Wedding - Collaborative work

Jennii, Sharrah and I recently worked on photographing a wedding together. Before the wedding we met up with Geoff (who was the Groom) to discuss arrangements such as what kind of photographs him and his Fiance' wanted and how many. We asked quite a lot of questions to make sure we were extra prepared on the day. I have photographed weddings before however it was Sharrah's & Jennii's first wedding job.

The questions we asked ;

1. What kind of photographs would you like? poses (candid etc) ? locations? 
2. How many photographs?
3. When would would you like us to start photographing? (i.e. bride getting ready or as they get into the car etc)
4. What are the colour themes? (to help build an idea of how everyone will look together)
5. How would you like the images presented? ( CD , Prints, Photobook etc)
6. Will the guests want photo's too?
7. How will the guests want their photos presented

It was a fantastic experience for all three of us to work as a team in producing the photographs. We decided on the day to position ourselves in different places to make sure we got a variety of different shots, for example during the ceremony Jennii was stood at the front of the room to capture close up shots of 'the kiss' and the 'ring exchanging' whilst me and Sharrah stood towards the back to get full room shots and wide angle shots of the bride and groom.

We started photographing in the morning taking images of bridal and bridesmaid accessories and also photographing the flower girl and proceeded to take photo's of the bride after she was ready and in the meantime we took pictures of the car arriving and then we got to the venue before the bride and bridesmaids to capture the moment they stepped out of the car. We took group shots before and after the ceremony too.

We took group shots of;

Bridesmaids

bridesmaids & Bride

Bridesmaids & Bride & Groom

Groom & Family

Groom & Best man/men

Bridesmaids family

bridesmaids family & Bride & Groom

Family shots

Here are just a small selection of my favourite photographs I took from the day;

Equipment used: Canon 600D

Lens: 18-55mm

Alamy stock photo task

Here are the four images that I would send to Alamy if not then something similar. I love product photography so I included three of those , the third image is quite basic however there are a lot of 'random' photo's on stock photography websites and you'll notice there is always somebody looking for something unusual even if you think there would be no use for it.

 

I thoroughly looked at the guidelines when picking out my four photographs to see if they match what they ask for.

I'm unsure at the moment about how I feel with stock imagery , it's a great way of earning money but I hate the idea of giving somebody all my copyright with a photograph so if I ever submit to stock websites I will make sure that I still own copyright to a certain extent of the photograph.

Alamy

Alamy is a stock photo company , under the website alamy.com. Photographers can request to create an account to upload their images to the website but to do so you need to upload 4 photograph's under strict guidelines that they set. 
Here's a link to their guideline page : http://www.alamy.com/contributor/help/prepare-images.asp

Some of their guidlines include ;

1. No camera shake
2. No data loss or corruption
3. No high contrast (due to blown out sections etc)
4. No watermarks

Along with many more. I think it's actually really good that Alamy have so many guidelines because it prevents the website from being filled with not so great photographs so basically it filters out all the bad photo's. The website also tells you what Cameras they accept for you to use to take your photographs and which ones they don't accept too.

There are other stock photography websites other than Alamy such as ;

istockphoto

shutterstock

gettyimages

Alamy is a good one to pick because as students we don't have to pay any commission for our images if they are sold, also there isn't a limit as to how many photo's you can upload (if you are accepted). They also don't edit any content that is uploaded by the photographer. Alamy is a great way to make money as a photographer, you upload your images and if a company/business (or anyone really) wants to buy your images, they can. The photographer picks the price and can decide if the person buying the images owns complete copyright (forever) or just for the one photo, without full copyright. 

Once I looked at the images on their website that other photographers have submitted , I got a pretty clear image of how the type of photo's I wanted to create to fit the brief for the website. I reflected on previous photo's I have taken and thought about how I want to approach the brief and I have decided to create still life images. 

