Managed to get my hands on a Wista finally, so I could go back up to London and shoot some decent film negatives. I ended up shooting photos of Canary Wharf from three angles around the city.

The first was from the latest location I found, looking east from Rotherhithe over the river. This was probably my favourite location as it was the closest to the buildings so the shot I got was much clearer and detailed.

The second location was in the same area as the first, except it was further west and away from the buildings. I chose this location because of the pond's location due to the buildings emerging through the gap in the trees. The lights around the edge of the pond also give great reflections in the water, creating a very unusual effect when combined with the exposure time.

The third location was the original place that I found and visited on numerous occasions to get the right shot, it is located on the other side of the buildings, and looks the other way - just behind The O2 Arena. This shot is also great because of the proximity to Canary Wharf, but gives another angle on the buildings.

I also shot a fourth location from the Isle Of Dogs itself, but further south and looking north. The body of water that I used for the reflections is one of the docks, but I didn't print the shot because the shot was full of camera shake. I suffered from this problem in all of my shots because I didn't have a sturdy enough tripod, and had to manually hold the Wista's shutter open for over a minute. The ice cold winds didn't help either, but considering the conditions, I think I did a fairly decent job with my 'ol digits.

In order to get a decent exposure over a minute, I had to use a much smaller aperture than normal, I ended up using the camera all the way down on f/64. I felt like one of the group :D

The Body: Production Shoot

These are my four final shots from my Production shoot yesterday, I'm really happy with the way they came out not only because of the quality of the prints, the correct exposure and focus etc, but also because I managed to produce some very decent shots, near enough what I wanted, within a 20 minute shooting period (because that was all the time I could get with the model)

Sides of A Coin (kinda)

This was one of my earlier initial ideas for my Body production shoot that I went back to later on to experiment with a little in digital post production. I had an idea of people having split personalities, and this was inspired by events in my own social life with friends. I wanted to experiment in creating a picture that showed "two sides of the same coin" of someone's personality. This result shows one half being a perfectly normal human being, lit up in the darkness of reality, whilst the other side represents the same person, but they have started to decay and crumble. 

A very strong contrast I think.

London's a Big City...

I managed to get up to London a few times over the last few weeks to shoot some test shots for my city section of my environment unit. Despite multiple setbacks thanks to typical London transport & other things, I was able to locate a few decent shots of the buildings at Canary Wharf from multiple angles across the river - thank God for the natural geology and shape of the river thames!

Quite happy with these shots, but I think I prefer them when they're black & white - even though there's a significant amount of nice colour tones in them. I just think the black & white looks more sophisticated & appropriate.

I hope to be able to go back to London soon with a Wist large format camera to shoot my final shots. :)

The Body: Test Shots

Wow, I look weird...

I got the honour of having my ugly mug snapped during one of our portrait workshops the other day... So yeah that's my face plastered over there to the left. :)

This blog post is really for me to show some of the various ideas I had for my portrait shoot.
I had a lot of ideas regarding a concept, but the one thing I really wanted to focus on was the idea of a portrait being a literal representation of a person. So a photo of someones face for example.

I was very interested in showing the differences between human facial features, thus started looking at the work of Martin Schoeller. His work inspired me to think about the idea of taking a straight-on photograph in order to show the person for what they are when they look at something/someone.

As good as this idea was, I felt that the photos themselves didn't look as natural as I wanted, in regards to the way they were lit, so I decided to experiment with simple Rembrandt lighting setups using my DSLR and off-camera wireless flash.

I experimented with this simplistic way of lighting, using my mother as a test model at home in my kitchen, I also tried using natural light instead of strobe flash to compare the results. I prefer natural light, but I have to use studio lights for this shoot. Bummer :/

I've always liked the idea of using multiple photographs in a 2x2 "quadriptych" style because it allows you to present more within a space rather than say one single photograph. I thought this would be a good idea because people often have different sides to their personality which sometimes cannot be captured within a single photograph. Doing it this way allows me to showcase more of each person at the same time.

