‘The Languages of Light’

 

 

 

(Bloomfield, 2018)

Initial Response

After looking into this assignment and the requirements and what I need to do going forward, I found myself with a lot to do, from a small but simple brief. My first thoughts were about making this into a final submission for an assignment, and I feel that I am capable of doing this. Out of the three shoots that qualify for a development, I feel strongly that form was by far my strongest as I felt far more comfortable and enjoyed it more than the other two, followed by natural light and then artificial. With form a firm favourite, ideas came a flowing and some were very appealing. I feel there is room for development in this shoot, and I can easily identify where it is and how to overcome this. This is the route I am opting for, and hopefully within my written response, planning and execution of a shoot for this assignment, progression can be easily identified and shown accordingly within the body of work. I also realised that this work needs to be submitted via prints also, which I am happy to do, although I am not sure whether my printer can produce the quality I desire. For my submissions for the year, I am thinking of getting it printed professionally, but not currently for this assignment, it is dependent on my tutor’s response to the prints submitted for this current assignment.

 

Mind Map

To view the mind map, click the link.

Mind Map

 

Ideas of Development

Other than one other assignment, and tweaking slightly here and there, this is one of the first times in the course I get to do a development shoot. I am looking forward to progressing with this shoot and creating a shoot that will be much stronger than my previous shoot. Although I absolutely love my images from my previous shoot, I feel this one will be better. Firstly, one of the main points I want to address for this shoot, in which I feel will be beneficial is using a tripod. Last time I didn’t and I took 100’s of photos and only a minority worked. The tripod slipped through my head and when shooting long exposure, it is always key to use a tripod to stop camera wobble. So that is my main first point I will address. Then, I feel the location in which I took the shoot was silly. Although I could block out light etc. I think doing it on a table from above wasn’t a good idea, doing it on the floor would have been fine, but again that was a simple and silly mistake. If this shoot is shot from above again, I will make sure I will do it from the floor so that I am able to get good height so that I can look into the viewfinder to make sure my positioning is good, I am also going to change the background slightly in the shoot as I found the other one slightly annoying as I didn’t feel it was big enough to use. Although I got away with it, I did struggle. Another piece of development which I feel is necessary, is using a range of light positionings, as I only used a few, last time, and this time I would like to try more variety.

 

Shoot Plan

For this shoot, I am going to use Manuel mode, like previous shoots. I am going to take inspiration from research conducted and will ensure I use the relevant camera equipment to help me with my shoot. From my conclusion of the last shoot, I will use this and what I thought was my weaknesses to help me improve and ensure that this shoot is a much more of a complete shoot. I will be using flowers and plants for this shoot, and a selection of them. I feel they are all individual and show different form throughout, with different shapes and sizes. For this shoot I will be using a black backdrop, like last time to help the subject stand out.

 

Contact Sheet

To view the contact sheet, click the link.

 

Contact Sheet

 

Shoot

 

Image 1

Image 1 B&W

Image 2

Image 2 B&W

Image 3

Image 3 B&W

Image 4

Image 4 B&W

Image 5 

Image 5 B&W

Image 6

Image 6 B&W

Aperture, ISO, Shutter Speed

Image 1 –

Aperture: 8.0
ISO: 25600
Shutter Speed: 1/25

Image 2 –

Aperture: 8.0
ISO: 25600
Shutter Speed: 1/25

Image 3 –

Aperture: 9.0
ISO: 25600
Shutter Speed: 1/50

Image 4 –

Aperture:  9.0
ISO: 25600
Shutter Speed: 1/25

Image 5 –

Aperture: 9.0
ISO: 25600
Shutter Speed: 1/13

Image 6 –

Aperture: 9.0
ISO: 25600
Shutter Speed: 1/13

Development of the Shoot

For this shoot, the main purpose was to make it a development from Exercise 4.3. To then make it into a submission for Assignment 4. I think that Exercise 4.3 was a really strong shoot, but there is always room for improvement. Before this shoot, I stated some points which I felt that would significantly improve this shoot. I stuck to those and I felt that my shoot was improved from the previous shoot. I feel the subject was a very interesting one with all the different types of flowers and how they came out amazed me. One of them even seemed to resemble one of the artists I looked at, Emma Davies, really well with the colours. I used lighting in a variety of places around the subject making it really light up and create shadow and other features that make it look different in a range of shots, proving how lighting can affect the form of the subject depending on where it is situated. The tripod also made life so much easier and the change of background, and I don’t think I could have pulled it off without the equipment that I decided to use, making it look like a professional studio shoot.

