Photography week 5

Memory check – a recap of things we have covered so far

Q1. What is ISO and what does it effect?

The ISO affects the shot resolution, it is the detail of the shots taken. The ISO setting depends on the lighting in a given area. The higher the ISO the more visible something is in dark lighting.

Q2. When would we use the ‘P’ control setting on the camera mode dial.

Program, in this mode we are in control of the ISO as well as the white balance.

Q3. Name two important consideration when attaching the tripod base plate to the bottom of camera? The base plate has two arrows which point in the direction of the lens. The handle has to be tightened so that the camera is secure. Keep the tripod secure, by having the fatter legs out instead of the skinny ones.

Q4. Name three important considerations when using a red-head lighting kit.

No touching the light bulb, as this will release the oils in our skin all over the bulb, destroying it in the process. Turn it off once done to prevent any damage to the light bulb and most importantly you. The red head must not shine into your eyes as it is very bright and it could cause blindness.

Q5. When focusing the camera, what do we place on the 

object/subject to ensure it is the centre of focus? 

The green triangle must be centred on the object. To achieve focus the shutter button must be pressed gently.

Q6. Name two techniques we can use to adjust the brightness and contrast of a photograph? We can limit how much lighting is projected through the aperture mode dial. The ISO is used to insure how your object is prone to lighting.  

Evaluation

Our assignment was based around the freak or unique project. Essentially the final piece was a montage of photographs captured by me, I then had to pick out some of my favourites and include them on a seamless photograph. My idea was to produce several photographs of me posing in a suit and tie with the addition of a horse head mask. I shot this in a variety of different angles, the shots are as followed: front face, sides, back and lastly a seated angle. This idea is similar to what I was doing in my film production groups for the 30 second advert, with a photo shoot instead.

This idea was inspired by some of the research I completed in my week 2 lesson. I mentioned this in my proposal as well; I was primarily inspired by 3 of the 10 images I researched, these are: the man in the horse mask sitting on a chair next to a dog, the man in the gas mask and lastly the man with a nebula background shining off of his helmet. All three of these images have some sort of mask or helmet in common, this was similar to what I was striving for.

Following my proposal I found myself taking approximately 70 photographs. I then picked out the shots which stood out most from all the repeats. I was left with 39 photographs, most of these were edited using the “Levels” and “Curves” functions. Most if not all of the images I edited weren't in contrast, so I darkened some of them while others were simply too dark so I did my best to brighten them up. After that I picked out 2 of my favourites, these were the ones with me facing the camera backwards and the photo in which I was seated from a low angle.

This about the time I had to remove the outline of both of these images. I found this challenging as it took me a long while, the magic wound tool couldn't select the entire background so I had to use the pen tool as a result. The seated shot was the most difficult out of the two: In addition to having to remove the overall outline, I had to crop out the outline inside of the chair. The most challenging was the clean up after the outline, because my photos were taken on grass some of it had gotten unto the shoes for example. To overcome this problem I used the clone stamp tool to successfully select another area of the shoe and insert it over the lingering grass. I had to do this for the both photographs.

I was then able to create my very own seamless background using some of the work I used for my advert. I took the logo and aligned it to the centre, I then hovered over the “Filter” tab, clicked on “Other” and selected “Offset”. I then set the horizontal and vertical pixels to 250, this would evenly spread out my logo in all 4 corners of the rectangle. I then merged all of the layers together, lastly I saved my pattern through “edit” and selecting “define pattern...” to save my pattern into the pattern overlay list. I then added this overlay over my photos to create my final piece. I created 2 variations with the seated photograph, one with the chair and one more with a planet for a chair instead.

No ouline

Pattern template

The pattern with a nebula background

No outline with chair

 

Horse seated angle (planet)

alternative