Assignment #4 - Additional Shot

Studio lighting shot with our made up lighting scenario. Turns out it is almost Renaissance lighting (where you shoot from on main light to the side forming a triangle of light on the opposing, shadow, side). Taken in RAW format.

Assignment #4 - Submission

This is my favourite of the shots I took of Chloe. Obviously studio lighting and was shot in JPEG format. Despite how bad I think I am at directing people when I am shooting them, I seemed to be one of the few people in the half of the class in the studio with me who could ask anything of their subject. I asked the simple task of put your head on your hand. I also suggested things like face that way but look back at me. I was pretty happy I was able to suggest poses unlike the last studio session I had.After a little while we starting playing with the studio lighting - moving it around and such. We turned off the secondary light (fill light) and moved the main light up just a touch. The result was the above lighting, after a few bad jokes, etc we were able to get Chloe to genuinely laugh. This was taken in RAW format.

Available lighting and taken in RAW format. This photo was taken at the top of some stairs in front of a pillar. I wanted the texture from the pillar to come through as an interesting background so I left her relatively close to it.After a few attempts at getting shots inside, we moved to the available light outside the buildings. We found this light which was at the second floor level of a building and it work wonderfully. This was taken in JPEG format.

Pumpkins

Jerrica and roommates decorated a few different types of pumpkins this year. Above was one of their not so traditional jack-o-lanterns while below are some of the painted gourdes they whipped up.

Assignment #4 - The Assignment

Assignment #4 is another portrait assignment. We are to produce two in studio (using studio lighting, etc) portraits and two on location, available light (no flash or pro lighting) portraits of the same person. We were to take both jpeg and raw photos and as my camera is awesome I set it to take both simultaneously to prevent not having enough good photos of either kind (like what has happened when needing to take x number of vertical or horizontal images).
Initially I was going to ask Chris to come and be my model for the class but as no one else in the class was asking friends or family to model for them, I thought it might be a bit odd this time around (there is a makeup studio class that I may invite her and/or others to for fun). I ended up pairing up with another student named Chloe. She is a really tiny lady, and in my opinion, very pretty. She is also one of the better photographers in the class and has taken the studio lighting course and was therefore a huge help when it came to setting up the lights and had some interesting ideas for the available light shots. Unfortunately we also ended up with another guy, whose name I do not know. He is also a good photographer and had good ideas for the available light shots, but as I was not really wanting to pose for two people, he shot Chloe as well and our shots will be directly compared which frightens me slightly. We will have to see what happens in the end.
Long story short, the portrait session went fairly well and I am working on the images now. Hopefully I will be able to get them posted in the next couple of days.

Agricultural Museum

The Agricultural Museum has a photography contest for members ever year and this year was no exception. When Dave and I got our annual memberships back in March, I read about the contest and waited patiently for the entry time to arrive. And it has - October 31st is the deadline for entry into this year's contest.I began looking into my photos taken at the museum earlier this year and found that the vast majority of them, including the ones I liked the most, were taken before the June 15 start date. I rushed to the museum and tried to take a bunch more to add to the one set that fell within the correct date range. They weren't as good as the ones I had taken before, but they did fall into the correct range and were acceptable enough to be entered into the competition.To be honest, I don't know which of the three images I submitted is my favourite as my favourite from the museum was taken back in April. None of the images have much Photoshop work, in fact the only thing that was done to them in Photoshop was some contrast adjustments and file size and type changes. The rules stipulated that you could only adjust contrast, brightness, and sharpness of the photos, anything else done to the images would eliminate them from the competition.

Flickr

I created a Flickr account the other day and have since started uploading some of my images to it. I think this will be the best way for me to share larger numbers of photos at one time (eg. Holiday photos of family and friends). I will let you know when I post a large group of photos there both here and on my regular/daily blog, for those of you who only visit one but might still be interested. They are of course, edited to some degree as well as signed and resized. If you are ever interested in any of my photos, just let me know and I will gladly discuss whatever it is you want to discuss.

Assignment #3 - Marks

I attended my photography course last night and got thinking - where are the marks for my last assignment? Turns out he attached them in a reminder email that I thought was sent to the entire class, but instead was sent individually. My marks were down there at the bottom of our 16 message long conversation. I ended up getting 10.25/12 (and A-). I am pretty happy with the mark as I know he is a pretty hard marker (well, relative to my other Algonquin instructors). Looks like A- is likely going to be my final mark in the class as long as I keep going along these lines, and I'm okay with that.

Motivation Monday - Henri Cartier-Bresson

"The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality." - Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was one of the main contributors to the creation of street photography, which is my preferred method of (candid) portraiture. He switched from painting to photography around 1930 after being inspired by a random photograph captured by a Hungarian photojournalist in Africa.
In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book "The Decisive Moment". Within the book he stated, "There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment", and applied it to his photography. The Decisive Moment is now a term for images like the ones included in this post that capture a brief moment in time in which you feel as if you can picture what is next to come. According to Cartier-Bresson, "the decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recoginition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression"

I am always trying to get photos that would fit into the category of the decisive moment. It takes a great deal of skill to do this as you need to have your camera ready to go at a moments notice. You have to be able to adjust the shutter, aperture and focus as required very quickly. Sometimes I can get lucky though.

Motivation Monday - Eliot Porter

“You learn to see by practice. It's just like playing tennis, you get better the more you play. The more you look around at things, the more you see. The more you photograph, the more you realize what can be photographed and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it.”Eliot Porter (1901-1990) was most known for his colour photographs of nature. If you have ever taken a nature photograph you owe a gigantic thank you to this man.He started in black and white, teaching himself the everything that made him great. By 1930 he had mastered black and white development and though he never gave it up completely, it was in 1939 that he began focusing his energies towards colour photography.One of the many aspects which makes this artist so motivational to me is his background. He had degrees in both chemical engineering and medicine, and worked as a biochemical researcher at Harvard. He was a magnificent photographer who was able to use both sides of his brain equally as well. Some of his published books even combined his photographs with scientific information relevant to them.Some of Porter's images seem bland and dull in terms of the colour when compared to the rich saturation possible with today's technology. But he was there first, arguable, he is the original nature photographer.

Assignment #3 - Submission Part II

AliveBeyond

Comfort
Fantasy
Go
The remaining photos submitted as part of my third assignment in my Composition and Design course at Algonquin. I used a variety of techniques for this assignment including painting with light and rear curtain synch flash.

Assignment #3 - Submission Part I

Texture
Trails

Unique

Vertigo

Wet

The above photos were taken as part of Assignment #3 - Marketplace at Night. We were given a list of words to use as the names and I did my best to be both clever but rational with the naming convention I chose. As always, any and all constructive criticism you have on the photos is appreciated. The rest of the images will be posted tomorrow.

Assignment #3 - The Assignment

The third assignment is much more open than the other assignments in this class have been which makes me pretty happy. We are to photograph the Ottawa Byward Marketplace at night (10 photographs to be submitted).
The class gathered Monday night in front of the Art Gallery on Sussex and we were given directions to photograph in and around the marketplace (excluding Sussex) between the hours of 7:00 and 9:30pm. Once the night was over and we had met back up at the Art Gallery for attendance, we were told that we could make a second trip to the marketplace to complete the assignment. I intend on going for my second trip either tonight or tomorrow evening, whichever night in which the clouds seem most likely to let it rain. The assignment is due on Saturday so I should be posting the submitted photos shortly thereafter.