Colour vs Black and White

Colour catches the eye. Mood can be communicated based on a photo's color scheme; a cool tone can give the image a feeling of sadness or loneliness whereas a warm tone can give the image a feeling of joy or tenderness. The ability to use complementary colours to emphasize relationships between subject matter is lost with black and white photography. Coloured images usually look more real and show the true reality because it captures the different colours and shades but black and white images would make people guess what colours are in the image.
Black and white photography can seem rather dull but some images can seem really deep because it can make the images seem more historic and there is usually more of a contrast between the shades. Black and white photography is also great to tone down the grain in some images which I have been able to use during my music shoots.
In my opinion, I only like black and white images when it is occasional, this is because the images that I have produced have always been full of color such as the sun set along the frozen canal. The sunset on the canal, in my opinion, would not look right if it was in black and white because it would take away the beautiful colours in the sky and the reflection on the ice.

Task

My task was to pick a colour and go around college to shoot some images that involve that colour. The colour I chose was yellow, this is because I know that yellow is a colour that looks terrible if it is overpowering. I took several images but my favourites are a small yellow wellington boot, a yellow car and two yellow lines on a paved road. I chose these three as favourites because the yellow boot stands out on the mostly plain background however it doesn't seem to overpower the overall image. I like the second image of the cars because it's full of a few different colours and the yellow car is almost hiding. I like the third image because I think that the yellow lines compliment the dark red bin.

This task helped me improve as a photographer because it helped me notice more things that I probably would've missed because I knew I had to look for certain things. 

Photoshop Joiners

To create a joiner, you different images of the same area. Then, you upload the images onto a computer and open photoshop. Go to File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack. Click 'browse' to find the images you want to use. You must make sure you have ticked 'Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images' and click OK. Photoshop will then automatically align the images for you. 

You are then free to experiment with the different layers and also move them.

Add a new layer by going to Layer>New>Layer from Background where you can now change the colour of the background by going to Edit>Fill>Colour.

You must then flatten the image before saving by going to Layer>Flatten Image which will let you save your image as a JPEG.

Studio Lighting and Props

 A beauty dish is a light that produces a hard light. The light can be made harder when you use a grid which directs the light into one direction rather than having a widely directed light. When you place a beauty dish close to the subject, the subject will be illuminated from different angles and this will produce less shadows. When a beauty dish is further away from the subject, more shadows are formed.

A small reflector directs the light. The light in this image has an attachment called the honeycomb grid which creates a focused beam of light with no diffusion but it is not intense. Honeycomb grids vary in size but are usually the size of a drinking straw.

A soft box is an attachment for the studio lights that softens the light. The soft box is there to evenly light the subject, thus creating an evenly lit image.

Manual Camera Handling

I have been experimenting with the camera settings to see if I can get a perfectly exposed picture. I had been changing the shutter speed, aperture and the ISO on the camera to see how much of a difference each setting makes on the brightness of the entire image.

Changing the Shutter Speed

Changing the shutter speed seemed to change the exposure of the image quite a lot because of how quick the shutter opens and closes. When the shutter is open, light is let in, so when the shutter speed is slow you are letting more light into the image. So I decided to use 1/60, 1/100 and 1/250.

This image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/250. Due to the fast shutter speed, this image is rather under exposed because there are too many shadows and the white background isn't even white.

This image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/100. This image seems to be more correctly exposed than the other two I had taken.

This image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/60. Due to the long shutter speed, more light was able to get through the lens making this image over exposed.

Changing the Aperture

Changing the aperture changed the exposure of the image slightly. The aperture controls how much light goes through the lens and is measured by f-stops. The smaller the number, the bigger the hole. I chose to use f 2.8, f 8 and f11.

This image was taken with an aperture of f 11. This is the smallest aperture I used and the image is under exposed due to the lack of light let in to the lens.

This image was taken with an aperture of f 2.8. This image is rather over exposed because the aperture setting let in too much light.

This image was taken with an aperture of f 8. This is a correctly exposed image as the aperture was at the correct size.

Changing the ISO

The ISO has a greater part in the exposure of images because the ISO controls the light sensitivity. A low ISO, such as 100, will be less sensitive to light than a high ISO, such as 800. The ISO's I used for this experiment are 100, 800, and 3200. 

This image was taken with an ISO of 100. Due to the ISO being low, it did not pick up much light so this image is under exposed.

