This week

This week has been eventful. On Monday we had a trip to London, It was a really long journey, which began to bore me. It took around five hours till we got to the first gallery where we looked at Tom Woods work. His work was ok but I thought it could be better. We then spent another twenty minutes travelling to the national portrait gallery. I thought most of the work in there was really good especially some of the work of the royal family. While we were in there we went into the Taylor Wessing prize gallery where all the pictures in there were part of a competition to win £12,000. There were some strange images in there which I didn’t understand. But there was a number of amazing images like one portrait shot of Mo Farah.  After this we went further into London for free time. That was fairly good as we spent our time taking pictures of some of the sites. I thought some of the people around the city were really strange as there were quite a few saying random things to us and looking at us in a strange way. On Tuesday we spent our day finishing our sketchbooks or PowerPoint’s. I’m happy I have got that part of the assignment out of the way as I fount it was confusing at first and really stressful.  We have also looked into the next part of the assignment where we have to create an artist book all about a certain part of Newcastle. I think this will be hard to begin with as I don’t really have any ideas. 

250 word reflection

This week has been quite a challenge. On monday i had brought in my work on the making your mark assignment. I spent the first part of the day i spent putting my work into my powerpoint. It took a while but i only just got it done with about five minutes to spare. I feel quite confident about my work and feel that i will pass. We then went straight into the next assignment which is called on the map. we had to go to a place around newcastle which we were designated. It was a pain as trying to research a church which was in out area was a pain as we weren't aloud to have a look at the archive. After we went into town which was annoying as i didn't have any ideas to shoot. Wednesday we started to think of more ideas and try to shoot abit more but failed.

Location Photography

Location photography is where take a photo outside of a studio like getting a picture of a skater in a skatepark or a business man in an office. Its basically to take an object into its own environment like the picture above. This is usually done to set a mood within a picture like the one above could suggest excitement.

When a photographer goes to a location he or she would usually take their camera, lenses, flash gun, tripods, electrical equipment to power equipment and loads more.

Reflection

On Monday we started by looking at HDR photography which i fount really interesting. Its where you get a number of images which are the same but the exposure is different on each and then putting them together to give it a so real look to it. We then looked at panoramic photography which is where you take a number images to make one long really wide image. Next we went through our smart targets which if im honest bored me, i couldn't think of many but i ended up putting "I think i need to go into more depth in my work as i havent got enough detail" After that we started our assignment by researching experimental photography which i though was really inspiring and gave me me quite a lot of ideas.I then went onto photoshop where i started to experiment with a few of my images and learnt how to use layers. The last thing i did monday was start my powerpoint off. Ive got the information for it but havent put much of it into my powerpoint yet.

On Tuesday i carried on experiment with my images and then decided to go out into town to get more images, if im honest i didn't enjoy it this time as it was freezing and wet, i didn't have many ideas in the town which made it a lot harder but i made do with what i had, I got a fair few images but not many decent images in my mind. Once i got back to college i uploaded my images and started to experiment with them and created one of four final images. I used three images to create a wierd image. I used an image which was blurred and didnt seem very good but i used it in the background because it had some nice colours in it. Next we created a Jackson Pollock on the computer which is where you throw paint onto a canvas, its fun but not something i would be interested in doing again if im honest. We also looked at visual language which is where you read a image and try to understand what the photographer is trying to show within the image. Finally we went on to talk about a trip to london in early December. Im really excited for it. Ive been to London before but i didnt enjoy all of it, i hated how busy it was and how hard it was to get around.

HDR images

Ive been looking at HDR toning which is where you take an under exposed image, normal exposed and a over exposed images and put them together to give an image a lot of detail and colour which sometimes makes the image look like a painting or a something off a video game

What i like about these images is the colour, it brings out the detail in darker areas. I really like the bottom image of a car which has got a really dull background but the photographer has brightened the car to make it stand out.

This week we have mainly focused on Photoshop. We have learnt about cropping images and seeing how sizes can change the quality of an image. We also looked at layers, like how we can change the colour of an image. Yesterday we looked at refelcters; these are white, gold or silver different reflective materials that reflect light to brighten up areas in your images. They also bounce light off bright coloured walls, floors or other objects to brighten up your images. They work well on portrait shots where natural light has hit one side of the person or models face but the other side would be dark so you would put a reflector on the dark side to bounce light onto the model so all the face is lightened up. We also had a look at focal length and lenses. I have learnt that our eyes see at roughly 40mm, which makes some images that have been taken using a 10 or 20mm will look really zoomed out which would be used to capture landscapes or large areas. We were also trying to find out the largest focal length, the largest one I could find was 2000mm, which would be used to take pictures of wildlife photography. We took a look at people that airbrush image and repair-damaged images. I thought it was amazing, I didn’t even know it was possible to repair the images to look like or even better than they did before they were damaged. I’m also looking forward to the next assignment, which is where we will be experimenting with images, and seeing how they come out after.

250 word reflection

This week I finished off my black and white project. We got our grades back from when we first submitted it and I got a pass mark, which I was quite disappointed with. So I started to improve by reading through what I had put and going in to more depth in each part, as some of it didn’t have enough detail. I also when into some techniques that I could use like dodging and burning, basically dodging is when you can brighten one part of an image to make it stand out and burning is when you make one part of an image darker. I also looked at tinting which is where you add colour to black and white images. The next part, which I looked at, was solarizing; this is where you change around the tonal range by making the lighter areas darker and the darker areas lighter. I also edited a few of my images to show these processes. Overall I now feel like I have done fairly good and feel that my work could get a merit, if not I will do more work on it when I can. I would like to push it up to distinction but I need to do a little bit more on it to get a distinction. On one of my comparisons I went on to talk about tonal ranges within my images like in one photo had a similar tonal range which made a difference when changed to black and white.

The second photographer that i chose was Bob Martin, He has been a sports photographer for over thirty years going to some of the biggest sporting events in the world such as the summer and winter olympics. He has also won 57 national awards. He has also won three sports photographer of the year awards and i can clearly see why. The top image of a snowboarder instantly caught my attention because how the image is so sharp and clear which brings out the detail within the snowboarder. I also like how he has caught the mountains in the background. The bottom image is amazing, I like how instead of just taking a picture of a plane he has made it mor interesting my capturing a landscape. Its a clear and fairly sharp image. I believe this shot could be good for advertising as a few big brands are within this image.

Ed Templeton

Today we have had to research two photographers that we are interested in or that inspire us. My first photographer is Ed Templeton who is a photographer for a famous skate team. His images inspire me as they arent just aimed towards skateboarding. He has alot of cultural shots which also link in with skateboarding. I really like the image above just because its different to other skate photographers. Ive seen alot of skate photographers who are very much similar but i havent seen many shots like this one where there is so much colour. I also like the way he has linked the sculpter and skateboarding together.

Welcome to my photography blog. i will be posting pieces of work that has been completed in college