Task 6

The photographs I have taken fit the purpose of painting with light. They are as good as they possibly be with the conditions I worked in. I think the photos I took are aesthetically pleasing apart from in some of them you can see me in the background. I did have limitations whilst I was taking these images. They were things such as not working in an actually studio and having to work in my bedroom. If I was to do this again I would try work in a darker place without anything that could be seen in the photos such as one of the studios in college. I could have carried out the work at college as an alternative approach and that may have had a better outcome because I would have been working in a studio. To shoot the images I set my camera up on a tripod and set it to manual. I then put my shutter speed to 6" and my ISO to 100 so the light would show up well and the rest of my image would be darker.

Task 3/4

Task 3

What I am going to do

For my project I am going to be looking at painting with light. When we did this in class I didn’t have much of a go at actually painting with the torch, I did more of the photographing. I am looking forward to having a go at this. I will need to start off with a room which is dark. I am going to set my camera to a shutter speed of 6" and the ISO to 100. I will then set up my camera on a tripod, to avoid camera shake. I will be using a very slow shutter speed to do this so if the camera was hand held there would be a lot of camera shake but the tripod will prevent any camera shake.

Task 4

Here are the images I produced for my project

Task 2 - Health & Safety

Place	Problem	Prevention
Studio	-wires from lights -extras and things that are being photographed -chairs and tables -equipment	-these should be taped down to prevent people falling or they should be moved to the edge of the room as far away from people working as possible. -make sure these are returned from where you got them so people who also need them can use them and do not leave them lying around so they do not get broken or lost. -make sure chairs are all tucked under tables and out of the way so nobody can trip over them. -make sure that all equipment is turned off and put away before leaving so nobody can use it whilst your away and use things in correctly.
Outdoors	-theft/damage -vehicles/roads -bring a place to store your camera	-if you are using a camera in the street you should always keep it safe around your neck so that nobody can steal it or it cannot be knocked as easy and get damaged. -when outside you need to be aware of crossing the road and moving vehicles so that you don’t get injured. -weather can be a problem when shooting so always bring an appropriate place to store your camera to stop it being damage by weather such as rain.
Darkroom	-chemicals -lack of light -amount of people	-always wear gloves when using the chemicals so you do not damage your hands. -having a small torch would be handy in case you need to get out quickly so you can see and also this means you can see where things are and do not hurt yourself. -you should not allow too many people in the darkroom at once because people may not be able to see where they are going and could cause problems with crowding.

Architecture

These are images that I have shot of buildings around Leeds and Bradford that I thought looked good.

I think this building which is in Bradford looks really effective in black and white.

High key and low key photography

High key photography is taken with several lights and white background to make the images bright with no shadow. 

Low key photography is normally taken with one light shining on the subject.

Low Key

Here is an example of low key photography that was taken of me.

High Key

Here are 2 shots that I took which are examples of high key images.

Evaluation

Over 5 weeks of studying photography I have learnt about street photography, painting with light, shutter speeds, aperture and macro photography. Before I started this course I did not know anything about street photography. We looked at some examples of this and then we went out and attempted doing our own street photography, I enjoyed this but I felt a bit rude taking photos of people on the street, but apart from that I think it went well apart from I didn't get too close to some people. I didn't know how to use shutter speeds correctly before I started studying this course. Now I have learnt when to use them correctly. If I now wanted to take photographs of a person doing some fast sport and I wanted the freeze the motion in the image I would use a fast shutter speed. I think all of my shutter speed work went well apart from when using a slow shutter speed sometimes I get too much camera shake I would need to take a tripod. I now know how to create a motion blur using shutter speed as well. I had always seen photographs like this and wondered how to get that effect, now I know that I need to use a slow shutter speed and I can create this effect myself. Before I began these 5 weeks I had always seen light painting photos and thought they were really good. I didn't know how to do this either though. Now I have studied this I know if I use a slow shutter speed then move a light around, such as a torch I can create light painting effects. This would have been easier if I had used a tripod because the shutter speed I used was really slow so this causes camera shake. I needed to also make sure that the room is as dark as possible so that you cannot see the person behind with the light. I think my photos went well though. I knew about aperture before I started the course but not how to create this effect. I did not know what F numbers where or how to use them. I now know how to create shallow and wide depths of field by changing the F numbers. If i want shallow depth of field it is a low F number and if I want a wide depth of field it is higher F numbers. I think all my aperture work went correctly and I don't need to change what I did. In the future if I went somewhere such as a huge building and wanted a photo of it from the outside I could use a large F number and that would mean all of my photo would be in focus. Before I started the course I had done quite a lot of macro photography, as I enjoy this. This is where you take a really close up photograph of something. I think my macro photographs went really well apart from sometimes my camera does not focus in as close as I would like. In the future I could use a macro lens to improve these even more. When I had taken these photographs I edited them in photoshop to make them even more effective by changing saturation and things like hue. I have really enjoyed this course so far and have learnt a lot in such a small space of time.

