Today the class has been doing time lapsing for me it was the first time experimenting with it and have found not as hard to do as I assume or expected. All that is required for equipment side is a tripod then the rest is just knowing the setting adjustments which are:

• Manually adjust the exposure settings.
• Manually set the focus so that nothing changes from shot to shot.
• Navigate to the time lapse photography setting, where you first choose the (interval) the rate at which you want the camera to record each individual time. You select any interval from 1 frame pre second all the way up to 1 frame every 10 minutes.
• Next set the shoot time, how long you want the camera to automatically shoot individual frames. This can be set for just a few minutes, or several hours.
• If you don’t want to do the math, just look at the information screen, which lets you know how long the video will be.

My Time Lapse

The group I joined in morning decided to go to the hoe way, trying to find a decent spot to set up the camera’s and tripod’s. One of us said we should stop at the war memorial, then we ran into some other student’s from a different course so you’ll see one or two of them and me through out the short video. It was pretty interesting to do this method of using the camera and I will try it out more during my free time outside of college.

I’ve looked into how Bailey exactly dose his amazing flash black & white close up portraits by watching a youtube tutorial.

The man in the video (Rob) explains step by step how to capture David’s style of portraits as well as he can, from reading the information from one of David Baileys books named “Look”.

1.Camera standing on tripod.

2.White background.

3.Light stand, manual flash with a shoot through umbrella if I cannot get ahold of one I’ll use a soft box, the difference to effects of both is very little. Rob had the flash set to slave mode so it can be triggered by the camera’s pop up flash when capturing the portrait.

4.Second flash placed behind model, pointing towards background so it will brighten it up. also on slave 2 mode.

5.Camera in manual (rob had it at)- 1/200, F 8.0 to get good depth of field, and 800 ISO, but obviously I’ll adjust my camera to the correct settings of what fits the studio.

6.white balance set to flash.

7.By setting your camera too manual, your able to access white balance which you would of set to flash also can now change picture control to where you can capture images in black and white digitally by changing from standard SD to Monochrome MC, I had no idea you could take photographs in black & white digitally and can’t wait to start experimenting with this style of portraits.

I will also keep in mind the methods and themes we have be set along side this task whilst using the tutorial.

• Body Language
• Mood/Emotion
• Composition  (square or rectangular form)
• Focal length
• Lighting (studio or natural)
• Background

Three shoots

I originally planned to do all three shoots in the lighting studio because I thought task 1 would be continuing into next term so I assumed I’d have plenty of time but recently found out that the deadline date is the 18th. So I am going to borrow all the right equipment necessary and do the shoots from home which I guess is much easier then bring friends all the way to Plymouth.

For the first shoot I’ve decided to attempt recreation’s of some my favourite bailey portraits that I recently discovered as well as possible, using my friends and a family member. For an example the portraits of Jude Law, Bob Marley, Jack Nicholson, John Lennon and Paul Mccartney and a few more, all of them being done by Bailey. To make sure I’ll get these portraits closely identical to Bailey’s I will keep looking back on his photo’s of famous legends whilst doing shoot one.

Here are a few examples of what I’ve written down for ideas to my first shoot. A friend Owen wearing a black suit if possible, if not I have a grey one. Cigarette in his mouth and determined look going straight into the camera, I took this one from Micheal Caine and Jude Law’s.

My step dad martin expressing lots of emotion’s mainly joyful and happy because I will be attempting to recreate Jack Nicholson’s portrait but I shall experiment with other emotions too.

My second shoot I will make little adjustments to some of David baileys iconic portrait workings in my own eye. Using the same style on the camera settings just slight changes too body language of my models also try to bring a sense of how the world is today rather than in the sixties.

The adjustments i’m under taking for the second shoot will include people with things we both have interest in, guitars, notebooks, and certain style of fashion. for an example I am going to have my friend Owen dressed in a “peaky blinders” theme with him smoking a cigarette and another idea is to have a guitar resting on Owens head, with a innocent yet friendly face.

Third shoot I have looked at other photographers which only relate to Baileys work of fashionable black & white portraits to get more inspired by different body language, facial expressions, and as many means of fashion like props, clothes Ect. The other photographers i’ve been researching are Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, and Peter Lindbergh. Another reason why i’m taking ideas from related photographers is because I couldn’t find any of David’s pieces to be on a outside or a natural location, mainly his are close up studio captures. I shall look back on these photo’s i’ve chosen from all three photographers as i’m doing this shoot to create my images similar to the best of my ability’s.

For my first article named armistice in Tavistock I choose to cover an event on remembrance day for this project “the revolution will not be televised” as it relates to its meaning. The fact many people from lots of communities leave their homes and  come together to show an act of support for the people who served our country.  The world comes together to leave their homes for one united reason. What made me decide to go with this as a topic was because I found out that it had been one hundred years exactly from when the WW1 ended.

I researched many articles and made a survey to gather information on how the public feel towards this topic. However, due to the amount of time my organisation skills slowed me down and although I completed the survey, I didn’t have any time to analyse any responses. Next time I need to give myself plenty of time to gather this information. My time managing skills need to be improved.

The “True Colours” article relates to the previous article in a sense where a smaller group also joined together in time of need and a similar reason of hardships and suffering. People that have been and are currently in service also have been known to suffer from mental health issues. The topics are about awareness and I felt inspired by the fact that more people feel that both the armistice day, where the younger generations will be reminded about the sacrifices and hard ships that were made. Furthermore, the charity bringing mental health public for others to recognise, care and not feel as alone in times of their own struggles.

