#cogcncphoto1a

[amethystelphotography]

Contains research for both my imaging class & portrait class.

A fascinating Photographer to research!

[taraprigge-blog]

Composition tips

We were asked to find a video that explained a bit about photographic composition, in particular the rule of thirds. I thought this video was quite good as it has loads of examples that clearly show how the rule works, as well as how you can break it effectively too.

[fionaclarkphotography-blog]

Paperchase Task We had to chose a single item that had a Christmas theme to it from our local paperchase store and then we had to photograph it as simply as possible. This was so that we would think of different composition ideas to control our images. We had to experiment with the rule of thirds and also had to try leave some negative space in the image. I chose this gingerbread man salt shaker as when I think of Christmas I think of baking and also of gingerbread houses. I chose the red background and green floor as these are typical Christmas colours and it excites people when they see these colours together.

[amethystelphotography]

[amethystelphotography]

Depth of field Finals

For my first set of Depth of field Photos I chose these red berries.

The first one was taken with a wide aperture at f5, you can see that the berries are in sharp focus but the background is completely blurred. The second photo was taken with a much smaller aperture of f22, and you can see allot more detail in the background.

   For my second set of Depth of field Photos I've used a pinhole camera on a tripod displaying a photo recently shot.

The first photo was taken with a wide aperture of f5 and you can see the camera is in clear focus but the background is distinctly blurred.

The second photo was taken at a smaller aperture of f22, and you can see that the back ground is in much more focus.

[amethystelphotography]

Still Life Finals

For my first Still Life I chose to photograph a college DSL with one of my lenses on it. It does not look like a very thought through plan, in fact most would see this as being completely unprepared and just choosing what was available on the day to photograph. Far from it, as a photographer I have not done this specific still Life, so even though it is a very common still life, its something I wanted to achieve, so I did research on how other people have chosen to photograph a DSLR, I knew immediately I wanted to stay away from the high key stock style images, I had seen some images with black backgrounds and lovely colourful catch light in the lens which I used as my basis for this still life. With in half an hour of set up I was happy with my lighting (roughly 45 degree angle soft box almost directly in front) for the catch lighting, I used Purple shiny wrapping paper, which has not only given a nice catch light in the lens but an interesting hue on the lens camera and background. The background was purchased in advance for this shot (black crushed velvet). I am very pleased with the lighting and mood of this still life.

My original second Still Life was suppose to be a skittles set up making a rainbow with water, but when I did a trail run at home, though the shots were effective I was not happy with how it turned out did not want to use it as my still life. So after some further research I came across an image of a chess set, coffee cup and ancient book which looked very appealing, which reminded me of my late Uncles Chess set I had stored away which I felt would make an interesting still life. So I did some research on how others have photographed Chess sets, I decided I quite liked the Harsher lighting which create strong shadows. I used the black velvet in the distance to create the pitch blackness of the background, used a honeycomb lighting with barn doors at a very low angle to the right. I experimented with different ways to set up the pieces. After looking through the images I decided that this was my strongest image, the contrasting colours between the foreground piece and the background pieces works well, I love the shallow depth of field and the angles of the shadows and chess board. The only thing I did in optimization is crop about 5% of “dead space” to the right of the image.

[amethystelphotography]

Lightroom

Star rating in Lightroom is quite easy, but doesn't feel as efficient as Bridge, until I was shown a more efficient way of rating, by using the arrows to scroll along the photos and just typing the number 1-5 to rate which is quicker than using the mouse like I originally was.

I particularly like the ability to just pull up your star rated images, it makes finding the images you want to work with very easy, rather than my old method of sifting through thumbnails on windows folders and opening a selection in Photoshop, which did become very frustrating. I can see why adding Lightroom into your work flow would be beneficial.

In this before and after, I Really like the dropper you can use in the White Balance controls to quickly select a neutral colour and automatically determine the correct white balance. I also like how the vibrance affect the facial tones with out changing colours.

In this before & after, as well as using the white balance dropper tool, I also used the clarity tool, this is quite new to me but I really like the effect it produces, though in portraits it works well for female subjects but not really for male subjects.

[amethystelphotography]

Adobe Bridge Review

We were taught how to quickly rate images in Abode Bridge, which is surprisingly fast and easy once you know how!

Abode Bridge is a very good software for batch sorting and doing simple batch optimizations.