Continuing on Lifestyle Assignment

Here is two more photos for the Lifestyle assignment. The model is once again Odessa and the two first pictures (which is the "same" picture) is taken by Matt. The settings for that picture is, ISO: 6400, F-stop: f/5.0 and exposure time is 1/6 sec. What I've done in photoshop is; croped the picture, add some sharpness on the glasses, made is black and white and then added red and yellow and then decreased the saturation to get a sepia tone, I've also added the Ray-Ban logo and written "change your view". I tried to get ridd of some noise in the picture but to keep more feeling in it I left some in it.

The picture below is taken by me, and what I've done is, I've cropped it and moved the blurred out lights in the background to make the picture more interesting. The setting for that picture is,  ISO: 6400, F-stop: f/11, exposure time: 1/4 sec. For both picture a flash was fired. 

Playing around. . .

Today I tried to learn how to make a photo in cartoon, just for fun... This is the results, hopefully I'll get better with time. I learned this from this website which, was really easy to learn from

Lifestyle Photography

                    My contribution for this assignment is the first two pictures below. The settings for that photo (photos) is: Exposure time: 30.00 seconds, F-stop: f/5.00, ISO: 100. The light sources that is used is a A flashlight to write "iPod" and a flashlight to brighten up the model, Odessa in the end of the exposure time. The iPod that she is holding in her hand is also used to make a movement of light from her arm. I have added an iPod in the photo, even though there already was one in the picture, I wanted it to appear more. In the second picture I also added an Apple logo. As you can see by comparing the original picture (the third one) with the two edited ones, I have darkened the picture and added contrast, also reformatting the letters in the word "iPod" and taken the "P" from another picture. The models shirt is changed in to pink to make a better color combination in the picture since the iPod is also pink.

                    The two last photos is just experiments from the photo shot, in the last one you should be able to see a face in the circle...

Photo: Matt Richardson Edit: Malin Johansson

"Back to the Future" - Irina Werning

              While I was looking at fotosidan.se - a Swedish website for both amateur and professional photographers - I found a project by a Spanish photographer named Irina Werning that I really liked. Her project is called "back to the future", which is based on letting different people relive their happiest childhood photograph. A few months ago Irina Werning decided to invest in the project with old photographs of children and started inviting people to go back to its future. On her website she writes about the project. "I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today...", 
            
             I myself really like old pictures too, and this project that Irina is doing right now is really fascinating. Not only because I like the emotions that a good old picture gives me but this project is more than that, you can see what 50 or 20 years have done to a persons look and appearance. I'm really going to step by her website to see if there's any new pictures in that project. Beneath is a few examples from her project. 

                                                        : Nico in 1986 & 2010, Buenos Aires,Irina Werning

                                                               Ato 1992 & 2010, Buenos Aires, Irina Werning

                                                        : MECHI IN 1990 & 2010, Buenos Aires, Irina Werning

                                            PANCHO IN 1983 & 2010, Buenos Aires, Irina Werning

Wildlife photography

Today I read an an article by Jim Zuckerman and what he thinks of Wildlife photography and how to improve it. Jim thinks that, to take a great animal picture, great light is the primary requirement to successed that picture. Through this article you can learn from Zuckerman what he thinks about light while taking wildlife picture and with that create a "WOW!" response from the viewers. 

The first thing he talks about is the five types of lightning available when photographing outdoor. As he describes in the article "Light can illuminate a subject from:

1. the front,
2. the side,
3. the back,
4. a three-quarter angle, or
5. within, where a translucent object seems to glow from within."

He then talks about how the sun can affect your photo. If the sun is low in the horizon, it is going to reduce your contrast in the picture. So the lower the sun is, the lower the contrast will be, and vice versa. Since this is happening it allows both the shadows and highlights in the picture to have a "pleasing degree of details". In his article he show us example of how this looka like.

Jim explains how a second flash/strobes "adds dimensionality and life to a shot in these kinds of situations." But that he rather prefer to use the available light to make the picture more natural. He tries to avoid direct sunlight during the middle of the day and rather shoot in shadow. Jim explains in his article that shade makes these kind of outdoor portrait much more attractive, because, "it retains the the subtle light and dark relationships on your subject." and as he says, even fillight attends to reduce those subtle details.

Below is a picture of a moose that Jim has taken, he says that he owes a lot to the natural light that was available at that moment. 