I experimented again at home to try and figure out how I was going to light my shoot, because I'm planning to have the photos in a quadriptych, I want to keep them simplistic and almost identical. The shot below and left is, I think, to bright and lacking in tone because the subject's head is hiding the majority of the shadow behind to the right. To overcome this problem, I switched the light position to the other side and the result is a significant improvement, as seen in the photo below and right.

The decision to move the subject's head round slightly wasn't one that i took lightly, but I wanted a more human, and realistic shot instead of a mugshot that lacking in life. The shot below and right is a fairly accurate representation of the lighting setup, composition & overall look that each of the four final photos will be, just with a different model.

The lighting setup I will hopefully be using for this shoot will mainly focussed arount Rembrandt's famous style, I will be utilising a large softbox for my main light source, this will be located on the subject's left (camera right). This will hopefully create a very dispersed, soft light that will look very nnatural and compliment a woman's face. On the opposite side I will place a large white reflector to help give some bounce-back light into the shadow areas to try and lower the amount of overall contrast in the shot, but not too much as to wash out the shadow. I will also try to create an evenly lit, white backdrop using two matching light sources from either side of the shot, but out of frame.

Ralf Uicker

First off, I love Ralf Uicker. I think he's a brilliant photographer with a real eye for urban landscapes. I like him so much that I have one of his photographs framed in my room ready to go up on the wall. Ralf captures a wide variety of street life, in various cities around the world, often simply from a normal person's point of view. He almost exclusively works with Black & White film, but has recently started to adopt digital colour photography.

This photograph of the New York skyline was very inspirational to me and I hope to be able to create something similar from the buildings of London. I want to be able to photograph the idea of "A city that never sleeps" But due to travel cost and time I can only really venture anywhere as far as London, oh well London'll do :)

What I really like about this photograph is the use of water to reflect the building's lights, yet not exactly mirroring them. I also like how Ralf has shot it so that the sky is almost pitch black, showing that it was late at night when there is very little light in the sky from the sun. It is truly at night.

The use of Black and hite enhances this photo as it gives a sense of sophistication and gives the building added majesty and grace with the way they tower over the city like guardians or watchers.

Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller is a photographer that really caught my eye whilst I was looking for inspiration for my Body shoot. One area of his work particularly focuses on straight on flat photographs of people looking straight at the camera. He uses a very small depth of field from a large aperture lens, and almost always focuses on the subjects eyes. He keeps his backgrounds simple and plain as to keep the viewer's attention fixed solely on the subject. This use of small depth of field creates a kind of veil around the parts of the photograph that are out of focus, making us look at the subjects eyes more and more. It's a very clever technique that I would love to include in my work somehow.

Martin tries to keep the Portraits he takes quite similar, but occasionally adds in extra things within the frame, such as a prop specific to the subject or allowing them to pull a certain pose during the shoot. Because he sits and talks to the people during the shoot, they never really know when the photograph will be taken so they cannot really prepare for it and add any kind of fakery to it. What is captured is a very accurate representation of their personalities and lives.

Rembrandt Workshop

We recently had a workshop session in-studio about the use of Rembrandt's Lighting technique.

Rembrandt lighting: Quite simple; one light on one side, one reflector on the other. That's pretty much it.

The workshop went great and was a lot of fun,It was a good chance to get to grips once again with studio light setups and I got to use a Bronica medium format camera for the first time, now I just wish I'd checked the focussing more closely...

Every single shot on the roll of film from the workshop that I took was slightly out of focus, primarily due to the fact that I was unfamiliar with the camera. But this was only noticeable when in the darkroom printing the pictures, because the slight mis-focus was not visible on the negative itself.

The day was not a complete failure however, because with my being typical me, I had my 7D with my also for any other shots I wished to take, I was lucky to one portrait in particular which shows Rembrandt lighting rather nicely:

Yes it's colour and yes it's digital, but the fact of the matter is, it's still a portrait. And one i'm actually proud of at that.

The Body: Simple Potraits

^^ That's George.
<-- And that's Nicola.