There are 52.41 million photographs on Alamy.com and so far I have seen so many creative photo's and I look forward to seeing If I will be accepted or not to add my photo's to the pool too. My favourite categories to look at on there is ;

Love

Travel

Still Life

Festival of light (light painting)

I had two sessions to experiment with light painting which is something I have done several times before and it's something I have always liked doing and I love seeing how the images turn out. The first session we worked in small groups , I worked with Jennii, Danny , Chloe & Sharrah. We turned off the lights and used the glow sticks and fairy lights to 'paint' the light. Danny was in front of the camera whilst the rest of us were behind it. He used the lights we passed him to create different shapes and movement whilst we had the camera on a slow shutter to create fascinating imagery. 

I researched photographers that used light painting and used my light painting images from these sessions & my research into my light and time project too.

The second session we had was my favourite out of the two. As a group we all collectively used more equipment and the whole class worked together.

We all created half a circle with our cameras (although I was using Jennii's camera as she sat out during the lesson due to a headache from the lights) all facing towards the light box, Danny , Ellie & Jake thought out the lesson volunteered to play around with the lights whilst the rest of us took photo's. I secured the best spot in the semi circle as the camera I was using was facing directly towards the lights so I got very direct front on images.

What we used to create light;

External Camera Flashes x2

Fairy Lights x2

Glow sticks (lots of them)

To defuse the light from the external flashes Danny and Ellie covered them with paper.

My favourite images from the session that I took are;

Colour Blindness & Updating Blog

Last session (yesterday) we discussed that as a group we all could do with improving our blogs. a lot. So we went into detail and wrote a list on the board of exactly how we can do that. Our tutor told us to write down questions on a piece of paper that we can ask ourselves when we write up our blog to help ourselves so that we don't get stuck on what to write , basically so we can write more things that are more in depth.

I thought it was a really good idea because I love documenting my work in a blog style format so to learn how to do it better was interesting for me. 

I'm going to make a conscious effort from now on to write more in my posts and to answer questions that people may be thinking whilst they are reading them and looking at my photographs.

After we had talked about how we can improve our blogs we did a colour blindness test on the big projector screen. Two people out of the class struggled more so than anyone else so I guess you could say they are colour blind which is interesting considering they are photographers and makes you question whether or not it could effect their work in subtle ways. For example they could photograph a blue object but think that it is purple when it actually isn't. Although it isn't a big issue it was fascinating to realise that people you may know may actually be colour blind.

Asos / Boohoo inspired.

In session we were given a brief to photograph a fashion shoot. We were told to use the photographs on Asos & Boohoo as inspiration. In class we created individual brainstorms for our fashion shoots, so I wrote down key pointers about the photo's I saw on both of the websites. Here are some of the key things:

• High Key Lighting
• Studio Based
• Good levels of contrast
• Models posed in various positions
• Eye contact & Non eye contact from the model (side profile etc)
• Asos often has the head cropped half off on their images
• Portrait style photo's (camera held portrait)

However there is also 'location' shots on Asos and Boohoo although you can't see much of the background because the focus is on the model and clothing you can clearly see they have been taken elsewhere than the studio.

Shooting in a studio environment is only something I have really come to do during my time at college although previous to college I did set up a 'home studio' several times for practice and even now I am learning more and more about photographing using professional lighting equipment and various backdrops. I have never done a fashion shoot before so I was looking forward to the challenge. Because it was something I had never done before I spent time looking on the websites for inspiration and also on pinterest too. 

Here are some of the images I looked at prior to my studio fashion shoot: 

These four images above are from Asos.

These are a few of my images from the studio shoot I did with Sharrah. I was unable to use the studio lights because they weren't working so I had to improvise and just play around with my settings a lot and use the light box (without the light) as the background. The Asos and Boohoo photo's are high key lighting and have obviously been done with professional lights which I couldn't do because none of them were working in our studio however I tried my best with what I had and I am pleased with the final outcomes under the circumstances. 

My favourite photo's from this session are 3, 7 & 9 (the last one). 

I asked Sharrah how I wanted her to pose for the photographs and she co operated really well so I achieved the photo's I had in mind. I'm really glad I did research before the shoot because it always helps me a lot with my shoots, it gives me an idea of how I want my outcomes before I begin.

