Portraiture

Over the half term break we've been asked to think about portraiture. I am a bit gutless when it comes to portrait photography; I have hundreds of pictures of my cat batting her eyes at me and not much else. I looked around for some inspiration and came across some interesting photographs:


Anneke James - fashion photographer based in Leicester

I love the gritty location and the cloned subject - need to learn more about Photoshop before I attempt this but I've all sorts of ideas and locations whirring around my head...


'Portraying Kate Moss, a study in conversation' - Corinne Day

I love the honesty of these shots. It doesn't matter to me that it was Kate Moss, who Corinne had famously photographed as a child for The Face (1990) - it could have been anyone and been just as intriguing. Corinne sadly passed away last August aged just 48. Her work is incredible; take a look.

Picaso by Cory Smith - Orlando based specialist in creative portraiture and military photojournalism

Little bit in love with this - the light, the composition, the idea... just need some willing models... preferably a couple or this would just be weird!

Last and definitely not least, I'm fascinated by model turned photographer Ellen Von Unwerth's work - it's a tad risqué (some of it is very risqué) but the shock factor is a huge part of what makes your eyes stick to her photographs. They're graphic and gritty but they're absolutely beautiful too. Here are a few of my favourites:

 

 

Raaaa! Food for thought...

Short courses

Just a quick note for my course mates to let you know about a couple of short courses coming up over the next few weeks...

• Manchester Academy of Photography are running a course on the use of light in photography this Saturday 29th October - Peter Richardson who runs the class let me know there are still places available. I did an intro to digital photography class with Peter a couple of years ago - he's a brilliant tutor.
• Cornerhouse are holding a photography workshop on multiplicity and meaning (nope, I'm not sure what that means either...!) from 12-13th November

Sadly I can't make either of these but if you do go, enjoy!

Photographer's dilemma

Since I have taken photography more seriously and started to learn new skills, I've struggled with this dilemma:

Does post processing destroy the ethos of photography?

Digital post processing can certainly encourage a lazy approach to photography with the power of camera RAW. Certain features of someone’s face are permanent; part of who they are but often airbrushed away. Equally, photographs you wouldn't look twice at in their original format are often transformed by post processing.

Some photographers regard post processing as photographic heresy... I've not made my mind up yet but I find it hard to rule post processing out completely when it can come to the rescue of an image like this:

Before - the bright, overexposed sky has been 'blown out' due to the darker tones across the majority of the image After - the wonders of post processing (thank you Dave for teaching me what that strange little wand tool is all about...!) But what do you think?

Landscape photography

We were set the task of shooting a few landscapes this week, so I headed off to Lyme Park and into Manchester with my Sigma 10-20mm lens... here are the results:

Lyme Park - ISO 200 10mm f/4 1/1000 sec

Lyme Park - ISO 400 10mm f/22 1/8 sec

Lyme Park - ISO 400 10mm f/9 1/15 sec

Lyme Park - ISO 400 10mm f/9 1/80 sec

Roman fort, Castlefield - ISO 200 18mm f/22 1/16 sec

Beetham Tower, Manchester - ISO 200 10mm f/22 1.3 sec

Finally, this is my favourite landscape shot taken in the most beautiful place I have ever been - the Erawan National Park in Thailand:

Magical landscapes

This week we're looking at landscape photography. I love taking landscape shots but I know I've a lot to learn... here are a few of my favourite landscape shots by some incredible professional types:

Tom Nicholls took this at Harrop Tarn in the Lake District with a Sigma 10-20mm lens. I have this very lens! Sadly I am not Tom Nicholls... something to aspire to though

Michael Kenna grew up in Widnes and now lives in Seattle. His work is amazing and he has exhibited all over the world. I love this shot of the Manhattan skyline.

Richard Harris - 'A Day at the Beach' - Woolacombe, North Devon

Tomas Utsi - aurora borealis (the northern lights) - amazing

I'm a bit obsessed with the northern lights and although it's not photography-related I just wanted to share the following video. I can't stop watching it; it's magical:

RRRAW - first foray into Photoshop

This week I took my first ever shots in RAW and there's no going back... 4,000 brightness levels versus 256 is a no-brainer but the resulting file size is going to play havoc with my trigger happy tendencies. Methinks I might need to purchase an enormo-memory card.

I've always had an issue with Photoshop. I can tinker with contrast, brightness and saturation levels but I reckon I only understand about 1% of what it can do. There are too many windows, toolbars, buttons, sub-buttons hiding inside other buttons... it scares me.

I planned to get out on campus and take some dramatic wide angle RAW shots of the Whitworth Building but Manchester did what it does best ALL week so I'm afraid I ended up with a pot plant instead.

This week's class was a real eye-opener for me. Here's the results of manipulating the RAW image in Photoshop:

Applying an s-curve accentuates the highlights and lowlights

A more extreme s-curve creates a retro feel

Playing around with saturation levels, picking up on the red edges of the plant

As before but this time picking up on the green in the image

Just for fun ;)

Project angst

So, this course definitely isn't going to be a walk in the park; I have to do some actual work. Which is great actually, because it will help to focus my photography on themes and techniques that interest me, rather than just taking 'nice' photographs of things I come across. It will make me seek things out and experiment more.

