Time Lapse

My first attempt at Time Lapse.

If I was to do this again, I would use a neutral density filter to get the right balance of light between the sky and the ground.

Unit 32 Experimental Imagery

Long Exposure with Editing

Below is an image created by leaving the shutter speed open for 5 seconds and moving the camera around.  I then put it through the high pass filter in photoshop.

High Pass with Overlay

f5, 5 seconds, ISO 100

High Pass with Linear Burn

f5, 5 seconds, ISO 100

Next are 2 images with a longer shutter speed and also manipulated using the High Pass filter.

High Pass with Multiply

f9, 30 seconds, ISO 100

High Pass with Colour Burn

f11, 25 seconds, ISO 100

Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton - October 1920 - January 2004

Jesse McKinlay wrote "He was a prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black and white images were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications"

Newton was born in Berlin and attended the Heinrich-Von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American school in Berlin.  With a keen interest in photography from the age of 12 when he bought his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva from 1936.

Between 1936 and 1946 due to Nazi oppression on Jews, Helmut fled to Singapore then Australia.  In 1946 he set up a studio in fashionable Flinders Lane,Melbourne and worked on fashion and theatre photography in the affluent post war years.  He shared his first joint exhibition in 1953 with Wolfgang Sievers who was also a German refugee.

Newtons growing reputation as a photographer was rewarded when he secured a commission to illustrate fashions in a special Australian supplement of Vogue, published in January 1956.  He won a 12 month contract with British Vogue and left for London in 1957.  He left the magazine before the end of his contract and went to Paris, where he worked for French and German magazines.  He returned to Melbourne in March 1959 to a contract for Australian Vogue.

In 1961 he settled in Paris and had his worked published in French Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.  He established a particular style marked by erotic stylized scenes, often with sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts.

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon - May 1923 - October 2004

Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer born in New York City.  His interest in photography came about when he joined his local YMHA (young men's hebrew association) camera club and his first camera was the family Kodak Box Brownie.

He used photography to escape his personal life where his father was a strict disciplinarian.  He used his younger sister Louise as a model as she was very beautiful.  Louise struggled in her teenage years and was given psychiatric treatment she was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.  These early influences of fashion and family shaped his life and career through his love of capturing the tragic beauty in an image.

Tilda Swinton

In 1944 Avedon began working as an advertising photographer for a deoartment store but was quickly discovered by Alexey Brodovitch, who was the Art Director of Harper's Bazaar.  Lilian Bassman also promoted Avedon's career at Harpers and in 1945 his images started appearing in Junior Bazaar and a year later in Bazaar itself.

By 1946 Avedon had set up his own studio and was providing images to magazines such as Vogue and Life.  He then progressed to Chief Photographer at Bazaar.  In 1952 he became Staff Editor and Photographer for Theatre Arts Magazine.  Avedon liked to show his fashion models full of emotion, smiling, laughing and many times in action.  Towards the end of the 50s he became dissatisfied with daylight photography and open air locations and turned to studio photography using strobe lighting.

He has photographed campaigns for Gianni Versace, Calvin Klein and Revlon amongst others and he has also shot for numerous rock bands including The Beatles and ELO.

Paul McCartney

Avedon was always interested in how portraiture captures the personality of the subject.  As his reputation as a photographer grew, he brought in numerous famous faces to his studio and photographed them with his large format camera, these included Buster Keaton, Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol.  His portraits are immediately recognisable by their minimalist style, the person is looking square into the camera and posed in front of a white background.

Marilyn Monroe

He would provoke reactions from his subjects by asking them uncomfortable questions or psychologically probing questions.  In doing this he produced images revealing aspects of his subjects character and personality that were not captured by others.  

Avedon worked right up until his death in 2004.  He died of a brain hemorrhage whilst shooting an assignment for The New Yorker.  At the time of his death he was also working on a new project titled Democracy to focus on the run up to the 2004 US Presidential election. 

Unit 23 - Digital Media

Plan For Outdoor Photoshoot

Nikon D5100
50mm Lens
18-105mm Lens
Spare Batteries
Memory Cards
Tripod

I plan to take portrait photographs of a family outdoors.  I need to plan ahead what day to go on so as to get the best weather.  