Location Fashion Shoot

 

These are my four favourite from my location fashion shoot. When researching fashion shoots I noticed that a lot of the time photos are slightly over exposed and depending on the situation I think it can work , so using lightroom I tweaked the exposure and contrast to create light photographs. I chose to have a plain brick background for the shoot because I think that draws you more towards the clothing rather than being distracted from the surroundings. 

I used my Canon 600D with natural lighting because I thought that would go best with the style of clothing and I think it suits the overall feel of the image. Learning how to do professional looking portrait shots in the studio has helped me consider the lighting conditions even more when I'm shooting outside too.

Head Shots 2

 These photographs are from a studio shoot I did with Chloe. They are a follow up from the headshots I did in my previous post. I had difficulty uploading the last photograph's of Ryan because they were corrupted during the upload so I decided to do another shoot for the experience. I used a similar set up as the last head shots I did. I used a plain white backdrop with two lights however sometimes I turned one light off and only used one but kept them both on either side of model.

I always look online , especially on pinterest, for inspiration before I do shoots. I have several boards on pinterest dedicated to photography that I often look at and add to to help me know what I want out of the shoot. I used pinterest to help inspire these photographs by searching headshots and studio photography.

I edited these images on Ribbet.com and also on Lightroom too. I usually use lightroom for editing the exposure and contrasts and then I used Ribbet to add different effects and filters. I'm happy with the final outcome from this shoot. I really like the side profile images that I took.

Edited Head Shots

 These are my edited photograph's from my shoot with Ryan in the studio. I edited these images on Ribbet.com.

Headshots

We were given a brief to produce 10 headshot images that need to be taken in a studio, however we couldn't photograph anyone in our class so I photographed Ryan. I have previously taken headshots before with a home studio set up but I knew it would be fun to experiment in the college studio using the lights and backdrops.

I spent time researching different style of headhots on pinterest , here is the board that I created for it : http://uk.pinterest.com/ellaruthmcquoid/headshot-photography/

Here are my UNEDITED photograph's from my head shot session.

Whilst I was uploading my images to the computer they corrupted and these were the only images that uploaded. I was really disappointed because I was so pleased with how my images turned out from the shoot however I am going to re shoot but using Chloe as a model instead. I'm going to edit these images and then upload them again in another blog post.

Beauty in the equipment

Today in college we were photographing photography equipment. I focused taking images of traditional cameras and film, I also asked several people in class if I could photograph them holding the equipment too. I'm really pleased with how some of my images turned out!

I was playing around with different camera angles and photographing in different ways from other people in the class, for example the last image above was taken looking at the mirror in the Nikon film camera so you can see my lens through the reflection , I used manual focus to focus on my lens rather than the Nikon camera and film, i like the effect it gives, it blurs out a lot of the photo but you can also see what it is and what brand camera too.

The middle photo I took whilst Sharrah was taking an image without her knowing until after I showed her the photograph. 

Some of my favourites from todays session:

 This is one of my favourite photographs from this session, I edited a colour version and a black and white version.

From these past few sessions I have discovered my love for product photography!

Beauty is in the eye of the camera holder

Today we got part of our brief in class, woo!. The title is 'Beauty if in the eye of the camera holder' and the whole point of the brief is to basically photograph photographic equipment but in such a way that it advertises photography as a subject rather than an object. I'm looking forward to trying something different and have a bit of a challenge and this looks like it will be! I already have some ideas planned however.

I'm thinking of photographing both old camera equipment and new, I'm looking forward especially to photographing my instax fujifilm.

I've created a board on pinterest to help with project inspiration. Our tutor got out some of the camera equipment in our college store and it was great to look at the old medium format cameras.

For futher research I'll look at photographers and also create an ideas blast.

Product Photography

Session Four

For our Fourth session we had to bring in a product to photograph, the product was of our choosing so I decided to bring in my Tiffany & Co bracelet with it's packaging to use as props too. We were first asked to take a shallow depth of field image with our product;

I began experimenting with light and where I was taking the photographs around the room, I took them with white backgrounds and high key lighting and I also tried photographing them on a black chair which is how I photographed these three.