Within this project I had many creative ideas which would have taken a lot of time and expenses to set up. One of these included a large poppies placed in front of the memorial statue in Plymouth. Each poppy defining one soldier marked on the statue. Due to funds and time I decided to go for a simpler option and chose capturing the remembrance day in Tavistock town centre.

After printing my first article, a teacher proof read it and was able to point out grammar and english mistakes. From there I corrected them and continued to proof read the first and second article as I went along.

I have been working on new technical skills for example when I did the layout for the design I used indesign with my partner. This was very new to me, so I learnt whilst creating our zine. Using the help from the teachers and the one other person in my group I feel more confident using this editing app. I made sure I was taking a large amount of photographs at all the events that I had attended  so that I had a large enough collection to choose from. I also made contact sheets of all the images from each topic and screen shots of indesign to show my article layout as progress went on. 

The thing I liked the most, besides the images I was able to capture, was the two pull quotes – which I spontaneously thought whilst working on finishing touches on both articles: the Fray poem [unknown author] and the powerpoint slide from the charity event, ‘talking is stronger than silence’.

Looking back on my photo shoots I had hoped for better angles. Remembrance day was very crowded so I found it hard to position a good eye on the ceremony. During the charity event, there were many good angles that I didn’t use to my own advantage, which I could have taken. I believe I need to build up my confidence and try and not be so caught up with the goings on around me and more in tune with my camera and concentrate the point that I’m at certain events for taking photographs and to become less self-conscious.

I had done contact sheets before in community college for a BTEC photography course but hadn’t for about four years, a teacher was able to remind me how to do it and now feel at ease knowing again.

What I’ve gathered from doing this end of term project is that its built my character on quite a lot of massive levels within a short amount of weeks. By putting myself in situations where I took the photos also gave me a realisation that I wasn’t getting the best angles due to the lack of conference and being over respectful to personal space of others. For example I felt like I may get in the way as of people’s performance’s at the charity event and I got caught up thinking that others thought I was disrespectful taking photographs of remembrance day. From this I’ve leaned not to care what others may think and keep in mind the actual reason why I am there to begin with and just be at one with my camera. If I was able to re-do both shoots I would have gotten to the armistice day exactly an hour earlier, before 11. To get better angles also I would have asked a person who was apart of the ceremony how close I would be aloud, to get better views of the goings on and so the crowd wasn’t blocking my line of sight. I would of done the same with the charity event, would of actually been easier to ask about better angles and getting as close as possible because I know some of the people who helped organise the event. When starting the project my first idea was to do a topic based around music because my friend Owen is in a two man band, where he dose the vocals, electrical guitar and the other member is a drummer. I couldn’t go through with it because my partner said it didn’t relate to street photography our overall theme, so I decided to find other topics but have my musical idea kept for safe keeps later in future projects.

The whole class was put in two person groups to review our work so far on the magazines we all have been doing for our end of term project “the revolution will not be televised”. we were suppose to give positive and negative criticism where it is needed in the units 1-4, I’ll reflect on this to improve my future projects.

This adventure, family, fantasy film is based around a young teenage daughter named meg (the main character) who is on the look to find her father which mystery went missing four years ago because he discovered a new form of space travel which makes him disappear. As the hope of every seeing him again starts to fade a odd strangely fashionable women called mrs whats’it (played by Reese Witherspoon) enters her home talking to her boy genius brother about a way to the father. a wrinkle in time was directed by Ava Duvernay who has films such as Selma (bio of martin Luther king), a documentary 13th also has done work on SNL and the main stars were Chris Pine as the father, Storm Reid as meg, Deric McCabe as the young brother also for the important but smaller roles had good actors and famous people such as Orpah, Zach Galifianakis, Mindy Kaling. The humour was good and well put in along side the exciting tense moments. The daughter and brother must join three magical beings to travel across the universe to there dad from a horrible type of evil, this movie is based from a novel.

personal summary

I was really tired because i didn’t sleep a lot the night before and wasn’t very interested at the beginning but as the plot unfolded i was tried to wake myself up too watch what going to happen next. isn’t a movie i’d personally choose to go watch but definitely one to take the kids too, rather if it was little girl’s film then that of a boy. overall rating 2/5.

We were told too bring in food that resembled a Christmas theme but a lot of people forgotten to do so me included. There was food and other festive thing already there, and I had brought a coffee in the morning which has a festive design and pun (seasons tweeting).

There’s two things I’d definitely change first is the depth of focus, you cant tell as much because I’ve attempted editing it as best I can so no one can notice too badly. Second is the background I would either have it fully black cause of the little white specs, or have the background completely blue so the colours wouldn’t clash with the colours of objects. The equipment that used was a tripod and a flash.

Contact sheet.

lighting diagram

The couple in the image suggested that i should take a picture of them after realising that was trying to catch one of their dog, i have this capturer funny because they are completely obliviously to what the dog behind them is doing. They are posing for the photo and the dog couldn’t care less which creates humorist air.

Our theme for the idea is street photography including remembrance day, it’ll be a free costing magazine. Planning is a hard for this genre of photography because you never know what you may capture but we’ve also decided to go the city centre to find some poppy salesman which apparently are soldiers and i had an idea of going to the hoe where statues which represents the lost lives for soldiers from world war 1 & 2 are and placing certain amount of poppy’s on or near the statue.