DEVELOPING PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS - PRACTICAL

In today's lessons we are going to practise taking photographs in a set up studio with artificial lighting and dark background. I am going to take images suitable for my magazine cover which I will then develop. While capturing photographs I will consider lighting, positioning, depth of field and colour in order to obtain successful images. I will be also continuously sharing gained skills with other students which I obtained in AS Photography course. I think this is a good way to do a practical as it allows me to apply and combine knowledge from other subjects. I will be also considering the difference of a portrait image which is slightly different within the media section comparing to photography. 

This is a studio set up which we created in one of the media rooms. We chose a dark grey background, in order to obtain full focus on the portraits itself rather then a busy surrounding. This also allows to easily manipulate the images by cropping them out and placing within different backgrounds. In addition, we also used an artificial light. This was a really important element which allowed us to obtain different exposure effects within the images. However, the overall lighting was quite limited as the room was really dark. This affected the overall compositions of the images.

Here are some examples of photographs which I took at the beginning of the session. The quality of these images is really low and this is affected by the lighting but also incorrect use of camera settings. Within these images I particularly used a setting without a flash, as I thought it would allow me to obtain natural effect. However, this was also affected by wrong positioning of the artificial lighting, as it wasn't fully reaching the area where the image was taken. I also took the photographs from the same level as the models. All these problems affected the final effect which I then decided to improve. Firstly, by spotting all the problems. 

This is the improved version of my photographs within which I tried to use different camera settings and positioning. In the first image the lighting is much better however, the shadow is slightly appealing within the facial area. However, this can be easily developed using editing program. Furthermore, in the middle image I decided to use flash. This worked quite well as the exposure of light is much higher. This allows to capture a clear and bright portrait with a strong but small shadow that can be cropped easily within one coloured background. In addition, I think the last image is the most successful one, as the lighting is particularly balanced while the colours are natural. Although, I think I could improve this image even further on by applying more suitable image within the background that would reflect the school/ college environment.