Week 7

This lesson I finally started taking my final photos that were based on uncontrollable things. Before I started I looked at my planning and sketches so that I had a clear image of what I was going to pictures of, the only thing I hadn't prepared for was my chose of location. So to take my photos I made sure I had all my props prepared, and for my first photo I fetched a lamp to use so that I could alter the lighting easily. My first photo was about 'Addiction' and featured someone reaching out for a bottle of alcohol, I took many attempts to get the photo right, I tried over 10 angles with my character using at least 8 different positions for my photo but it took me a while to get the lighting right, eventually I figured the picture would look a lot better if the character moved his arms during the photo to give it a blurry effect and make it look more like he is desperately reaching for the bottle of alcohol. In the end I had to many shots of that one picture for me to decide which one to use, but I ended up using two for my final photos, I edited them equally though, I increased the exposure as well as the contrast and gamma correction to get more light onto the whine bottle and more shadow onto the characters face making him look dark and weak.

For my third photo and fourth photo I used the lamp again, but this time I used it as the main object in the photo. For my third photo I wanted to show 'Evil', I put a lamp into the character's face (this time I used a different model for the character to represent the evil character for my photos) and made him look into the light as if it were an orb of energy, I tried an angle that went above his head and the lamp to give his face some shadow making him look sinister and mysterious. When I edited the photo I used a black and white effect to make it look more mysterious, then i increased exposure and put more tone into the characters face by using the burn tool and the blur tool so that your focus is drawn firstly to the light at the bottom of the picture and then the light leads to the character's face, so that you can see the evil in the photo after the light. My fourth photo featured 'Power', I again used the lamp but instead of having the evil character's face in the photo I made him stand above the lamp and stretch out into a violent position with his face bent backwards so that it couldn't be seen, The photo represented Rage and Power but I still wanted the evil character's face to be unseen to give him a mysterious and almost scary persona. To make the character in the photo look powerful and angry, I used a low angle and took the photo from under the character's feet so that he seemed taller and more threatening to the audience, it also causes your eyes to follow from his legs to the top of his body so that you can see all of his body language and see the rage and power in the photo. I didn't use a black and white effect this time, instead I wanted more color and shade to make the photo seem stronger and really eye catching, but it also made it look as though there is a lot of energy surrounding the character, making him look powerful and beyond a normal human being, but it also draws your eyes away from the background and onto his arms which is where I believe the strongest part of body language is shown in the photo.

For my last four photos I wanted my evil character to show 'Crime', 'Pain', 'Violence' and finally 'Death'. So for my crime photo we searched for areas that had large amounts of graffiti, it took some time but eventually I found a wall that was almost perfect, with a large graffiti tag and a plain but dirty background. I had my character stand on the right side of the photo so that when your eyes follow the photo the first thing you see is the graffiti which is the crime, then you see the character at the end of the photo which is the criminal. I made my evil character put his hood up to hide his face slightly again whilst he faced the graffiti tags, and I stood behind him to get an over-shoulder shot to make it look as though he were admiring his work of art/crime. I used a black and white effect on the photo and make the background darker by increasing the darkness in all blue colours which made the wall darker but also made the dirt and scratches on the wall more visible, then i increased the exposure and gamma correction on all the graffiti tags to make them stand out more and look more eye catching. For my last three photos I mainly used one effect to make the photos look dark and grey by using a faded black and white effect so that they were only slightly black and white but still had small traits of color, then increased the contrast to increase the shadows and make the colors in the photo stronger but still almost grey and dark. My aim was to make the photos look dark and gloomy, but without using full on black and white because sometimes black and white takes everything away from the picture including color, but other times it makes it seem better if it's true colors are hidden. For my 'pain' photo I included my first character as well as my evil character in the photo, I used my first model to represent the 'victim' of pain, and the evil character to represent the one to cause the pain. I took the photo from an angle that was mainly from the victim's point of view to show that he was in pain and suffering. I only included the legs of the evil character, to make him seem powerful to the audience since he is bigger and still standing, almost the opposite of the victim who is in a weak stance and has fallen to the floor. I chose the angle to make your eyes follow the victims legs to his body, so that you firstly notice he is on the floor and then realize he is in pain/ almost defeated, and then you can see his opponent to the of him. I made sure the victim character faced his head downwards to hide his expression and almost look like he is cowering or to scared to face his opponent, and also because i wanted his body language to speak louder than his facial expressions. For my seventh photo I did everything the same as had been done in my sixth photo, but this time I wanted to show 'Violence' so I took the photo from the evil character's perspective to show that he was the one who had brought pain to the victim through violence. I again made sure the evil character's face was hidden to keep his mysterious and dark persona. Finally my last picture which showed 'Death', I wanted for it to link most of the pictures together and end the story. So at the start of the story my first character becomes a 'victim' of 'Addiction' and turns very weak, whereas my evil character discovers 'Evil' and gains uncontrollable 'power', then with his new evil persona he commits a 'Crime' of graffiti and then uses his new powers to inflict 'Pain' on the weaker character using violence, until he  is finally at one with 'Death',also with the bottle in his hand that caused him to become a weak victim. So basically I tried to make my two characters contrast with one another, one being evil and powerful and the other becoming a weak victim. To make the photo look better, I put water on the victim's hand and on the concrete surrounding him to make him seem more pale and as if there was blood on the concrete, it gave the picture a better effect and the reflections in the broken glass worked very well too, I tried to make the picture seem really dark by using dark colors in the photo and dead leafs surrounding the character's arm to really give an atmosphere of 'Death'. Overall I think all my pictures topics related to 'Uncontrollable' and I was proud of my editing and photography skills, but if most of my work hadn't been lost and focused on planning my photos and locations more, then perhaps I would have experienced a lot more success throughout this entire module.

