A Shoot for a Friend

Over christmas break my  lovely friend Raiona, commissioned me as a photographer to take some photos of her face for her blog, because she has recently dropped out of University and is focussing more on doing her blog.

We decided to meet up in cambridge because its half way between where we live and the easiest to get to. Just like anything Rai and I do, we ended up laughing! Thankfully she had an idea of the kinds of images she wanted and locations she wanted to use.  So my job was instantly made easier. 

Although I am a photography student the equipment I use is very limited! I only had my camera to hand which for the sake of easy I used in auto mode (I can already see all the photographers out there shaking their heads and giving me disapproving looks) However I am very much still a novice and getting to grips with my camera! 

Our objective was simple to have fun and capture Miss Raiona Thornton at her best, care free and herself. I think we managed to achieve this and without further ado, here are my favourite images from this shoot :)

Overall i think this shoot went really well, we have been friends for 2 years which means we are comfortable around each other and can be our true selves! 

I also like how the images from the shoot came out.

Workshop 8- The Gok Wan Session

WHAT: Use flash accessories to control the light.

1. Getintoyourgroup.

2. Makesureyourgrouphas:acamera,atripod,ahandheldlightmeter. 3. ISO:100.

4. Whitebalance:DaylightorSunny

5. Fileformat:JPEG&RAW.

For task one we had to place our model in front of a Colorado paper backdrop. Then set up a 'key' flash with no attachments. this was the image we got from that: 

Then we had to Use a large white polyboard and bounce the flash off this to light your model. 

This created a softer light. which I prefer to the first image. 

We then Fit a 'spill kill' to your flash head. 

This created a harsher light.

The next step was to fit an umbrella to the spill kill

Fit a soft box 

Fit a 'snoot' 

This made the image darker 

Fit a spill kill with a honeycomb attachment.

This created different shadows on the model and background creating different effects. 

Thank You for Reading, 

Rebecca

Guest Lecture 8- Kasia Wozniak

Kasia Wozniak is a wet plate collodion photographer. 

One of the first things she shared with us was a quote she liked... I copied it down because i liked it to!

"Each answer remains in force as an answer only as long as it is rooted in questioning" - Fred .M.

From the very beginning Kasia found she wanted to be a hands on photographer so, wet plate process was ideal for her! 

Kasia Wozniak has travelled around the world, and was also approached by one of the curators from the museum of London to work with her. 

Wozniak does fashion and portraiture work with her personal practice being portraiture. 

One image took about 1 hour and 30 minutes to create. 

I didn't get many notes from Kasia Wozniak's lecture because i found it was hard to understand some of the things she was saying and it was also hard to hear her. 

Thank you for reading! 

Rebecca

New Brief Thoughts

When we were given our new brief  I found that I liked it a lot more than the first one we were given.
For one thing I found that we didn't have a difficult text to get our heads around and our sole focus could be on the the work, getting our ideas and purely focusing on the task at hand.

Our word for this brief is "Narrative" this instantly sounded more appealing to me than our previous brief which was "what is photography".
I felt like this new Narrative brief worked so much better for me and my style of photography than the previous brief, as I can use it to my advantage to photograph  what I am good at. Which is Landscapes.

I chose landscapes because we were told to focus on things like:

• what are you curious about?
• what intrigues you?
• what excites you?
• what fascinates you?
• what questions you?
• what puzzles you? 
• does your idea interest others?

I am interested in how landscapes can change how the weather or lighting can make the place feel completely different. I plan to incorporate this into the area I live and the surrounding areas. 

For this project we also have to write an essay comparing and contrasting two photographs that link into the work we will be producing, for this I think I am going to be looking at the work of Don McCullin's with his landscapes because I think the way they are heavily contrasted is reflective of his time being a war photographer. McCullin has also previously stated that his Landscapes became more of a process of healing for him after the years of photographing war ridden places. 

The other photographer I plan to look at for this is Robert Adams because I find his work very interesting and also a complete turn around from the work of Don McCullin.