I will be using a digital camera and editing and enhancing the images in Photoshop afterwards.  Depending on the weather I will adjust my white balance accordingly.  As I am outside I shall leave my ISO at 100 as there should be plenty of light.  If I end up with shadows on faces during my test shots, I will make sure to use a reflector to fill them in and also use a fill flash.

I aim to get nice close ups of the children's faces so I can really see their eyes.  I have researched online how to make the most out of the eyes on an image and enhance them to make the picture.  Composition wise, I like to fill the whole frame with so am hoping to get a few good shots like that.

As I will be outdoors and photographing moving children, I will keep my shutter speed fast above 1/60 and open my Aperture to about f2.8.

f2.8, 1/640 sec, ISO 100

I have captured in this image what I set out to do, full frame and nice eyes.  I have added an action to this image in Photoshop which adjusted some colour.

f2.8, 1/640 sec, ISO 100

Again on this one I have filled up the frame and enhanced the eyes in Photoshop.  This was originally a bigger picture but I cropped the rest out so as just to focus on the face.

f2.8, 1/800 sec, ISO 100

With this shot, I pushed up the exposure time a little so as to freeze the ball mid air.

I think overall, I achieved exactly what I set out to do.  I really enjoy portraiture and love to enhance the images in Photoshop.  I would say I am gradually building up my skills in editing and produce some high quality images.  I can crop, resize, change hue and saturation and do so on a regular basis.
I have had excellent feedback  from my images off my clients and feel I am growing with confidence with every new shoot that I do.

There is always room for improvement even if you are one of the world's leading photographers.  Personally I think I am holding my own at the moment.  I am still learning how to use my camera in manual mode and am growing in confidence doing this.  
I still need to practice taking pictures in strong sunlight and would also like to learn how to use the sun and other ambient lighting to enhance my images by maybe including a sunset in one of my portrait photographs, but this will only come with practice and good weather!

Architectural Photography

Unit 31 Specialist Location Photography - Night Photography

For my Specialist Location brief I have decided to do Night Photography, Urban Landscapes.

I really like pictures taken at night with all the lights and ambiance that comes with it.  

As with my other work I am carrying on the theme of shooting in my home-town of Manchester.  

I have been doing some research online and have earmarked some locations where  I would like to try and recreate some of the shots that I have seen.  

One location I am really looking forward to photographing is Media City.  

The image below was taken by Andrew Brooks and although it has been digitally manipulated I love it, I love the colours, reflections everything. 

Media City is an amazing place to take night photography, the colours and reflections really make an impressive picture.

I have decided to digitally manipulate my final shots to really maximise the sky, water and colours.


Task One

SWOT Analysis
Strengths	Weaknesses
Growing Confidence in manually using my camera Good with Photoshop and Lightroom Like to experiment Artistic I have a good vision of how I want image to be	Lack of experience in certain areas of photography Need to be more confident in my own ability Organisation of files
Opportunities	Threats
Competition entry Sell images online or elsewhere Approach Media City, Britannia Hotel etc with my images, see if they like them	Weather Security, if need to gain access to a good place to shoot Lots of other photographers have taken same images

What is Location Photography

Location photography is where you go to the subject rather than the subject coming to you.  There are many different types of location photography, I have outlined a number of them below.



Architecture

Photo by Susan David

Architectural photography is the photographing of buildings and similar structures which are aesthetically pleasing and accurate representations of their subjects.  Architectural photography could also cross-over with documentary as it is a snapshot in time of a certain area and how it looks that will probably have changed in the future.



Documentary

Photo by Caroline Golton

Documentary photography chronicles and records significant and historical events.The photographer attempts to produce truthful, objective and usually candid photographs of a certain subject usually people but can be anything.  It can cross-over with other genres such as architecture, events, wedding, sports, and street to name but a few.



Commercial

Photo by Caroline Golton

Commercial Photography is images taken for commercial purposes, such as advertising, corporate publications, brochures, restaurant menus etc.  Basically, commercial photography involves a client that wants to sell or promote something for which they need photographs taken.  Commercial photography is an umbrella for many different types of photography such as, fashion, still life, food, advertising and many more.



Events

Photo by Kerry Diamond

Event photography involves documenting a certain event.  
This can range from a festival of 5000 people to a small intimate gathering.  It can also be used to document sporting events such as the Olympics or the World Cup.  It can be used to photograph fashion shows.  Event photography crosses over with documentary, sporting, wedding and fashion.



