Conceptual Shoot - Surveillance

For this shoot, I will being using the same surveillance idea and adding my own twist to it. I am going to complete this shoot in town during lunch time when it will be busiest. My aim is to capture people off guard as they are walking through town. When completing this shoot, the images will further suggest the idea of always being watched.

The equipment I will need during this shoot will be my camera (Nikon D810) and a tripod. I am going to set my camera up to continuously shoot every 5 seconds or so. The reason I am doing this instead of taking the images myself is because I do not want my subjects to feel uncomfortable or like they should pose for these images. Although my camera being there on a tripod may intimidate some people into posing, I hope that most people do not take much notice and carry on like they usually would. 

This shoot is going to be done outside so I will use a low ISO and as I want the images to be sharp and clear I will use a high shutter speed. If possible I may even try and get a shutter release remote so I can take the images manually but without touching my camera; this is so I don't waste shots on a blank canvas.

The obstacles I may face during this shoot is the weather may not enable me to go outside and shoot. Also people may realise that I am taking images of them and they may not appreciate this, however, if this does happen, I will simply delete in. Another obstacle that I may face is the fact that a person may notice that I'm taking images so they might pose which is not the results that I would like. This shoot will help improve my project because it is just reiterating the idea that nobody can have a private life due to the amount of camera and CCTV that is around nowadays.

Technical Shoot - Night Photography

For my first technical shoot I'm going to explore and experiment with night time photography. I am planning to do this shoot when the class goes on our overseas trip to Iceland. My main goal is to try and capture the Northern Lights but I am aware that it is not so likely that they will be seen. Aside from that my main goal is to produce some eye-catching, exciting photographs, as I have never really experimented with night photography before it will be good to learn. Where we are staying in Iceland, we will be near a harbor so it would be good to take some images of that and there is also a greater change of seeing the Northern Lights as there will be less light pollution. Below is an example of what I would like my images to look like:

To do this shoot I will definitely need to play around with my camera setting to see what looks the best. I imagine a long shutter speed and a high ISO will probably work best. The equipment I will be bringing is my camera (Nikon D810), a tripod because of the long shutter speeds, a spare battery encase mine runs out and also a spare memory card.

I am not completely sure what will be the main subject of this shoot as I have never been to Iceland before so I am not sure what it will be like but I hope to improve my night photography skills. The obstacles I may come across is it may take me a while to find the correct settings on my camera, therefore, I may not get any amazing shots but to overcome this I will ask my peers and my tutor for some advice. A personal obstacle will be not getting the opportunity to see the Northern Lights because it would be a wonderful experience. Doing this shoot will help me progress in my photography because it will help me learn how to create good photographs at night which will be helpful if I ever wanted to shoot at night again.

In Iceland, I managed to get out most nights to do different techniques when it comes to night photography. As I was lucky enough to see the Northern Lights 3 nights in a row, a lot of my final images are based around that. I also experimented with different lenses that my Tutor kindly let me have a play with as well as that he also taught me a few more difficult techniques that we practised together.

When shooting the Northern Lights, I had to experiment with my camera setting quite a bit before I could find the best way to show them off the most. In the end the most common setting I used were: shutter speed 8 seconds, ISO 800, and aperture 4.8. Over the three days that I successfully shot the Northern Lights these settings were the best. I am extremely happy with my outcomes because the images are so beautiful and interesting, however, when looking over my contact sheets there were a lot of not so good ones this is due to at times I didn't have a tripod to use, especially on the first night, this caused my images to look blurry and unprofessional. This is something I would know for next time if I ever got the pleasure of going back to Iceland and shoots them again.

Something else I learned whilst doing night photography, was how to use a tilt shift lens. A tilt shift lens is a lens in which the optics can be tilted or shifted in relation with the image sensor. They also rotate to allow the lens to shoot in a wide range of directions. The image below is one of my favourites from using this particular type of lens. As you can see, I focussed on the front of the object, slightly blurring the rest of it.

On the last night, I mainly experimented with light drawing and light painting. In the image below we used a torch and a long shutter speed to create these light drawing. The shutter speed was put on around 10 seconds depending on what pattern we decided to draw. If I could improve these images I would next time ensure that the guy in the image below was more clearer by manually focusing on to him. The reseaon I didn't to that is because I was to busy deciding on the camera settings that I didn't even think out the focus. However, I know that if I do this again, the focus is something I will remember to take into consideration. 