I've started to think about a couple of potential project themes and look for some inspiration...

I've always feared portrait photography. For some reason this makes me want to choose portraiture as one of my themes (I do wonder about my psyche sometimes). I want to challenge myself in this course and some of the most evocative photography I've seen is portrait photography.

I came across an incredible French photographer, Richard Vantielcke. This photograph blew me away:

l'abysse aussi regarde au fond de toi (the abyss also looks inside you)

I love it - the perspective, the subject, the use of light... just beautiful.

Another area I'm interested in is street photography. Again I've always been hopeless/gutless when it comes to pointing my camera at someone I don't know. I love the honesty of street photography - it's raw and it captures a moment that might have passed a hundred people by, but you've seen it - and seen something special in it.

Felix Lupa

I mean this is brilliant - the balance of the poster, the child, the passer by; different directions; ages. I love this. Who else would have spotted this but Felix that day?

Then I think do I want to do two themes which terrify me? Probably not a great idea... but it would stretch me, which is the whole point of this course.

Another option is nature. I've always loved photographing nature, both through wide angle and telephoto lenses. I am fascinated with flowers and colours. I'd love to experiment with macro photography but have never invested in a macro lens. I know you can achieve a macro effect through reversing your nifty fifty but I doubt it's anything like the same clarity and impact.

I mean this is just exquisite:

Dewdrop flower refraction - Brian Valentine

Kudos to my classmate Darren who is a dab hand at this - fantastic stuff - check out his blog.

Choices, choices...

Custom bokeh

I have a rather girly obsession with custom bokeh... the pretty, twinkly kind:

  

I should probably get over it and concentrate on 'proper' photography, but before I do, I had a couple of requests for a tutorial of sorts, so here goes; it probably isn't going to make much sense...!

You will need: a trusty 'nifty fifty' lens - mine's a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 - card, scissors, craft knife (this is very Blue Peter isn't it?), sellotape and a light source e.g. fairly lights, candles etc.

The first thing you need to do is create a 'hood' for your lens. Make a short cylinder which fits snugly around the lens. Tape a circular piece of card over one end of the cylinder but cut a small square from it first. Fix two pieces of card across the top and bottom of this opening to enable you to slot different slides onto the hood.

Create the slides by cutting shapes from a small piece of card - anything you like. I'm a sap so I went for a heart, star and butterfly. You might want something a bit more butch, like a skull...?

Add your chosen slide and place the whole thing onto your lens:

Set up your light source - lots of small lights work really well - I've used both fairly lights and tea lights before. Now the tricky bit (or rather the tricky-to-explain bit because you're going to need to experiment a bit)... 

You need to throw your light source completely out of focus. I've tried both short and long focal lengths (is that the right terminology Dave?!) and I can't tell the difference - they both produce a similar effect. Set the focus to manual and fix it at one extreme. I set my camera to Av mode and f1.8. Look through the camera and move slowly away from the light source until the shape you've chosen comes into focus. 

Take the shot!

This one was a row of tea lights in front of a photo frame which reflected the light

Again this is a group of tea lights in front of a picture frame, but I've rotated it so it looks like they're shooting upwards

This one came out really well - it's a lamp with a single bulb but its cut work shade has split the light creating the tiny hearts in different colours

I really hope it works for you and I haven't made a total hash of explaining how to do it. 

Right, I'm off to grow up...

Welcome to my blog / Week one: Depth of field

So... I started a photography class last week after months (for months read years) of procrastination. I have finally run out of excuses - my photography isn't going to get any better if I don't commit a decent amount of time and heart to it.

So here goes... 15 weeks x 3 hours per week (and the rest) = 45 hours worth of trigger happy joy - what's not to love?

I've a feeling I'm not going to be the most eloquent of bloggers by the way, so hopefully my work will speak for itself. I'm hoping to chart my progress in class through this blog... in reality I'll probably just use it to vent my frustration when I start losing my mind to white balance, f-stops, metering, vignetting, bracketing...
The first thing I learned in class? Exposure compensation. Totally by accident. Turns out I had set my camera to consistently underexpose my aperture priority shots. Oops. Well at least I finally know what that funny little symbol means - I've a feeling this will happen a lot over the next few weeks as I get to grips with the intricacies of my beloved Canon 1000d.

So, this week's assignment was to experiment with depth of field and provide some examples of shots we have taken with small and large DOF... et voila:


Fairy light bokeh - small DOF



City centre shutter - small DOF

 

Dicentra / bleeding hearts - small DOF



Manchester manhole cover - Northern Quarter - small DOF

Aleksandr - small DOF

 

Bosherston lily ponds - Pembrokeshire - large DOF



Table Mountain - Cape Town - South Africa - large DOF