                                                                       Jim Zuckerman

After reading this arictle I've learned that light is not the best solution in outdoor environments like this but that I can take a lot of help from the natural light sources, the sun. By knowing how to take advantage of the sun and it's pointings I can thereby get better pictures. 

Lifestyle Photography

"Lifestyle photography is a style of photography which aims to portray real-life situations in a controlled setting. Lighting is bright, airy and natural-looking. There are many commercial applications including magazine editorial and advertising usage." - Wikipedia


                  Our next assignment in class is to take a serie of lifestyle photographys. For this blog I tried to find out what kind of photographys that includes and find some insporation for the assignment. Above you could read the definition of lifestyle photography from wikipedia. I think that is a good explaination. I personally thinks that a picture that shows a person in action of doing something that he or she truly loves doing, would be a good way of thinking about it too, but in that manner that it takes a bigger part of your life. It's often said that for example soccer is not just a sport, it's a lifestyle, this also includes being a sports fan. Some people dedicate their life for one team and basically life and plan their lifes based on when and where the games for their team takes place. 


               Other example of lifestyles could be, rockstar, outdoor living, a certain way of clothing or music style, basically something you live for and love doing. I think that I have some ideas now after thinking about it, but nothing to reveal here. . . :)

Depth of Field

I just read an article about Depth of Field - How to Control It by Christopher B. Derrick. This really interest me because I like to experiment with the depth of field. I think it adds so much more to the picture with a more "eye-falling-focus". I like the depth of field called "shallow" depth of field. Which is when not much more than the main subject is in focus and sharp. 


            In the article it is said that there is three factors that affect the depth of field. The first one is lens aperture; if you want the main focus on one small part, make the aperture (f-stop) as wide as possible or if you want a wider depth of field, with as much in focus as possible, set as small aperture as the light allows you to. In both cases you have to change the shutter speed to compensate In the article you can learn more about the aperture values and about the hyperfocal distance. "The hyperfocal distance is basically a point in which you focus and everything from that point to infinity will be sharp." This is most successfully used in landscape pictures. 
          From another websites I got this examples on the different aperture values. I thought it would be easier to understand the value if you see the changes in similar pictures. The following pictures is from this website (uhm, it's in swedish...)

                                                                         (f/2.8)

                                                                         (f/5.6)

                                                                          (f/11)


                 The other factor in working with the depth of field is the distance between the subject and the camera. The shorter the focal distance, the less depth of field. So if i refer to the lego men in the pictures above. If the red and white guy would be closer to Chris in the middle, it would be more focus on them than if they both were further away from him. In the first article you can read more about the relationship between f-stop and the lens that you have. 




              The last thing to control is the lens focal lenght. This is also very hard since you can't maintain the composition that you wanted. 




My own example of a picture with a shallow depth the field. This doesn't have that extreme shallow buuut, I like it :)

Basketball

Here are my pictures from the sport photography assignment, the three first ones are included in our presentation in class. The settings for all these pictures are the same; f/5.6 , 1/200 , ISO 3200 and taken with a Canon EOS 40D. Under each pictures is a breif discription on the editing that I've done and why I took the picture.

 This picture I thought would be cool since you can see the basketball field in the instrument and at the same time get some feeling on what is going on beside just the game, the environment and surrounding. With this picture you can get an understanding that the game is more than just a game. What I've done in the computer with this photo is: crop it, add some "temperature" and explosure. 

 This one needed a little bit more character from it's original format. So we made it black and white and added contrast and balance in photoshop. When I look at this picture I get the feeling of pending or waiting. As an observer of this picture you can tell that there is something going on in front of those cheerleaders, but what? This picture gives you many question; what is happening, what are the expressions of the girls, and because of the black and white, the picture is a little bit more timeless. 

 These two pictures I wasn't really sadicfied with at the beginning, I thought the guy was to blurry so to make him seem more sharp and in focus I blured out the audience and background. I thought it would be cool if both pictures were set together. Even though each picture is framed seperantly they are carefully put together so that the frame of the basket are followed as line through both pictures. 

 Just a picture of a cheerleader, nothing special...

This one may seem a little bit to dark... But that is actually with a purpose. I want the eyes to notice the dark in the bottom and then follow the light in the picture. The reason why the light gets lighter at the top is because both guys are facing that direction. So what I've done in photoshop with this picture is the light, the "temperature", exposure, cloning so that one advertise sign is gone and a pole in the background.