Annotations

Click the link to view my annotations for this shoot.

Annotations

Colour or Black and White?

Although briefly observed in my annotations, I feel I didn’t quite touchdown on differences between the two when analysing my work. The reason I did the breakdown of the two is because I feel you can see more tones within the black and white images. You can tell where the light source is coming from easier.  Although, I like to include the coloured images as they are very vibrant, and stand out well against the background and make it visually very attractive image. Take Image 1. The coloured version is very colourful, the yellow stands out all round, of course there is a darker element to where the light doesn’t reach it as well but it is still very well lit. You flip it to black and white and you can see ever so slightly that the tones change and not as drastic as the coloured version. Image 5 is the best representation for this. The colour is amazing, it is very odd and unique and creates a sense of illusion, whereas the black and white version doesn’t, but shows more of a variety of tones, which still makes the image very much still visually appealing. I feel both show the form and how lighting creates the form but in respect I feel both black and white and colour show this differently. This stems from how strong the lighting looks in both images, in which in Image 5’s case I feel the lighting looks harsher in the black and white version even though it is the same image. Overall, I like to show the coloured version for what it is but also in this case show the black and white, so you can see the ray of tones.

 

Written Analysis

I have developed the assignment from the original exercise by fixing what I see as obvious weakness and mistakes I made in the original shoot. I have outlined these in an earlier section of Assignment 4. This included using a tripod, which I did not do in the first shoot, leading to me struggling with long exposure, lighting, using more variety to get different effects and to produce various images that use the same subject but look different in form because of the way the lighting has perceived the subject. And also, the location in which I shot the subject, I didn’t exactually make my life the easiest with the positioning or the backdrop I used. So, within this assignment I have improved and amended this and tried to do a shoot bearing this in mind. When I did the shoot, I did in fact do all of this, and I must say it did make my life so much easier. I really wanted to capture the form and I really wanted to exploit this using the flowers and I feel this shoot was stronger by making simple tweaks with equipment and props and positioning helping me to achieve this.
Over the course of the exercise and the assignment I have looked at numerous artists for inspiration. I kept the artists relevant and used work that I enjoyed and that I feel would benefit me and my shoot. Unintentionally, Edward Weston and Emma Davies’s images kind of resemble what I shot, I didn’t intend to but when I looked back at my work in relation to my artists, I felt there was a good comparison to them and a relation. In the first shoot, I know Weston did the pepper, because I wrote about it, and I decided a pepper would be good use of veg when looking at form and found a really interesting shaped one, so I used that, and when I finished doing the shoot I could see a lot of similarities between my work and his. The same for Emma Davies. One of my flowers came out very similar and had similar effects, again not intentional, it just happened to take up the same kind of form and had the same attributes. All the artist’s work has influenced me throughout though, by showing me how form can be important and how it can be portrayed with lighting.
My technical approach was simple, to use Manuel mode as stated, and to use short aperture to get a soft effect that would luminate my subject and to get the background dark as it was focusing on the subject, and to use long shutter speed to ensure the image was correctly exposed. Whether I did landscape or portrait it didn’t really matter for the shoots, but the backdrop, tripod and lens were all very important aspects of the shoot, and helped me massively in terms of producing imagery that was of a good standard.

I feel throughout the two shoots there were a lot of strengths and weaknesses within my work. And because I am continuously learning, there is bound to be. Some more notable strengths I think were my subjects for both shoots, I really thought the flowers and the veg were really strong subjects that show and work the brief in terms of form. I also think that my settings on my camera were very effective in using small aperture and long shutter, and made the desired effect. I feel weakness included some of the images looking slightly too soft and dark in some areas and also not necessarily the pictures but I feel my write ups could have been more in depth and more critical in terms of how the shoot went. I also thought another strength being my planning and how I have led the development taking precautions along the way, clearly showing my thought process and how to constantly improve leading from one shoot to another. However, I do feel that my work as a whole shows progression and determination to get the desired effect and to pursue the exercise into making it a formal submission. Individual images to note, I feel my pepper, red chilli and image 2 and 5 of the flowers really came out well, and I am very proud of them for a number of reasons. Mainly because I think they fulfilled the brief and look really professional seeming as I didn’t use a studio and also, I think they are visually attractive. One I feel that is not as strong is Image 5 of the first shoot, as I do not think it is on the same level as the other images, simply because the lighting and form isn’t particularly good showing the form and how it can be made to look like something else from the light.
I feel I have developed the exercise in order to fulfil the Creativity criteria by changing aspects of my work to make it more creative, such as light positioning, choice of subject, and background etc. I have used my imagination to create images that are visually attractive and show form through lighting. I have experimented with various light and positionings and changed the subject continuously to improve shots in order to collect a range to pick from that work the brief.

