Evaluation

I really didn't enjoy my elective.

And I learnt very little as I know its unprofessional to say but our tutor didn't seem very enthused about teaching us as a group and you could only learn anything if you went up to her and asked.

From getting my one to ones with her however I did learn the basics of using the studio, such as lighting equipment, light meters and coloured gels etc.

The brief we were given was pretty much totally self directed with only a pre requisite of an essay and a way of displaying your photos.

I struggled to balance concentrating on my current project in Vis Com and the elective as it was far too spread out for me. Having over three months to finish the project when only having one night a week with no crits along the way really didn't motivate me either.

I definitely will choose to do my elective in a short period next year so that I can get it out of the way with as once I start something I usually don't finish until the deadline but having other and what I thought to be more important deadlines got in the way of my progress.

I displayed my theme of Light in a hard back album and blew up 5 of my pictures to A1 and A2. This was expensive!!! but worth it as they looked fab and I'm going to try and sell them to recover the expense.

Getting to know my camera

My Christmas present! 

This is my first digital camera and the first camera that cost me more than a tenner!

Does this mean I have to take good pictures now?

A few Tips

• If you want to get a clear and well lit picture that's being taken in a dark room but don't want to bleach it out with the flash set a higher ISO.

• To get the sharpest portrait of someone - focus on their eye. 

Experimenting

I would have shown the first pictures I took in my elective but made the fatal error of leaving my quality setting on the highest setting of RAW2 which I've now found is incompatible with pretty much everything! So I'm afraid it's all words...

Scary...whats all this about turning my DIGITAL camera to manual? thought cameras had evolved into most aspects of 21st century technology that will do everything for you but press the button?

So many buttons, nozzles, twiddly things and the digital screen of a maze makes me worry if I'll ever find that automatic button again.

We're allowed to venture around the college to have a play with our cameras. 

I set my camera to manual, a low aperture and ISO and take a picture of a lonely plant in the smoking area. This gave me a very dark and grainy photo so having zero patience I reset the ISO to the highest setting 3200 and switched the mode to auto to see what aperture and shutter speed settings it suggests.

In my dark pics I realised my shutter speed was far too low at 8 and should have been between 50-60. My aperture was far too high at 20 and worked better at 5.6.

I also tried adjusting the white balance and used the 'K' setting. In using this I could alter the colour in the photo using colours RGYB. I found the most useful setting to be red as it gave a warm glow to a harsh cold image.

As it got darker I discovered the 'creative' night setting that allowed you to scroll up and down on the shutter speed giving an interesting effect with light. 

This is one effect I got excited about as I could just point and shoot and the result was always a surprise.

On my way home from college I decided to play around with this setting even more and whilst my boyfriend was driving, I randomly snapped away at traffic on the motorway. I carried on doing this whenever I was out and about at night and had my camera with me. 

I enjoyed this as I the surprise you got each time as everyone was so different and so vibrant with colour. But I did eventually get bored

I then thought what it would be like to photograph the traffic on the M62 from the withering heights of suicide bridge! not on my own obviously this place makes me shudder everytime I across it as you contemplate the many that have thrown themselves off it!

Using a tripod and extremely long aperture I got a few interesting images. I even tried moving the camera slightly which gave a slightly drunk effect to the curve of the motorway.

Research

After really enjoying my playing with the light from traffic I discovered these guys; Lichtfaktor. They use a range of specifically modified LED and other torch wands is probably the only way to describe them to create Light Graffiti.

I asked at college if they had anything similar but I don't think they knew what I was talking about. I believe Lichtfaktor actually make these torches themselves.

Below is a short demo of one of their many round the world tutorials;

Their imagination is really inspiring as they seem to know instinctively what shapes to make with light that to us humans we can not recognise but to a camera lens makes perfect sense.

Gregory Crewdson 

Is best known for his elaborately stages surreal scenes of American homes and neighbourhoods. I particularly like some of his work because however un-natural the manmade objects seem the sky is always the tell tale that this is real.

The whole feel of his photos are very eerie and you think that something very sinister is about to happen or already has.

Another photographer Sophy Rickett seems preoccupied with what art historian Victor Stoichita once called 'Skiagraphy'- writing with shadows. 

In the most extreme of Rickett's images, particularly those in black and white, its as if a minimal quantity of light has slowly against some sort of resistance, seeped into them, just the least amount that could possibly allow the surface of the photograph to register the presence of an image at all.

 

In Rickett's colour pictures darkness still dominates but light gets turned up a few notches to flare up in artifiicail glory, with poisonous greens and sulphurous, Mephistophelean yellows.

'I'd like to encourage the viewer to track, to use a filmmakers terminology, rather than pan' Rickett has said 'to move along the picture rather than stand away and survey it from a fixed point'.

Florian Maier-Aichen

Maier-Aichen's obvioucs digital manipulations of his photographs have an unexpected effect. Rather than hiding or obscuring technical inconsistencies in the photograph, the 'imperfections' digitally input by the photographer draw the viewer closer from the distant position they'd usually assume in order take in an extensive panorama.