Week 6

This lesson I started the day by sorting out my sketchbook by annotating pictures and pages and making sure everything was in the right place and correctly labeled. I also carried on my research on my three topics that I  had chosen for my final pictures, By looking for more pictures online but this time I analyzed and annotated them for inspiration on my final photos.

But before moving onto my final photos I took two or three practice shots of things to do with media, however I only had time to edit one before starting my planning on my final photos. I took a picture of an advertisement called Krave, I wanted to show how advertisements help persuade you to pay for the things you crave, even though it's just a simple cereal advert the name of the advert represents what most adverts try to do; control your craving for things. The strong sunlight made it hard to prevent the poster from showing mine and other people's reflection, so i put it in black and white to try and blend people in with the poster, but eventually I realized that it looked a lot better with the reflection and also showed how the advertisement was aimed towards us, everyone who has a craving for Krave.

After brainstorming and looking at examples of photos, I tried sketching out some photo ideas in my sketchbook. I started off with just a few simple sketches to help me plan out my final photo ideas and then tried to improve on them or decide whether my ideas could or couldn't be possible depending on the equipment I can get or can't get.

week 5

This lesson I arrived late due to a dentist appointment, which gave me only enough time to work on my photos that focused on objects within school based on 'Control', because my old photos were accidentally deleted by another student, I borrowed a camera from CRAM and took some photos in my spare time at home and in school. Then during this lesson I started to edit them using Adobe photoshop.

I used a black and white effect on a picture of a path leading to one of the school's main entrance doors, and I tried to make the door and the pathway stand out in the picture by using a blur effect on everything but the path and door so that your eyes follow from the start of the path (at the bottom of the picture) to the door (at the top of the picture) which makes your eyes focus more on the door. I wanted to try out a 3-D effect on the path and door using red and blue colors to outline the picture, however I couldn't figure out how to perform these effects and the other students who had used such effects forgot how use them with photoshop.

Another picture I took of a pen but put the camera on the same table on the pen so that the angle was flat making the camera lens and the pen on the same height level, but I put the camera at one end of the pen so that the shadow of the pen could clearly be seen. I used a black and white effect on the picture because I thought that it made the pen look more plain and also to bring up the contrast of the shadow because it looks a lot better in a thick black then just a faded shadow. I made sure I used a flash when taking the picture because I wanted the pen to reflect a bit of light so that it's more eye catching instead of just a boring old pen with labels on it.

For my third photo I wanted to take a picture of a light but with a dark background, so I took one at night of a lamppost near school. Then when editing with photoshop I tried to darken the background by increasing the contrast and using a blur tool, I didn't aim to completely rid of the background just make it seem almost pitch black except for the parts that the lamppost helped to light up such as the bushes in the background. I made sure the only colors in the photo were black and orange by increasing the contrast of the lamppost's light and the darkness of the picture then increasing the orange color of the whole photo.

Once I was pleased with my pictures I moved on to thinking about my final pictures and what I should take pictures of, so i picked out three topics related to control and then looked at examples online and did research on fine art photography to do with 'Media', 'The human body' and 'Uncontrollable things' since those were my three chosen topics related to control for my final pictures.

Week 4

This lesson I started my editing on my milll road pictures that I took last week, I chose four of my best pictures to edit and stick into my book. I started off with this photo of a traffic light with a green man. I wanted to really highlight the green man and show how it controls when we walk across roads and when we don't for our own safety, and how we control technology for our own benefits. The sunlight made it hard to make the green man be fully focused on, so I made the photo black and white by putting a black and white effect on the photo layer but then I realized it makes the green man quite difficult to spot, so I used the Magnetic lasso tool to crop the green man out of the black and white effects so that it would stay green and then I increased the contrast to make it a brighter and more noticeable green so that your eyes are drawn to the green man straight away.

