#shoot 5

Unknown gunmen shoot five people while they were having meeting in Okporo, Orlu local government area of Imo State on Thursday. The Police Command Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Micheal Abattam, confirmed the incident on Saturday. According to Abattam, “They were having a meeting when the gunmen came and attacked them.”  he said, this is uncalled for and we are set to fish out the perpetrators…

Shoot 5-

Objective: To creatively capture a subject using photography techniques learned in class

Brainstorm: Candies at work

Professional Examples: 

Photos:

After the limited success of incorporating reflections into my last shoot, I feel my fifth shoot has put me back on track. I am pleased with how bright and colourful the individual images turned out, having waited until the next sunny day to take the opportunity to spend the whole afternoon at the location, waiting for the right lighting.  Unlike with my first in the round shoot for this project, where I wasn’t too sure what I was doing and rushed myself, I felt far more prepared this time around.  Having learned from my mistakes, I attached my fixed length 24mm lens to the camera. This was to ensure I was not zooming in on the structure and changing the perspective without noticing. It also helped me pay more attention to where I was walking, making sure the monument remained straight and centre within the frame in each image. To make my result appear similar to the work of Stephen D’agostino and Pep Ventosa, I took as many images as I could from each angle. These artists use 30+ images to build up texture and a sense of movement in the editing stages. I took far more images than I did in my first in the round attempt, ending up with 47 good files to use compared to 17. Despite taking my time whilst walking round in a circle though, I still produced several photographs which were washed out of colour, as well as some which contained trees positioned directly in front of the monument, which removed the architectural element I was focusing on.

Using Adobe Bridge, I organised through the 47 good files and opened them up as photoshop layers. When editing just 17 images for my first in the round, I went through each one, giving them a different percentage of opacity, and also changing the blending modes. This was not going to be a realistic way of editing with 47 images. Instead, I selected all images and reduced them to the same opacity of 25%, leaving the last image at 100% to work as a background image. I then moved some layers around, bringing the images with the richer blue sky to the top. Then, with some of the lighter images, I changed their blending mode to Darken, so with the light parts of the image the colour is replaced, whilst dark areas remain the same. This helped retain details of the structure. https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/blending-modes.html

The idea for my fifth shoot is to create another in the round image. Having already researched and attempted one in my first shoot, I am feeling quite confident about trying another, and I will hopefully be taking my time with it. I firstly need to remember to slow down the image taking process, ensuring I line up the subject matter straight from photo to the next. I also wish to take many more images whilst walking around this time, to give off more of a layered feel after editing. One issue I discovered during my first attempt was that getting the correct exposure was not as simple as it should be. Sometimes the sun was too bright, so while the sky was exposed beautifully, the building was far too dark, and I lost all the details of the structure. http://www.exposureguide.com/architectural-photography-tips.htm On Exposure Guide, another lovely photographer blog which I have followed for some time, there is a post about the basics of architectural photography. A useful tip they suggest is to simply underexpose the photograph by one or two stops, ensuring you retain the details as it is undoubtedly the most important part of the image. The sky can always be fixed in post production at a later stage. The structure I would like to focus on this time is the Nelson monument in the centre of Glasgow Green. The tall obelisk towers high above the skyline, making it visible from across the city centre. It was designed by a popular architect of his time, David Hamiltom, to commemorate Horatio Viscount Nelson after the battle of Trafalgar. Nelson was a very popular man that over 80,000 people came to Glasgow Green when they were laying the foundation stone. I wish to photograph this monument as there is plenty open space for me to walk around it’s entirety, and I believe it would look very effective photographed in this style. There are high rise flats which sit to the right of the green, which I hope could add the urban feel into the images as I am essentially photographing in the park again.

Equipment List:

Sony a77 body

Sigma 24mm lens

Shoot 5 is going to be of Alex, who lives in Norwich and is ironically studying photography also. He has gone through a pretty strenuous relationship and break up recently and I wanted to capture it for my project. Him and his ex girlfriend were together for 4 years and were then on/off from December - August of this year until Alex bit the bullet, and ended it. Although they broke up 4 or so months ago, he still has objects left behind from that relationship at his university housing. He said that they constantly had small arguments about nothing and they were both at uni’s that were both quite a distance away from each other. He said she still tries to call or text him, especially when she is drunk but he ignores her calls and has blocked her online.