Week1 ASSESSMENT: Capturing Images

Task:

Photograph a white subject on a white background. Again, document your process. You can do this as a real set up, or use Set A Light 3d.

f/11 1/125 ISO 100  AWB

 I find this type of photography very interesting. Seems easy but it is more difficult than you think. It's very technical. First at all, I've never done much studio photography. The closest I did was at home, placing an object on a small table, with the help of a white cardboard, using the light of my room and the flash of my camera. And of course, with a lot of patience. It's basically the same principle but to be honest on the first day the big lights at the studio intimidated me. As I said, with a lot of patience and working as a team with my colleagues, we manually setup the settings of the Godox mono lights at the studio, placing one of them on the left of the candle as a constant light, using the second one on the right of my subject as a flash, creating the only shadow on my image. I didn't used any extra light on the background to make it whiter and I was happy how the final image turned out. There is a strong definition between my subject and the background (this one has a grey tone), my candle is the whitest subject in my photo and doesn't get lost or blend it with the background. I decided to use AWB but I was to don't go more than 200 on my ISO for this shot, so I don't finish with a very bright or grainy image.

Task:

Photograph a person or object (up to the size of a car, don’t shoot buildings) outdoors, think about your lighting and your framing. You can use artificial light as well as natural light if you wish.

f/7.1 1/1200 ISO 2500

On this photo, I was walking with my colleagues when suddenly I saw this couple trying to find an address on their phone. So I grabbed my camera, I knew that I had a very short time before they move.

My priority at that moment was to focus on the silhouettes, the gestures and let the image speak for itself. I always have the light detector activated in my camera so I knew the photo wasn't too bright, so my next reaction was to compose the image as quick as possible. I decided to put my protagonists in the left bottom corner, leaving a good amount of space for the buildings, the trees and the street to fill up my background. Then I kept walking and when I got back to the base I quite liked how the photo turned out. A bit bright because I neglected my ISO but I really like the building and the houses on the background, creating that mix of gray, blue and green colors and a visual balance. If I had to name this photo, I'll probably call this pic " Two girls lost in the big city"

Task:

Photograph a moving person using different settings in your camera. Use different aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings to achieve long and short focus and capture the motion. You can use CameraSIM if you wish. Again, document your process.

Playing with the Aperture

Image above, the most striking effect that can be seen is how the brightness or exposure of the image has been affected. As I have resized the aperture, the amount of light has decreased and therefore the brightness of the image.

Playing with the Shutter Speed

Image above, we can see another example how I affected the brightness on my photo. I did that playing with the shutter speed, which essentially is how long my camera spends taking a photo. We can also appreciate the blurry effect created on the first image - the steps of the people walking, which has slightly disappeared and where the focus improved when I increased the speed on the shutter.

Playing with the ISO

This image shows a third example how playing with two different ISO settings will make my photo more bright or dark. As I increased my ISO number, my photo has become brighter. However, as a consequence to shoot the second pic with ISO400 on a sunny day, I had to reduce the exposure, highlights and whites on my laptop before uploading this photo.

Understanding the depth of field

On the next photos that I took this week, I want to demonstrate how my aperture affected my images of people in motion. On the first one, showing my instructor and colleagues returning to the base, I captured this image using an f/4.0 aperture. My friends are in focus but the background is noticeable out of focus. On the second photo taken on the street, my aperture was f/11 and I managed to capture the subject and the entire background in focus.

Using the nature as example

f/2.8 1/180 ISO 100