This image was taken with an ISO of 800. This ISO helped me achieve a correctly exposed picture.

This image was taken with an ISO of 3200. The high ISO made the image over exposed.

Photographic Styles

Documentary Photography

Documentary photography is used to capture both significant and historical events. It is usually covered in photojournalism. The aim of this kind of photography is to produce truthful, objective and candid photographs of a particular subject. An example of a documentary photographer is Dorothea Lange who's famous for the 'Migrant Mother' image which was taken during the Great Depression.





Still Life Photography
Still life photography is the capture of inanimate objects, or usually a small grouping of objects. Still life photography gives the photographer more leeway with the arrangement of the elements in the image. This genre of photography requires compositional skills and a refined sense of lighting.






Panoramic Photography 
On some cameras, there is a Panorama mode which allows you to take a picture whilst panning the camera either horizontally or vertically to create an image with a wide field of view. This genre of photography is best for landscapes.




Portrait Photography
Portraiture is based on people. The photographs are usually of a person or group of people that displays expression, personality or mood. The main focus of portraiture is a person's face so the photographs usually contain the head and torso of a person; but on occasions, photographers will include the entire person in the photograph.









Landscape Photography
Landscape photography is typically the capture of the world; this includes nature and man made features. Many landscape photographs show little or no human activity. Landscape photography can be there to bring out the greatness of nature such as mountains or an open field.

Re-Touching

I have been given an image to retouch to make it look better. I will be using Photoshop to edit this image. I will use three tools; the spot healing brush, the healing brush and the patch tool.
To begin with, I decided to use the 'spot healing brush' to get rid of any visible spots and freckles, this made her skin look clean and smooth.












I then decided to clean up the scar under her lip and the small spot scars on her cheek to make her skin more clear using the 'healing brush', I also got rid of any loose strands of hair near her cheek.







Whilst I was fixing up her scars, I decided to get rid of any unwanted hair near her eyebrows and I also got rid of her wrinkles under her eyes to make her look younger.

Angles, Viewpoint and Cropping

Edgar Degas

Degas is a famous artist from France. He is well known for his paintings, sculptures, printmaking and drawings. He is known as an impressionist or a realist. His artwork is inspired by photography; where the artwork captures real life instead of perfection.
Before photography became known, artists would create drawings that are very perfect; but once Degas discovered photography, he changed his style completely and based his artwork on the sorts of images photographers would capture; reality. Photography was able to capture movements which gave the images more of a reality-like feel to them; Degas took that and created paintings that looked more realistic.

There is a rather clear difference between these two paintings. The painting of the jockeys and the horses looks more realistic because it captures a real life moment. Due to the horses moving out of the painting, it can show movement and reality. There is also a lot of open space in this painting.
However, his painting of the ballet dancers looks staged; it doesn't look natural. This painting is more brightly coloured than the painting of the horses.

Early Kodak Photographs

The early Kodak photographs were circular. Using the camera, which was named Kodak No1, you would have to set the shutter by pulling a string and pressing the button on the side of the camera. After the photo had been taken, you would then wind the key to reset the film. Normal people who were taking photographs with the cameras were known as 'amateurs'; this is because photographers would look at their work and criticize it because the 'amateur' photographs would crop people or their compositions were terrible.

Two examples of photographs taken with the Kodak No1.

Camera Angles, Viewpoint and Cropping

I went around the college campus and too some photographs focusing on different angles, viewpoint and cropping.

The first photograph I took was looking up at some people on a balcony inside one of the campus buildings. I like how this image looks because the people are looking down and it makes them seem like giants. The image is quite plain but it shows you the main focus of the image.

The second photograph I took was looking up at the branches and leaves of trees. But when looking at the photograph, I didn't like how it turned out, so I decided to try again. The second attempt looks totally different because I decided to take a picture looking up at the branches from the trunk of the tree. I'm glad I decided to take a second attempt because there is a higher range of colour and it represents a camera angle.

For my third picture, I decided to get one of my friends to be in the shot. This is an example of cropping because I chose my friend to be in the centre of the image so I cropped out some of the background. I think this image can be improved a lot because there are other people in the background and it's not very obviously cropped.

My final image is of one of the campus buildings. This is a mixture of camera angle and cropping because I cropped out a lot of the building but I put the camera on an angle which makes the building look like it is sort of sinking.