Fashion

Photo by Elizavea Porodina

This is a genre of photography devoted to the display of clothing and other fashion related items.  Over the years it has evolved and taken on a whole new style with exotic locations and images that could also be classed as fine art images.  Could also be linked with documentary, portraiture and event.



Landscape

Photo by John Kiely

Landscape photography shows different spaces around the world.  The photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also be used to document changes or disturbances of landscapes or man-made features.  Landscape photographers often attempt to document the space as well as convey an appreciation of the scenery.
In this respect landscape definitely crosses with documentary and also fine art.



Portrait

Photo by Caroline Golton

Portrait photography or portraiture is one of the most common forms of photography.  It is the art of capturing a subject in this case a person or group of people in which the face, facial features and facial expressions are all predominant.  What a portrait photographer tries to aim for is to focus on the persons face.  
This doesn't mean that the persons body will no longer be included, they can still be included in the image for it to still be classed as portraiture but the focus or emphasis should be on the persons face or facial expression.



Sports

Photo by Mark Pain

Tom Jenkins of The Guardian says "Sports photography is all about seizing the moment, capturing the drama and telling a story."   This is very true as capturing the action at its peak is the ultimate goal.  Whether it be a high paced Premier League football match or a more relaxed Golf tournament, capturing the action is a must.  It can also be classed as documentary as it is a moment in time and depending on what you capture it could also be a historical moment.



Street

Photo by Dan Eardley

There is not just one thing that defines street photography.  It is about capturing the emotion and expressions of people but also capturing the urban environment.  It is basically taking photographs on the street, finding art and beauty in ordinary places and ordinary people and having the skill to compose them in a clever way.  It crosses with documentary as you are capturing a moment in time that will never be the same  again, it could also be classed as portraiture if your subject is a person and also landscape if your subject is the urban landscape.


Wedding

Photo by Kerry Diamond

Wedding photography is the capturing of activities relating to weddings.  It can involve taking pictures of the couple before the wedding for use on invites, thank you cards etc as well as coverage of the wedding and reception.  You could also class wedding photography as documentary and portraiture.

Task Two

For my Specialist Location brief I have chosen Landscape photography, night time urban photography to be precise.  As I said at the beginning I wanted to imitate some of Andrew Brook's work without using montage techniques.  I have also researched a number of other photographers whose influences I aim to inject into my images.  

Andrew Brooks

Angelic View by Andrew Brooks

Photo by Andrew Brooks

Andrew Brooks is a photographer, digital artist and film-maker who spends hours in a darkened studio striving to show us the bigger picture.  Weeks, months and sometimes years can pass by as he re-touches picture after picture, to create the perfect moment.  In recent years his vision has evolved into large panoramic scenes of nature and forensically detailed cityscapes.  It gives his work a timeless, fantastical appeal capturing the imagination of the public and landing high profile international projects such as the Hidden City Series and commissions by the BBC. 

In his picture Angelic View (top of Town Hall, Manchester) 
he gave the usual dull grey working class city a visual make-over so exciting, he made it look like a scene from Tim Burton's Batman!
Ref.  www.andrewbrooksphotography.com

Mike Curry

Photo by Mike Curry

Mike Curry is a landscape photographer based in London.  He started out life as a photographer by blagging his way into a job at the renowned Selfridges Portrait Studio even though he had no portfolio and didn't even own a camera!  He was thrown in at the deep end on his first assignment of photographing Arab and Nigerian royalty, no doubt this was a daunting first task but Mike accomplished it and was soon running the studio.  He left Selfridges to start his own portrait business, which has been his bread and butter for the past 27 years.

Mike's image above is similar to the work I am trying to create.  I love the lights and reflections in his work as well as the contrast between the darks and the lights.  


Ryan Budhu

Photo by Ryan Budhu

Ryan Budhu is an amazing photographer from New York.  
On his Flickr account he describes himself as "just a guy who mostly just tries to capture things I see whilst living in Downtown Manhattan."  As you can see from the image above there are titbits from his work that are visible in my own.  To get the smoothness of the water Ryan has used a long shutter speed, which has also beautifully captured all of the lights and reflections in this Manhattan skyline.  I love it!  Most of Ryan's images are taken from rooftops which really show New York at it's best.