 

 

Reflection

Having wrote a lot for this assignment already, I feel that I have done a lot of preparation, and analysis and work to go into this to make it a formal submission. I am really pleased with my shoot because I feel although it is visually appealing, I also feel that it fulfils the brief well and especially the most recent shoot (the development). I have thoroughly enjoyed it and felt I was conducting my own little studio shoot which was very fun.

 

Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills

Using various materials and techniques, I managed to put together and conduct a shoot that really played the brief. I used various materials such as a backdrop and my camera, and objects to block out the sun light in order to get the desired effect. Techniques I used included shooting with long exposure, making sure the subject was central to the frame and was correctly exposed. I observed my artist research and defiantly took aspects of all work into consideration to help excel my work and to make it into a really strong project. Compositionally I couldn’t go far wrong, but visually I was aware of the positioning of the light which helped reflect the subjects form which meant the subject was then able to be captured by me to present in relation to the brief.

 

Quality of Outcome

My content, although bulky, has been in fact very informative about my intention’s, my feelings and how the work has concluded. I have tried to apply knowledge learnt and already present within my work to ensure my shoot was as strong as I could have made it. I ordered my work in a manner, readable and easy to understand throughout the assignment. My thoughts and ideas were present throughout and showed well in the end product of my shoot which really showed my research and planning conducted, easily put into practice and executed in the shoot.

Demonstration of Creativity

As discussed above, I have gone to town on creativity for this shoot, trying to push my own goals and boundaries in relation to this criterion. I have used various subjects which I would not normally encounter and I have used lighting in multiple positions to ensure multiple desired effects for the outcome of the shoot. I have experimented with different flowers, some that worked, some that didn’t and have also used props to help me work my creativity by making it possible such as using long exposure.

Context

I have reflected, a lot through this assignment and have done a lot of research both from the exercise and this assignment. Although, it is not all about quantity, but quality, and I believe that I have taken aspects of their work and imbedded them in my brain to help me focus on my subjects and to produce similar work with desired effects. I have thought critically throughout and made various decisions which ultimately have ended in the end produced looking the way it has. This included location, camera settings, subject etc.

 

Feedback

The feedback received for Assignment 4 was very interesting. I thought throughout Part 4 as a whole, that the third shoot was my strongest, but my tutor thought differently, and I can now see why, and I am glad I chose this shoot to make it into a formal submission for Assignment 4, because I feel I nailed it. I thought my images were visually really attractive because of the form, the lighting and the colour, and they were much better than the previous shoot, and in photography a development shoot is always key to improving photography and making yourself better. I feel in this case my shoot was improved second time around, identifying key points needed improving and then addressing those points. 
Of course, I knew that the point was coming about improving the print quality which I knew was coming already because I used my home printer which isn’t the best. I feel that getting it printed on different paper also may make a big difference.  I feel I am improving on being less descriptive, but still very much so, and really need to start focusing in on analysing more now, as by far this is my weakest point throughout EYV.  I need to explain more my reasoning for certain decision making and I need to point out what went well, what didn’t and why. In my research I made a mistake, of mistaking a cyanotype for an image, but then made sure I went back over this to correct myself to make sure the audience know, but still kept the same intention of using the work to talk about form. Overall, this is one of the stronger submissions, and I enjoyed developing an exercise and making it a strong assignment in the end.

 

End of year Reflection

This assignment is probably the strongest of the lot, with a lot of written analysis, but still not in the depth I feel I can now produce after my last feedback at the end of the year for my final assignment. Visually this is also the strongest assignment as I tried to do a shoot in which was out of my comfort zone and something I have never tried before, setting up and executing my own studio shoot. I feel within my written response, I explained about my struggles leading up to the shoot and how I was going to amended these for this shoot (as this assignment was a development from a project). I am very good at explaining some of what I did in order to capture the shot which is fine, such as holding the LED and in what position but then didn’t analyse the image in the depth about what it tells us and I think my tutor has pointed me in the right direction in terms of how to break down my images and this is something I will be sure to work on in the coming course.

© Lewis.Gibson.Photography.2019