In this photo I had a problem with the lamp post in the bottom, once I started editing I realized that the lamp post ruined the picture slightly, but when I tried to crop it out i couldn't figure out what to replace it with, because when I tried to blend it in with the blue background it never looked right and always looked as if i had just put a random blue blob over it. The green tree leaves on the side of the photo weren't on purpose but I decided that they give the picture a bit more color other than blue so I would leave them in the photo, the reason the photo is so blue is because it was a very sunny day and there was nothing but blue skies in the sky, so I decided to amp up the blue by putting a blue photo layer on to the photo using photoshop. The aim of the photo was to show that even though we believe us as humans are fully in control of the world, there are some things beyond our control such as the sky, hence why I used the sky as a background with a sign that had controlled zone written on it, to show that there is a limit to what we can control no matter how much power we think we have.

For my third photo I took a picture of a cone on a street with a gratified wall for a background. The sunlight caused almost the whole photo to look really bright and funny colored, so I tried out multiple colored photo layers to put over the photo and give it a nicer orange, I decided to use an orange layer because it suited the cone and the sunlight, but it made the shadows seem really faded so I had to increase the contrast and lower the brightness quite a bit, then I used the burn tool to blur out the background a bit so that the photo was completely focused on the lone cone and it's shadow. The aim of the photo was to show how even though we try to control things by making rules and ways of life, there are always people who are willing to break those rules or disagree with them, the cone represents our rules and the graffiti represents people breaking rules. Even though the cone wouldn't prevent people from doing graffiti on walls, people decide to obey the rule of not parking their car where the cone is, but they instead choose to break another rule instead, which shows that usually when people follow one rule it's only so that they can break another one.

Week 3

This week we continued our work on the topic of 'control' as well as Fine Art Photography, this time we explored the open environments of mill road instead of taking pictures within school. Our objective was to again take pictures of things that we believed related to 'Control' whilst also trying to make the photo as artistic and creative as possible and make the object of control stand out in the picture by using good angles and distances.

Since I was in a more public and open place instead of school, there was a lot more choice of things to take pictures of that were related to control. I took pictures of things such as Traffic Lights, Road Signs, Police, shop signs, advertisements, cars, etc. I Tried all sorts of angles making sure the sunlight shined perfectly on the objects I was taking pictures of, so that they stood out from the background and fitted in well with the lighting.

Once i had my pictures I chose my best ones and saved them onto a computer so that I could start editing them for next lesson using adobe photoshop. I think that the hot weather was perfect for the shooting conditions and really helped to make my photos look a lot better and more life fine art photography by giving stronger shadows of objects and great contrast.

Week 2

This lesson I started off by going through last weeks work and seeing what needed completing e.g my photos needed to be edited and printed, I had unfinished research to complete, so I decided to complete my research first and stick all my notes on Fine Art Photography into my folder.

To help me edit my pictures perfectly I looked up some examples of great Fine Art Photography photos and printed them out to put it in my folder so that I could compare my photos to theirs and see how they were similar in good ways and what i could do to my photos to improve them and make them look more like Fine Art Photography.

Once I had a clear image of how to improve my photos, I uploaded them onto photoshop and attempted to edit them to give them more style and look more artistic instead of just plain photos of random objects. I used multiple effects on my photos such as black and white and I tried to make each object in the photo stand out from the background by increasing the tone of the object or erasing some of the background or increasing the size of the object so that the audiences eyes immediately focus on the objects related to control.

Week 1

For the start of this module we researched fine art photography and looked at some great examples and artists that work in Fine art photography. When we were confident in understanding some of the basics to do with Fine art photography we created a short research report on it to stick into our sketchbooks.

As a class we examined the new cameras we had been given to use in this module, the teacher gave us instructions on how to use them, he told us how to correct the white balancing, how to delete pictures, how to take pictures, how to zoom in and out etc even though i had already been taught the basics of using a camera in year 10, it was still quite confusing for me since the camera was new to me with new buttons and functions but i still managed to catch on fast enough.

Once i was confident enough in using the new cameras, i was given the task to take pictures of things that relate to the topic of control but also make them as artistic and creative as possible by using my photography skills to make my pictures look more professional instead of random pictures of things, to do that i made sure i judged the lighting, angle, focus and colour when capturing my picture. I took pictures of things such as fire alarms, locks, pencils, computers, lights, doors, walls, people playing football and other things relating to 'Control'. Computers and doors were the most difficult to take pictures of because it was hard to get good angles on them without the focus going wrong, but things such as locks and pencils were easy to focus on and find good angles for them.

After i had finished taking all my pictures, i filed through them and deleted all the ones that weren't very successful or were just completely terrible so that next lesson i could edit my best pictures using photoshop and then print them to stick into my portfolio.