Instant.

A co-worker recently introduced me to a game called Life is Strange, which I played from start to finish in almost one sitting. I took many things away from this game - a new respect for storytelling, a fascination with the Chaos Theory. 

And a renewed love for instant photography. 

I have always loved Polaroid. Their instant cameras, their film. I have one of their old cameras, and I've run a single pack of film through it, so I know it works. But I've never run another pack through it simply because the film is so expensive. ~$30 for eight exposures? No thank you. I just can't afford that. 

So when I fell in love with instant photography again, thanks to this game, I did some research. I worked out what the cheapest instant film was, and then I worked backwards and found a camera. 

I now own a Fuji Instax Wide 300, and I am loving it. 

Revival.

It's time to get this blog up and running regularly again. 

I haven't really done much photography-wise lately. I bought a little point-and-shoot in February in the hopes of getting back into the swing of things, but that only held my interest for a little while. I did get some decent shots at Soundwave Festival with it. 

Now that I am able to drive on my own, my hopes are to get a car and then start going to shows again. Hopefully shooting more of them. Getting back into that, because it was something I was getting good at! With a car, I also hoped to start shooting some nice landscapes, but we'll see how that goes. 

Today I pulled out one of my old mag-books: The Essential Guide to Portraits. Looking through it made me want to start shooting portraits again, so. Now my head is all over the place. All I know is I want to get my camera out and shoot, shoot, shoot. 

But whether or not this feeling lasts is another thing altogether.

Self-Publishing: Slideshows and Multimedia.

For the next three weeks, we will be looking at self-publishing in the photography industry. Today, we took a look at slideshows and multimedia. 

Slideshows and Multimedia

Slideshows are used as a sales technique, especially by wedding photographers. The aim is to have our potential clients see the slideshows and like them enough that they want one of their own, so they will therefore hire you. They are often coupled with suitable music, to make the experience greater. 

Some things to take into account when looking at creating a slideshow are the formatting and sizes, and publishing platforms. 

An early type of image projector was the Magic Lantern, developed in the late 17th century and used to project images from small, rectangular sheets of glass that contained the painted photographic image to be projected. These devices were not replaced until the 1860's. After that came slide projectors, such as the Kodak Carousel. 

Slideshows allowed stories to be told, ideas to be expressed. They are used for a range of reasons, including but not limited to entertainment, advertising, promotion, art and education. They can be seen in homes, galleries, online publications, events, and promotions in shops. 

Types of Slideshow

There are many types of slideshows. They can include: 

• static images, displayed in a sequential order; 
• images with transitions, eg. a dissolving effect; 
• multimedia slideshows - these can include images, video, sound/music, text, etc. 

Things to Consider

Some things to consider when creating your slideshow are: 

• Audience: who are you making the slideshow for? What is suitable content for this audience? 
• Format and Ratio: what format do you plan on projecting? What is the appropriate ratio? 
• Resolution: are your images capable of being projected at such a size? 
• Platform: what platform do you intend on using? 

It is worth mentioning that projecting panoramas require a different technology to your ordinary projection equipment. 

Platforms

There are many platforms you can use to display your slideshow. These include but are not limited to: 

• traditional platforms - transparency film onto a light coloured background; 
• computer/web slideshows; 
• TV/DVD displayed; 
• technological platforms - slideshowpro.net, Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, etc. 

Tools for Multimedia Slideshows

Tools used for multimedia slideshows may include: 

• DSLRs capable of recording images, sound and video - as sound and video might also be a part of your slideshow; 
• dedicated sound recorders, for adding authentic sound as a backdrop to your images. 

My Attempt

 

For the purpose of a website, I personally prefer to have a slideshow without music - unless the sound actually adds something to the images. Other than that, I find it highly distracting.  

I also found this article rather interesting. 

The Angel Of Vengeance.

Have I mentioned previously that I might have an idea for the third part of my movements assignment, involving creating a poster/cover/something to do with a story that I am writing? Yes? Well, I am going to do it. 

I usually wouldn't post about this until after everything is said and done, because I hate to think of everything failing and me still having all this work up here as if things are going great, but I think it would be a good thing to put my planning here. It might motivate me to get things done, even if the first few attempts fail. So here it is - the first planning stages of my next assignment. 

I decided that I wanted to make a book cover/movie poster type thing for my current work in progress, The Angel Of Vengeance. I'm not going to bother finding perfect models for my characters - because let's face it, nobody's going to know the difference expect me! So this weekend I have my best friend coming over, and I'm probably going to end up using my two brothers as my two main male characters. (There is the potential of a third male character coming into play, and I have a co-worker in mind should this happen.) 

I have a general idea of how I want things to look, so I put my amazing drawing skills to practice and drew a mock-up: 

Gosh, what am I doing photography for?