Shooting In Manual

When shooting in manual there is 3 things you can change, these are shutter speed, f numbers also known as aperture and ISO. You can change your shutter speed to either a fast setting or a slow setting. If you choose a fast setting this can be used for taking photos of things such as people running and things moving if you don't want to see the movement in the photo and make the object sharp and freezes the movement. If you want to see things like motion blur of people, cars and lights in your images you would use a slow shutter speed to get this effect. F numbers are another thing that you can change whilst shooting in manual. If you want a shallow depth of field in your images (one thing in focus and the background blurred) you use a smaller F number, such as 4.5, which makes the hole in the lens wider to let more light in and gives the shallow depth of field effect. If you want everything in your photo to be in focus and sharp you would use a large F number such as 18, this would give a smaller hole in the lens and let less light in and all the image would be in focus. The final thing that you can change whilst shooting in manual is your ISO this is to make sure pictures and not over or under exposed and controls the sensitivity of light. If you were shooting in on a very bright day when it was really sunny or in a really bright room you would use a lower ISO such as 100 or 200. If you were shooting in a normal lit setting, such as an average day in england you would use ISO around 400-600. If you were shooting somewhere darker you would use a really high ISO such as 1600 to 3200 to make sure your images are not under exposed.

Hyde Park - capturing light/landscape

we went up to hyde park to shoot these photos. we had to try and capture light through things such as trees which i tried to do, which gave a good effect in my photographs.

I edited this photograph to make it black and white

Photo Trail

On this photo trail we decided to go from college to the museum and we had to take photos of our short journey there.

My Final Pieces - Macro Photography

These photographs I have taken are for my final pieces of macro photography which I chose to take and edit the most photos of. I used photoshop to edit these images by changing things such as saturation, hue, contrast and brightness levels. I took these photos with my camera set to manual, my shutter speed was set at 1/200 so that there would be no camera shake and my F number was set to 4.5 to create a shallow depth of field. 

I took this photograph in a small park area in Leeds. I then edited this photograph to make the colours a little less bright than the original photograph i took. I really like how the editing of this image turned out and I think that it looks really effective.

This is a photograph I took of a small part of a garage door. The colour of the door originally looked quite brown but then I edited this by turning it black and white. 

This image is a part of a brick wall. I edited the saturation of this image to make the orange bricks look much brighter than they were when I took the photograph.

This photograph was taken from my bedroom window when it was raining. I thought the drops of water being in focus on the window looked really nice and with the field and trees behind were out of focus I liked how it looked. I then edited the saturation of this photo to make the greens look darker.

This image is a close up of a tree trunk in a park in Leeds. I then edited the photo by changing the saturation and hue to get a more red effect on the leaves behind the tree and some parts of the tree trunk.

This photo is taken of a really old window ledge. The wood peeling off looked really effective so I thought it would be a good thing to photograph. I then added an effect to make the colour of the photograph look better than the original.

Macro Photography

Macro photography is basically close up photography. It is normally of small objects or it can be a part of an object. My macro photography is from when we went out around college and Leeds to find interesting things to photograph. My camera was set to manual where I used the shutter speed of 1/200 and the F number 4.5

My macro photography

Shutter Speeds

What is shutter speed?

Shutter speed is the exposure time which is basically how long the shutter of the camera is open. Shutter speed can effect images by adding movement to them by using slower shutter speeds. If a faster shutter speed is used then this can stop movement in an image. You would use fast shutter speeds for things that are moving and you do not want to see movement in your photo such as people running, you would also use a fast shutter speed to prevent camera shake. Slow shutter speeds are used in photographs for movement. You can take photos of people moving, cars moving, lights and water and you can see the movement in the image.

My light trails

To create this image a slow shutter speed such as 1"6 was used. A light from a phone was used and I had to draw the shape in the air with the light and this is the effect that it created.

This photograph was taken of street lights and houses at night. I used a really slow shutter speed such as 4" to create this. I took the shot and whilst the shutter was open I moved the camera around and when I saw the end result had turned out like this I was happy because I think this looks effective.

Examples of fast shutter speeds

These 2 photographs are examples of fast shutter speed photography that i found on the internet.  You can tell a fast shutter speed was used to take these photographs as both the person and the bird are moving but you can't see any movement in the photograph.

Examples of slow shutter speeds

Both of these photographs were taken using a slow shutter speed. The first image was taken a night of cars driving along a road and by using a slow shutter speed they get the movement of the lights. The photograph of the horse has also been taken with a slow shutter speed because you can see the movement of the horse running in the photograph.

My shutter speed work

Apart from my light trail photographs I also have some other images taken using different shutter speeds.

This is photograph was taken using a slow shutter speed such as 0"5 to get this effect of the water.

This photograph is of the same thing but using a fast shutter speed such as 250 so the water looks how we see it normally.

This is a photograph I took using the shutter speed 1/30. By using this slow shutter speed I could get the effect of the car moving in my photograph.

These 2 photographs of the people at the skate park were both taken using a fast shutter speed, something such as 1/400 so that the people were sharp and in focus and you could need see any movement in the images, which is the effect I wanted here.