The two images below were done using a technique called light painting. To do this. you need a long shutter speed and a flash. You have to set up your image and then when the shutter is going off, a person has to run around the frame and making the flash go off in the specific part of the frame you would like to be lit. This was my favourite experiment that I learned during my night time photography because I had never heard of it before; this is because when people mention light drawing/painting they just assume something similar to the image above. The second image is my favourite from the shoot because of how dramatic it looks and it perfectly shows off this technique. If I were to improve this shoot, I would try and do the same experiment using different subjects to I could explore the technique even more.

Overall, I think that these shoots have been very successful and I have learnt a great deal when I comes to night photography, especially as I had never done it before I visited Iceland. This shoot will be helpful in the future when I do night photography again.

Technical Shoot - Shutter Speed

For this shoot, I am going to focus on photographing vehicles and people using a variety of different shutter speeds. I am going to be doing this shoot around the busy roads both near college and where I live, I am going to do this shoot all day so I can do it in bright natural lighting and in darkness so I can see lights. To do this shoot I am going to set up a tripod wherever I chose to take my photographs and switch between fast and slow shutter speed so I can compare the effects on the images. Although I already can hazard a guess at what the results will be, it will still be an interesting experiment because I will be able to get interesting photographs of moving cars and people moving around. Below is an example of what I would like my images to look like:

For my photo shoot I will need my camera (Nikon 810) and a tripod. I will also bring with me a spare battery in case my other one goes flat and I will also be bringing a spare SD in case I run out of memory. For this shoot I will be switching between a number of different settings: during the day time there will be natural lighting so I will need a lower ISO compared to when shooting at night. I am also experimenting with different shutter speed so those setting will be different slow, probably ranging from 1/125 to 10". 

There is not an obstacle I can think of that will effect my shoot too dramatically, only being told I cannot photograph, as I will be using the public for my images but I can over come that by deleting the images if a certain person does not want them on my camera. I believe that this photo shoot will help me progress as it will give me a greater understanding and more experience of using different shutter speeds, but it will also hopefully give me some interesting street photographs that can be used as one of my final images.

Bibliography

Street Photography Research

Kim, Eric. "The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide for Street Photography." BLOG. Eric Kim, 05 May 2017. Web. 24 May 2017.

"Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, Exhibition Guide, The Unseen Photographer." Tate. N.p., n.d. Web.

"Who's Watching You?" Open Society Foundations. N.p., n.d. Web.

Artist Research

Wittner Fabrice Photography. Wittner Fabrice, n.d. Web.

"Matt Hoyle Pictures." Matt Hoyle Pictures. N.p., n.d. Web. 


Wright, IO. "IO Tillett Wright." IO Tillett Wright. N.p., 01 Jan. 1970. Web.

"Lost Angels." Lee Jeffries. N.p., n.d. Web.

Keffer. "Keffer." Keffer. N.p., n.d. Web.

"9shots." 9shots. N.p., n.d. Web.

Technical Research

NoteToYou. "How to Make an Old Fashioned Photo Effect (Photoshop CS4)." Instructables.com. Instructables, 12 May 2016. Web. 

Alfoart. Photoshop Old Photo Effect for Image. N.p., n.d. Web.

"Six Ways to Create a Vignette in Photoshop." Design Panoply. N.p., n.d. Web. 

Conceptual Shoot - Iceland

For my first conceptual shoot, I am going to have my first go of doing street photography as I have never done it before. This shoot will be done on my overseas trip to Iceland and I am going to do it over a couple of days. The reason I am doing this shoot is so I can know what do expect when doing street photography throughout the rest of my project and so I can also get to grips with my camera settings. The location of my shoot will be Reykjavik, which is the largest city in Iceland. Hopefully, it will be a busy area so I can practice taking images of people in a candid, natural setting. I will also be taking images of the scenery and the architecture because all though it is not what I am focusing on in my project, I believe in will help my understanding and development of street photography.

The equipment I will be using is, my camera Nikon D810, and I also have two lens; a 50mm and a 70-300mm. I will also bring a long with me spare SD cards in case I run out of space and also a spare battery in case it runs out. This shoot will be done during the day time, therefore, I will need to use a low ISO. I also want my images to be clear and sharp so I will also be using a fast shutter speed. My aperture will depend on the depth of field I want for the particular shot.

There will not be a lot of obstacles when it comes to completing this shoot, apart from maybe the weather, the lack of people in the City and the fact that members of the public may not appreciate me taking photographs of them but these issues can easily be overcome by me improvising and respecting other peoples wishes. This shoot will help me progress because it will be the first experience of me doing street photography so I can learn what to expect when doing it again.