Obviously, this isn't perfect. But it's an easy way of reminding myself how I plan for things to look. I also searched around on Google and found some images for inspiration, ideas, and for the way that I want things to look. It doesn't cover everything at the moment (because a lot of things are still just in my head, too) but I threw it all together and created a mini mood board: 

I want the image to be more dark than light, and I don't want the background to be distracting - which is why in the background inspiration images up there, we've got brick walls and smoke. 

Here's another thing I wouldn't usually do: give away spoilers, but in the spirit of noting down all of my idea-ing here... 

I want to try to create this image using only photos - as in, not artificially creating anything in Photoshop from scratch. It will be a challenge for me I think, but I'm up for it. Given the nature of the story, it's going to be interesting - so here are some ideas for how I intend to create the...crazier-looking things.

Zoe will potentially have lightning coming from her hands. Unsurprisingly, I've never managed to obtain a great image of lightning. I considered buying a plasma ball and taking shots of that, but then as I was walking to work on Tuesday morning another idea struck me. As I looked up into the trees, I was amazed at how much their branches looked like lightning strikes. And so I intend to use tree branches. 

Paris's hands were a little more difficult at first, but then the idea was obvious when it finally came to me - coloured smoke (or maybe just white, we'll see) and a sun flare or two. Again, we'll see how things go. 

Nathaniel has a force field surrounding him. When I first attempted a practice image on my brother, I followed a tutorial online that showed you how to make a force field. I didn't really like the look of it, but I figured it would do if I needed it. (I didn't save this image, so I sadly can't post it here!) But as I want to create this image now using only photos, I came up with a simple idea: shooting the rim of a glass. 

I also want to shoot a glass with a sparkler inside of it - both because it might create another interesting lightning shot, and because it might make for an interesting force field. 

If the third male character is included, he will be behind all of the others - looking back at the scene over his shoulder. 

This is obviously going to take quite a bit of work, and I don't have all the time in the world, but I have my hopes that it will work. If it does, then I'll tackle the issue of how I'm going to print it.

Complex Subjects.

Today's practical lesson had us looking at ways to light "complex" subjects - that is, product shots that involved skin tones. 

I had Jessica modeling for me, wearing my Pandora bracelet. The first shot is simply lit from the left side by a softbox, with a reflector to the right. The second still has a softbox to the left, but there's also a softbox to the right and behind her. This softbox also half-lit the background, giving it a nice grey gradient.

And yes, that was the desired effect.

The Pinhole Camera.

Last week we were discussing pin-hole photography, and as part of our homework we were to take a shot using a pin-hole lens. As I'm not in class today due to illness, I figured I would update my blog with the shot that I took last night. 

Obviously, something went wrong. 

Pin-hole shots are supposed to be known for their sharpness, and often vignetting around the edges. My shot isn't sharp at all! The only conclusion I can come to is that my home-made lens just didn't cut it. We don't own a drill, and I didn't have access to one (nor did I really like the idea of destroying one of my lens caps!), so I wrapped a piece of foil around my camera and stuck a pin through the front of it to make a hole. 

Maybe it wasn't straight; maybe the hole was too big or too thick. Whatever the case, my shot didn't work. But it's all part of the learning process, right?

The Brenizer Method.

In Wednesday morning's theory class, we learned how to use the Brenizer Method to create wide-angle photographs with the depth of field that is usually associated with either tilt-shift or telephoto lenses.

The method involved taking a series of shots, while keeping the film plane/sensor of the camera in the same place. 

First we focused on our subject, to make sure they would be sharp within the image, before switching to manual focus. A long focal length (preferably over 100mm) and a wide aperture (f/2.8 or wider) were used. 

Using this method reminded me of the joiners that we saw while studying Cubism. Making the image required taking several shots of the scene and then merging them together in Photoshop (we did this by using Lightroom's "merge to panorama in Photoshop" command). The difference here is that it looks like a straight image, as the eye sees it, as opposed to an image filled with different perspectives as you would get with a joiner. 

I was unsure about this method at first, but really came to like it - after realising that I had used it before without even knowing it!

I can definitely see myself using this again in future, a lot.

This method is particularly good when you need an image of great size and resolution.

Weddings.

I've been off TAFE sick for the past two weeks and haven't yet had the time to jump into our next movement of study, so I thought I might talk a little about the wedding that I second shot on Saturday with one of my classmates. 

This was my second time shooting a wedding. My first time was a complete disaster - it was the beginning of 2011, I wasn't highly experienced with people or with my camera, and I was the only shooter there! As hard as I tried, I went in far too unprepared and made rookie mistakes that I look back and laugh on now. Back then I said I would never do another wedding again, so this one was a challenge to me. It was a way of seeing if I could do it. It was a way of seeing if I wanted to. 

I was definitely less stressed than what I had been the first time around, likely because I wasn't the one who had to worry about getting all of those important shots. And that, in itself, is what should have tipped me off straight away - if I can't handle that stress, why would I want to be a wedding photographer? 