Two people that were happy to model and stay still as long as they could for me as a fumbled around for far too long composing, metering, focussing, then composing again, then checking again. And again. And again as I struggled to take a photo before it took too long.

I got there eventually both times however, and I'm very happy with these results. The idea behind these two portraits was to mimic the traditional type of portrait, where the model simply sat for the photographer, without the shot being too fancy or complicated. simple outdoor daylight with exterior backdrops give a natural sense to the pictures that I think just works.

Sticking this idea of simplicity, I would like my Portrait section to feature clean, simple portraits, with very minimalist backdrops to help maximize attention on the subject. I am as of yet undecided as the the specifics of what I would like to do for my Portrait studio shoot, it depends on who I am able to get to model for me for the specified allotted day.

Miscellaneous Environment Stuff

Managed to get in the darkroom a few days later and get another sunset picture printed, this time I deliberately added a bit of warmth to the image by altering the colours a bit. I think this adds to the image a great deal, multiplying the colour that was already there and adding it to areas that were previously quite plain.

My scanner is now pretty much useless, so i've resorted to taking photos of my prints with my iPhone, so excuse the grainy, distorted quality:

I've also managed to get hold of a Mamiya again for a while, so I took it out to take some general photographs, with no distinct subject, mainly to improve my understanding of the camera and as a way of practicing full manual film photography.

I decided to venture out to a local public house by the name of "Hall Place" as it was a nice day and I thought I could find something good to snap there. I wasn't wrong, as the house itself provided a great, almost picturesque, manor house-type subject.

I set up to take the first shot, had everything ready and metered & focussed. As I removed the darkslide to expose, a rougue goose stuck it's head up into frame and ruined my shot, costing me an exposure on the film, I wasn't most pleased although it was quite funny after when I saw the picture for the first time. I shooed the goose away and tried agin, this time the photograph was much better.

I also attempted to take photographs of a few notable trees in the local area, there were a few that stood out because of their size, location and separation from others. I thought they would make good subjects to practice on.

Overall I was very happy with this unrelated photographic venture, because it gave me some much needed experience with the Mamiya and was another opportunity to drill the process of manual photography into my brain, so it wasn't a wasted effort. (And I got some good shots out of it too I think)

Next up: The body :)

Environment: Sunset Shoots

Major hate for my scanner at this moment in time, it's currently casting a weird glow on everything I scan and I have no idea how to stop it. :S

Anyhoo, here be some contact sheets from when I went out and about with a Mamiya RZ to shoot sunsets at golden hour, I decided to keep the location the same so I was able to show the difference in colour and shapes found in the sky depending on day, time and weather. I shot the contents of these two rolls of film over a period of 4 different days ad was rather disappointed with the results if i'm completely honest.

However, this is because i'm used to shooting with RAW digital files on my 7D, and the ability to manipulate them to get the best shot is too easy to pass up, with film you are a lot more limited to altering the colour cast and brightness of the prints during post-production.

Despite this, I think that I was able to come out of this attempt with a few decent photographs that I can print bigger in order to examine them a little better. I do hope to, weather permitting, go out again and re-shoot a few more times so I can get some much better images, as I think the majority of these are a little dark. That's partly due to the fact that I didn't have access to a light-meter at the time of borrowing the equipment, to solve this problem, I took along my DSLR and used that to meter from the sky in "spot metering mode". This cheeky bit of resourcefulness managed to provide me with a fairly accurate way of metering, without actually possessing the film photographer's most important bit of kit.

These are two shots below that I have printed larger in order to assess the quality of the photographs, I think they are well exposed, if slightly dark in terms of foreground. Perhaps if I had metered for the mid-tones instead of the highlights in the sky, then I would have exposed much more evenly across the photograph, instead of just having a foreground silhouette.

Also, for comparison, here is a digital photograph that I took with my 7D whilst I was out there:

Obviously I prefer using digital, and I have a lot more experience with it, but it kind of defeats the point of learning, because it makes creating good photos too easy in a way, using film is more of a challenge, which will allow me to become a better photographer, I hope...

