon 5D with the 24-105mm lens (that I spoke about in my plan) there were no flashguns though, so I had to work with only the ambient light source which did prove challenging in some situations. I knew that I would be converting my images to black and white so I just set the white balance to 'Auto White Balance' - something I haven't done for a while!

My images were shot in RAW only, most of them were shot on an aperture of F4 which gave me the best of both worlds! It allowed me to use a fast enough shutter speed with a low enough ISO to have a smaller amount of noise in my images. It was also enough to have the subject's surroundings in enough focus to make out what they are.

Exposure Lock

Taking photos in certain conditions did prove quite tricky, below are two less successful images exposure-wise.

The image at the top was the original image taken, the in camera light meter exposed for the window in the background resulting in a well-ish exposed background but left the foreground under exposed resulting in an image that was too dark. Usually I would have got an exposure reading for the background set and used a flashgun at it's equivalent so that both the background and foreground were exposed the same but there was no flashgun available so instead I used the exposure lock feature. To use this control I pointed the camera down into what would have been the dark area of the image (I chose to get an exposure reading from the man in the image's jumper, I then pressed the FE Lock button (symbolised by an asterisk) this locks the aperture and shutter speed until the image is taken or the button is pressed again - this gave me enough time to re-compose the image and take it. I could've also achieved this on Manual setting but in this case using the FE Lock was faster and easier. For most of the images I took this function worked fine but in the image above the background became over exposed.





Converting to Black & White

 

 I always choose to shoot my images in colour but the requirement is that they are in black and white, so I had to convert all of my images to black and white, there are many ways to covert colour images to black and white using Photoshop, I chose to convert using the Black & White adjustment layer below is a run through of how you can do that.

To use this conversion method open up the image you want to convert, click on Layer, then New Adjustment Layer then find Black & White and click on it.

 Once you have done that this box will appear, all you do is name your layer and then click on OK.

  Once you have clicked OK you will notice that your image is now Black and White.

 This is the feature I love about using this adjustment layer, not only does it convert the image to black and white it also gives you these sliders so that you can control how the different colours are represented in black and white by making the tones darker of lighter, this really can manipulate the look of the image, for these images though I wanted to tones as close to as what they were in colour as possible.

Another benefit of this kind of conversion is that it isn't applied to the image directly, it is like a mask that is put over the top so it's not complicated to get rid of or to go back and change again later (that is until you save it as a compressed file, for example a JPEG or TIFF)

My Final Prints

Below are my four final images, I have printed these at A3 size.

 



 

 
 


Rounding It Up

As a whole I would say that this has been my most successful project for this course yet, with most of the practical photographic work taken, edited, selected and printed within three days!
I wouldn't have been able to fulfill my project without the willingness of staff at the college and I wouldn't have been able to get my images up to this standard without the use of some proper college equipment! (especially the wide angle lens!)


I think one of the most enjoyable things about this project wasn't taking the photos themselves but putting down the camera for a moment to meet and speak to new people and to explore new areas, it was nice to have that freedom and an excuse to do it.

If I had more time I would've also ventured up to City College East to meet the staff members there, this would've also been a more personal visit for me as I used to go to school at the building and haven't been back there since it's closure in 2005 -so there's an idea for a future project for me!

Perhaps spending more time with each person would allow me more time to get to know them, although that said I was photographing them in their working environment in work time so I also know that they are very busy doing their jobs!

I showed my final prints to other members of the class and some of the tutors to get some feedback on my project and prints, one person commented on how fast I work as they knew that I had only taken the images the day before, others commented on them being 'Sick' I'm hoping they mean that in what I like to call 'the American good way!'
 The only suggestion was that I could work on my highlights as some of my images were over exposed in areas and we talked about using the 'Recovery' tool on the RAW file editing screen - something which I later did for the images that needed it.

I feel that I fulfilled my project well I captured the staff in their own environments!
This project has also made me consider, through practicality, ways of making the 'model' feel more at ease when I am photographing them as some people that I came across appeared quite nervous about the fact that I was photographing them.