I'm really really pleased with how these photographs of the Tiffany and Co bracelet turned out. I played around with editing the levels and then changing it to a sepia tone and also black and white however I wanted at least one strong image showing the iconic Tiffany blue.

Session Three

Product Photography

Session three began by our tutor showing us a powerpoint. He asked us if we have began to research various blogging websites to create our online blogs and if we have been documenting the sessions so far which I have done. The second slide on the powerpoint asked us to identify what strategies and approaches are used with product photography so I wrote in my notebook key things such as ;

1. Good Lighting 
2. Good clear camera angles
3. Strong colours
4. Contrast (bold coloured products against plain backdrops etc)

The next task was to propose a product that we can supply to photograph using the techniques discussed and generate a series of potential approaches so as a group we all nominated three people to go up and write a big joint ideas blast with suggestions from the group of products we could possibly photograph.

The title in the ideas blast bubble was 'Potential products, brands, Items' and some of the products suggested include;

Hair dye             Glasses

Apple (brand)        Sweets

Stationary           Fast Food

Clothing             Laptops

Shoes                Accessories 

Jewellery            Childrens toys

Make up              Skate Boards

Books                Perfume

We discussed how certain products are best being photographed in environments they would most probably be used in, for example we spoke about how we would photograph a skateboard and how it could be taken in a skate park mid stunt. Including a model using the board with the skateboard mid air so you can see the details of the product from a low vantage point. Product photography is all about showcasing the product to its advantage to sell whilst considering the target audience. 

The final task of the session was to work in smaller groups and decide on two photographic adverts to show to the group so , Jennii Chloe and I chose an MUA makeup advert and a schwarzkopf hair colour one.

We bullet-pointed key features from each advert everybody chose so for this MUA one we picked I wrote in my notebook;

Colourful.Bright. Simplistic. Plain backdrop. Lots of products. White vignette.

The use of the pound coins in the photo indicates that MUA is budget makeup which is a key selling point. The bold product colours stand out even more against the plain white background, high key lighting has been used for this photograph which highlights colours and adds contrast. 

Here is the second photographic advert we picked. Its a schwarzkopf hair dye advert. My notes were ;
Warm tones. Rule of thirds. key colours red & brown. negative space. lots of text/information.

The photographer has used lighting to highlight parts of her hair to create a soft gentle look with her hair which is the selling point. Red is instantly a very eye catching colour even with a small amount of the colour in the advertisement it still makes it striking. 

Post production editing is also a main factor when it comes to creating a good photographic advertisement, its clear that both of these chosen images have used lots of editing to enhance the pictures to be more appealing. Its important to keep the target audience in mind as well as what the product is that your trying to sell even whilst editing.

I'm looking forward to producing my own product photography.

Session Two

High Key Lighting

Session two was all about using the studio and learning how to use the lights properly. I booked out a Nikon D40 from the college store to use during lesson and we took it in turns to photograph each other. 

For the high key lighting we used two lights , one on either side of the subject facing towards them and we had a back light behind the backdrop. Of course after already spending one year in college and occasionally using the studio we already knew the very basics of using the equipment but we asked for a lesson dedicated towards learning more about them. 

From that lesson I learnt the importance of using light in a studio and how altering the light source can transform a photograph for the better. I'm really glad that we spent that lesson solely on lighting because I feel much more prepared now for any studio photography I may do.

I have basic studio equipment at home however I have always been hesitant to use it due to my lack of knowledge however I feel much more confident in using it now. 

Here are a selection of my images taken during the session. I learnt from this session that if you get the lighting just right in the studio then you don't have to do much if any post shoot editing at all.

Our tutor suggested to us that instead of using an A4 sketchbook for our work which we normally produce to instead upload all our work onto an online blog which is why I have created this. He asked our opinion on if we would prefer to do it online or not and we all agreed that creating it in a blog format would be best. Not only will it help to possibly promote our work but I think it's easier and less time consuming to do it online.