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.