Photo by Ryan Budhu

You can find out more about Ryan at www.ryanbudhu.com


Ansel Adams

Photo by Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was an American photographer better known for his black and white landscapes using an 8X10 large format camera.  Although Ansel's work does not directly influence my own work, I felt I should  include him as he photographed the American landscapes that he loved as I am doing with my Manchester images.  
I think you have to enjoy what you are seeing in order to photograph it, that way your vision really shines through.

Photo by Ansel Adams



Felix Bonfils

Photo by Felix Bonfils

I really like the image above by Felix Bonfils, again although it is not directly influencing me in my work it has reflections in it as do mine.  
He was a French photographer born in 1831, I think it's amazing that he has captured an image so clear using 19th Century techniques!  I really like the composition of the image, the way it is split in half which is not conforming with the rule of thirds but it is still pleasing to the eye as reflections look better half and half.
I don't think I can really relate to historical landscape photographers as my work is very modern, but my work is still similar in some ways.  
If the above picture was taken again in this day and age, it could easily be enhanced and manipulated in Photoshop to give more of a wow factor.



Planning

For my Specialist Location Shoot I will need:

Camera, Nikon D5100
Lenses, 50mm, 18-55mm
Spare Batteries
Memory Cards
Tripod

I had been wanting to go out  and take my photographs for a number of weeks but due to other commitments and then when I finally had a window the bad weather, it took me quite a long time to getting round to it, but when I did, I picked a really good night.  
The quantity, size and format of the images had been pre-agreed with our tutor.  
We were to produce 10 images on our blogs and also printed in A3 
with correct printer profiles.

I researched what time the sun would set that day and it was 21.37pm.  I set off from home an hour before as I had to travel by train and tram to Media City, Manchester which was my first chosen location.  When I got there the sun had just set below the horizon, the sky was a lovely blue colour.  I decided I would use this colour as a backdrop to some of my images.  When I had exhausted Media City I hopped on the tram back into the Town Centre.  I had decided earlier on that wanted to photograph the Britannia Hotel with all it's lights outside, so I headed over there to see what I could come up with.  It was about 23.00pm so the sky was pitch black by this time.  Although it was late, there was still a heavy traffic flow, so I decided to use this to my advantage and do some long exposures.  I was so glad I did, because the results were really good.  I ended up with 3 Britannia shots all from different angles and all with light trails from the traffic. 
 When choosing my final 10 I realised that I only had 9 really good ones.  
That night I was due to do a midnight charity walk in Manchester City Centre so decided to take my camera with me and see what I could come up with.  
All of the walkers wore bright yellow t-shirts and wore flashing light bunny ears.  
I thought of my previous long shutter speeds and decided to recreate one but using people as the lights instead of the car headlights.  
I finished up with an image of all of the walkers passing me, yet 1 lone security guard just stood there.  I was very happy with the image and included it in my final 10.

Although I planned a little, like what equipment I needed and where I was going.  The final images are all down to the vision I had on the night.  I had earmarked the locations but the compositions of the images came to me when I got to the locations.




My Final 10

f10, 3 sec, ISO 100

f5, 5 sec, ISO 100

f5, 6 sec, ISO 100

f5, 2.5 sec, ISO 100

f3.8, 2 sec ISO 100

f3.5, 10 sec, ISO 100

f11, 30 sec, ISO 100

f11, 25 sec, ISO 100

f9, 30 sec, ISO 100

f8, 15 sec, ISO 100


The first 9 images were taken using a tripod, the last one I was on a charity walk so didn't have it with me so I improvised and balanced the camera on a bollard.

Post-Production Editing

I used Photoshop CS6 and slightly tweaked the vibrance and saturation in camera RAW.  
I then added a high-pass filter with an overlay at 100% opacity in all images.

Aims and Objectives

My aims and objectives were to recreate to the best of my ability some of the work produced by Andrew Brooks, now I know he really goes to town on the manipulation of his pictures by using montage techniques etc but I wondered if I could imitate his work but put my own spin on it.  I wanted to make beautiful night time images without using montage.  I wanted what you see in the image to be what I saw through the lens BUT I wanted to enhance the originals in Photoshop to maximise the effect of the picture.

I have ended up with 10 images from around Manchester, mainly Media City that are a little like Andrew Brooks, but in my own style, I'd say more realistic although enhanced.  

Overall I would say I was successful in my efforts and have achieved what I set out to do.