My reasoning for it was always that I wanted to capture those moments, to take pictures that people would want to take out and look at all the time and hang on their walls. But I can do all of that without having to shoot weddings. 

So if this wedding taught me anything, it's that I don't want to shoot weddings at all - I just want to shoot portraits. Things where I can be in control and there's not a long list of shots that I must get.

I feel lighter for having made this decision.

Keep Your Head On.

Instead of completing three different photo essays over the course of the year, we were told that we would instead be assigned to cover one of the opening nights of the Head On Photo Festival. 

From my perspective, this was a good thing. Not only was it getting us away from the dull briefs that we had been fulfilling since the beginning of our first year, but it was also giving us experience and throwing us head first into the industry. A real job in place of three ideas presented to us by our teachers - it sounded like a good idea to me. 

It didn't hurt that I felt I was on top of things. Since I shoot concerts, I'm no stranger to low light situations where your subject never stands still. I thought I had a pretty good idea about how to handle low light. If anything, shooting the open night should have been easy - the light would be unchanging and much more concert than the spotlights you get on a stage. 

But last night was nothing like I expected. 

I think I covered the three briefs I was given well enough, but I still feel like the night was a failure to me personally. 

Shooting shows is easy - you get there, and you know that your subject is up there on the stage. You don't need to know names; you don't even need to know faces. You don't need to speak to anybody - you just need to shoot.

But last night was nothing like that. I knew it was going to be a little more difficult going in - that I was actually going to need to speak to people and find things out - but I was nowhere near as prepared as I thought I was. And I'll be damned if my old timid tendencies didn't come back right at the moment that I needed them the least. 

When I got there, I spoke to the three people who were sitting at the front desk and did what I was supposed to - introduced myself, explained that I was shooting and asked if there was anybody I should know. They weren't entirely sure themselves, but they did describe what the Head On representative looked like. Her brightly coloured shoes would be hard to miss. 

After that, the little bit of confidence that I'd managed to scrounge up before walking in pretty much vanished. I took some shots of people, some long exposures, some detail shots, but eventually I started to panic a little. I felt that I didn't know what I was doing. I felt that I wasn't doing things right. 

But as the night progressed, things got better. My confidence started coming back. My shots started getting better. I grew more comfortable in my surroundings and took the shots that I thought I would need in order to fill my briefs. And then I let the gig photographer in me take over and just took photos of whatever took my fancy. 

Overall, the night wasn't a huge success. I screwed up a lot, but the important thing is that I know. So next time I can do better. 

And I have to keep reminding myself that it could also have been a whole lot worse. Being at the main opening, and at the TAFE of all places, I had classmates and teachers all around me, helping me out and encouraging me every step of the way. They, along with my best friend, are probably the main reason that I finished the night feeling more like a professional as opposed to the lost child I had felt like when the night began. 

But from this event, I can also say that I know for certain I'm not a huge fan of these sorts of jobs. I'll stick to concerts, and to weddings. Because in a way, those two things are similar - you go in knowing exactly what shots you need to get, who your main subjects are, and the lighting is unpredictable. 

That makes me sound crazy, but I suppose we like what we like. 

Pictorialism and Secessionism.

Today in class we are looking at these two early photographic movements.

Pictorialism This style seems to entail taking a photograph and then making it look like a painting. Photographs lacked sharpness, were often printed in one or more colours that were not black and white, and were often manipulated to look like the prints had brush strokes in them. It was a style that developed during the late 19th and early 20th century, and was more focused on making sure that photography was considered an art form than it was on what was actually in front of the camera. Many people believed that the camera was nothing more than a tool to document reality, not create art.

Photo-Secession Photo-secession came about because of pictorialism. As defined by Wikipedia, it was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general, photographic pictorialism in general. It was a movement started by Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day, and it held the viewpoint that the importance of a photograph was not what was in front of the camera, but the manipulation done to the image by the photographer so that they could get their vision across.

Pierre Dubreuil Pierre Dubreuil was a French photographer often referred to as a Modernist who laboured under a Pictorialist veil. He first started taking photos at the age of sixteen, in 1888, but it wasn't until 1896 that he began to become better known in the circle of pictorial photographers. He was also known as a creator of bizarre distoritions.

Between 1904 and 1930 he chose to use the Bromoil process to make his prints. This is a process that often resulted in soft, paint-like qualities, which was popular at the time and has started becoming popular again today.

Elephantaisie, 1908.
This is one of his more famous shots, evidently taken in Paris. Although I generally prefer sharper images, I find that I'm quite enjoying the painterly quality of this one. I also like that the subject is something unexpected, that the Eiffel Tower has been pushed into the background in favour of something that I haven't seen a thousand times before.

Pictorialism and photo-secessionism are probably not two movements that I would say I thoroughly enjoy. I don't mind looking at the style every now and then, but they aren't particular styles that I think I would really enjoy trying to portray.