Eric Hines

Eric Hines is a 21-Year-Old Photographer and Timelapse Cinematographer from Valparaiso, Indiana.

The reflections in this photo are very clear, mirroring the colours in the sky almost perfectly.

A well balanced exposure made possible by a digital sensors more dynamic sensitivity.

Amazing colour from a shot that would normally just have a blue sky, made possible by good timing during golden hour.

Movement made possible by a longer shutter speed, greatly enhances the scene.

Eric is one of my current favourite landscape photographers because his photographs are amazing in terms of both composition, and timing; he has managed to capture the beauty of the sky with incredible clarity, he makes almost constant use of neutral density filters in order to limit the amount of light hitting his digital camera's sensor, allowing longer shutter speeds to create smoother tones in the sky and smoothing out water quite substantially.

I am particularly fascinated by Eric's use of water within his photographs to showcase movement during the exposure, and by reflecting the colours of the sky and doubling up the beauty they present to the viewer.

The meaning of these photographs, to me, is that there is still beauty left in the world, you just have to find it at the right place and at the right time. These photographs make me feel like nature's majesty can never truly be destroyed by humanity and the ruination we have and are still bringing to the world.

Environment: Part 1 Idea.

All my life I have been fascinated with the transition between day and night and the brief time where there is incredible colour in the sky, transforming the landscape into an almost ethereal and heavenly place. For the first half of my Environment section I would like to try and photograph sunsets, and the dramatic colours they create in the sky.

Sunsets are not a new thing to me, because I have always been interested in this time of day/night, I have previously attempted to take pictures of them, found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/metcalfedan/

Sunset view from Erith Pier, Erith

Sunrise view from Erith Pier, Erith (The Following Morning)

Sunset over Danson Lake, Bexley

These Photographs were taken with my digital camera over the summer and feature a selection of multiple images stitched together with Adobe Photoshop to create a seamless panoramic photograph. Capturing the beauty in the sky is something I genuinely love and will continue to photograph for a long time. But I have only ever shot them with digital cameras, I have never tried it with analogue film - something I have wanted to do for a while.

Object Shoot: Lost Love

This is one of the two almost identical shots that resulted from my object shoot, with the theme of "Lost Love".

This was my first real attempt at shooting the objects to fit the theme, and I was particularly unhappy with the results. I intended to create a dark, mysterious and overall sad setting, using soft light with plenty of shadows. In this photograph however, despite featuring a lot of shadow, the objects within the scene are too bright, and not nearly mysterious enough.

The objects in the picture represent my chosen theme quite well I think, the meaning of the objects is that of possessions, reminding of relationships, and 'lost loves'.
For example, the block of glass containing the Eiffel Tower was a souvenir from a romantic trip to paris, the pendant; a gift returned at the end of a relationship and the burnt & torn photographs; a hint at attempts to banish the past from memory by destroying/purging the photographs of the people's faces.
The biggest and most important symbol within this photograph is that of the wilted rose.
Roses have always had a strong symbolic meaning, with red roses being representative of love. This red rose is wilted - it has died, and this is a very strong representation that love itself has died too.

I decided I wanted to use a wilted rose after seeing various photographs of dead roses taken by a photographer named Gấu December. I found her whilst browsing through the newest uploads section on the website flickr.com. I was struck by her ability to render such usually beautiful and prefect flowers as imperfect and impure.

The photographs she has created differ to my idea in that they feature little to no shadow, yet I still felt greatly influenced by them enough to want to refer to them when trying to figure out how I was going to set up my shoot and decide upon what I wanted to include in the shot.

I would like to reshoot if possible, but due to studio availability and time constraints, it may not be an option, if I re-shot the still life, I would perhaps try and get closer to the subject for a more macro type photograph, as I think that the picture I have is lacking in a bit of depth and detail. I would also perhaps not use a black cloth as a base for the objects as it makes the scene a little confusing in terms of depth and understanding of what is happening within the scene. A white surface would make it easier, without ruining the overall mood of the scene, because there would still be a black backdrop present.