Photography Induction: Working with a Brief

In our Photography induction we didn't have time to photograph our own personal items like we were instructed to in our brief, so I had to hire out a studio and photography equipment so I could complete the task I had been set. To be honest, I'm quite glad it worked out this way as it gave me experience in setting up the lighting equipment and my own back drops, and let me work at my own pace.

Photograph of my Set-up (wow)

My photography brief required me to think about the following things when I photographed my personal object: shot framing, compostion, depth of field, lighting, shutter speed and aperture. So basically I was putting to use the things I had learnt in my induction.

To begin with I photographed my possessions whilst considering composition and lighting. 

 

I started off photographing an owl money box that my mum had made in high school. I tried to make the photograph look more interesting by considering the rules of thirds and having the subject slightly to the right rather than dead centre. I also adjusted the ISO and white balance so that the colours were bright and "accurate". I also made sure that the aperture was large (small F number) so that the background would be blurry allowing for my subject to stand out.

I did a similar thing when I photographed my mum's Russian dolls, only this time I had the aperture on a different setting so that the background would be less blurry. Here I tried to consider the different ways I could photograph the dolls, and focused purely on the composition of the piece.

 

I also focused on compostion with these two images, but focused mainly on experimenting with lighting. In the first image (left) I have both studio lights pointed at the subjects whereas in the second (right) I turned one of the lamps off, so only the light on the right was aimed at the objects. I like how there are shadows in the second photograph and how the whole "feel" of the photograph has changed. 

I then went on to focus on depth of field, whilst still taking into consideration lighting and compostion. I thought it would be a good idea to look at depth of field by photographing my dolls in a line.

The first photograph didn't go so well. I had the white balance and the ISO settings all wrong, so the picture came out too bright. But I changed them and I was able to produce a better result.

Here I was able to getting my camera settings just right to capture the image I was hoping for. The larger doll is in focus and the dolls behind it get more blurry the further away they are. The colours of the dolls are also accurate I was able to choose the right ISO and white balance settings.

Lastly I focused on shutter speed.

It took quite a few attempts to get my shutter speed photographs right, as there was a lot for me to take into consideration and to get my head around. I'm still not fully sure I have done it. A lot of my photographs turned out like this one; very bright and a bit all over the place.

After about 20 million attempts (only a slight exaggeration) I was able to produce this photograph, and it happened by accident as one of the dolls heads were dropped towards the end. Despite this I really like this photograph, and is certainly the best out of the lot (my shutter speed photographs anyway). It isn't too bright like the majority of my shutter speed shots, and I like how some of the heads are quite sharp. I also think that there isn't too much hand movement captured, which is what I was aiming for. I'd like to say it's because I finally got my head around the settings and what they needed to be set at, but it really isn't. I still don't have a clue. So I'm probably going to return to playing with shutter speeds, as I'm not going to let it defeat me.

Maybe.