Project 65; Symbols

I have had a few Ideas on the themes that were mentioned in the project. They are as follows;

Crime:

Photo of news paper headlines. A ski mask with a gun on a table. A person dressed as a thief; mask, stripy top and swag bag. A wrecked and burnt out car. A broken car window.

Poverty; Begging hands/bowl. Homeless person/people.

Silence;Finger to lips. Someone gagged. Zippered lips.

Growth; Graph going upwards. Person standing on a height chart. An arrow pointing straight up.

Excess; Overflowing bottle bank?

Here is my first attempt at poverty;

And here is something that I produced purely by accident when I was playing with strobes;

It has an almost religious quality to it.

Project 64; Evidence of action

I like both of these and cant decide which one to publish here so have included both.

Before ...

After....

Artificial light. Balancing flash and ambient light.

I have been continuously experimenting with artificial lighting since completing section 6. I have been carrying out one of the exercises recommended on strobist.com on balancing flash and ambient light.

So I chose a subject to experiment on and here it is.

this photo is shot with just ambient light, f4.5 at 1/750th of a second with window light from the left of frame. The light is a little harsh I think and could probably do with diffusion. The shadow detail is poor too.

I placed a speedlight below and in front of the orchid, about a meter away set on manual. I took a series of exposures and reduced the output from it eventually down to 1/16th of full power. The flash head is zoomed fully to 105mm. I got the exposure above. Not a great improvement. The sun is on the left and quite strong. The flash throws a nice shadow on the wall behind and does improve the shadow detail. However the overall effect of the lighting is too harsh.

Here I have moved the strobe above and to the left of the flowers. The power is reduced to 1/32nd and the head is zoomed out to 70 mm. I like the speculative highlight on the green leaf and the shadow fill on the flowers. The effect on the wall behind is nice too, the splash of light.

The exposure is 5.6, 1/125th of a second. ISO 200.

Here the exposure is the same. The flash power is the same but I have placed the clear grid diffuser on, which zooms out to 17 mm. I like the quality of the light, the shadow fill and detail are good. The direction is good too. I think though that the light is too white.

The same shot but I have used the cloudy white balance on the camera to warm up the shot. I dont own any flash gels at the moment and I think that that would make a difference.

Here I have used tungsten balance on the camera. The flash still white as you can see on the background.

A closer shot of the flowers. !/60th of a second at f5.6. Flash is same position and power output.

So I was looking at some of the earlier photos and I thought about the ambient light. I prefer the balance between the ambient and flash with the balance slightly tipped in favour of the flash and the way its splashed on the wall and highlighting the flowers. So I left the f stop at 5.6 and changed the shutter speed to its max which is 1/250th of a second. This has the effect of cutting down on the available light. Something I might try is to cut it even more by using my variable ND filter, a trick that David discusses in a recent post here http://strobist.blogspot.com/2010/06/using-nd-filters-to-kill-depth-of-field.html

I turned off the flash to see how much ambient I would get and above is the result.

Now add the flash back in;

I like the balance here .

Project 63: A Narrative picture essay.

Project 62; Researching an event

Lunchtime.

I have decided that I will pick a very simple event to try this process out on. Lunchtime is something that happens every day and as we live in France it is sacrosanct.

Although it is a very simple subject, I am overflowing with ideas. The story goes something like this;

Bread; Very important here and bought fresh every day from la boulangerie. I am seeing shots of the bread cut on a bread board, macro shots of the nice fresh crust in warm sunlit kitchen.

Omelette; Eggs, Breaking eggs, eggs shells, shots of the other ingredients.

Salad; Nice macro shot of the heathy green leaves of lettuce. Shot of Vicky at the sink in kitchen either taken from outside in(need a stepladder) or inside out with a view of the mountains.

Table; a nice shot of the table, set with nice place mats and utensils. Close up of a chilled bottle of wine with beads of moisture on it. Wine glasses.

Sitting down to eat.

Afterwards; Empty glasses, empty plates, scrunched up napkins. empty coffee cups.

I think I will google lunchtime images and food photography as research.

As I said above, here are some of the links that I checked out.

The Ten Tastiest Food Photography Tips | Photojojo

Food Photography Techniques and Tips

Food Photography – An Introduction

Food Photography Portfolio : Food Photography Blog : Food ...

Putting the subject first.

So onto the final section of the course, narrative and illustration. On reading the introduction I think I am inclined to pay more attention to the graphic element of my pictures than the subject matter. I tend to put the subject first like this example;

When I am looking for pictures I tend to examine the graphic elements, I am very heavily influenced by lines, curves, shapes, colour. I understand the picture making process much better now.

Here is a badly taken photo taken by me from a friends wedding. I find the process of telling a story or narrative through photography very difficult. Actually a wedding is a very good example of a subject that is perfect for a narrative. Other examples I can think of now would be a national day of celebration, a parade or daily life. lunchtime seems like a very good subject for me because it is something that happens every day and close to home. Its nice a simple and the only limit to it is my imagination.

I tried this process a couple of days ago working from the point of view that it was easy and I didn't need to really read the notes on it! On reflection I think this is because that is the way I learn. I need to do and make mistakes to learn something. I think the step that I missed out was plotting the story. The second stage is the research, say for lunchtime I could put the term into a search engine like google and see what images it comes up with.

Strobist

Using speed lites has opened up a world of new possibilities for me. The possibilities are endless. The amount of information available on the internet is also endless.

I have become a big fan of the blog strobist http://strobist.blogspot.com. I find it a fantastic learning resource, full of tips and hint from everything concerned with lighting set ups to making homemade lighting gear.

I took Davids recommendations on some books and have bought these two The Moment it Clicks and The Hot Shoe Diaries both by Joe Mc Nally who has a blog here Joe McNally's Blog. He has a channel on youtube here YouTube - joemcnallyphoto's Channel. Speaking of youtube there are so many good videos to be found there like; Strobist Preliminaries, YouTube - PhotoGavin's Channel and so on. Also worth looking at are the videos by Zach Arias.

I am currently thinking of buying some more kit. At present I have two canon speedlites, one 580 EX and a 580 EX mark 2. I found a great blog here My Blog , with a great post on budget kit hereStrobist Startup Kit — Budget vs Premium.