Part 4 - Exercise 8

Tungsten and fluorescent lighting

The first part of the exercise is to compare the colour of (fading) daylight and indoor, tungsten light. And taking exposure readings of each.

I followed the instructions as follows....

I did this in our spare room. I waited till about 7pm when it was starting to get a bit dark outside. I stared out the window for a few minutes and then turned to look into the room. Not unsurprisingly the room had a an yellow, orange glow to it.

I then waited for my eyes to get used to light (though in truth it continued to look a bit yellowy), and looked outside again. I was expecting the scene to look a bit bluey, but it looked largely grey and green (largely because of the clouds and trees...)

I then took meter readings at ISO200 (the lowest my camera goes), in a number of locations:

• Middle of the room, under the main light - f22, 6 seconds
• In the darkest corner - f22, 30+ seconds (it was registering as underexposed)
• A more average lit part of the room - f22, 20 seconds
• Pointing outisde - f22, 25 seconds

The first shot above had whitebalance as auto. It maps pretty well to what the eye saw (the walls are slightly pink and that bookshelf is pretty orange!), but clearly the whitebalance is accommodating for the lighting because there is a definite blueness to the scene outdoors.

Now that the whitebalance is set to daylight, the room is significantly more orange, but the scene outside looks pretty realistic - the evening clouds have a slight blueness, but the white of the rendered wall of the house is a pretty good white.

With tungsten set, the blue of outside is more extreme, but equally it may have gone a bit too far with the scene indoors as well.

In the scene above environmentally friendly bulbs are in place. The auto whitebalance has done a reasonably good job of creating a realistic look to the scene. However,I'm not sure if the colour spectrum is represented here?

The tungsten make the scene look somewhat more green/blue than it should

The flourescent whitebalance makes the scene look very orange - it's obviously expecting a very blue lighting

Here the lights are halogen bulbs. As previous, the auto whitebalance has done a pretty good job.

And the flourescent has made it very orange.

Here daylight white balance has been applied and not surprisingly the scene has got very orange.

With a tungsten setting its not far from what the auto whitebalance applied.

Henri-Cartier Bresson

I was on holiday in Tuscany a few weeks ago and was pretty chuffed when on a day trip to Lucca I saw that there was an exhibition of the work of Henri-Cartier Bresson at the Lucca Centre of Contemporary Art - http://www.luccamuseum.com/HCB.php .

There exhibition was pretty large, I would guess that there were about 60 or 70 photographs, all at the same size. The rooms were thematically and thereby somewhat chronologically based.

It was the first time I'd seen so much of  persons work on display. Much of it I had already seen in various books, blogs etc, but it was interesting to see it all in one place. It's difficult to be unimpressed by the precision of photographs as well as the humour and warmth of the work - there is a genuine love and understanding of humanity at work here. That said, Bresson has been so influential and his approach so copied that unless you keep reminding yourself that you're looking at the original the work can look almost cliched. That said, the pictures do have a timeless quality to them and there is clear genius at play - the genius coming from the composition and timeliness.

However, the most enjoyable part of viewing the exhibition came from the fact that my family came in with me (I managed to convince them that they might enjoy it), and my youngest son in particular was really interested. He started by asking me what was so good about the photographs, but then he became fascinated when I started explaining about the compositions and the fact that everything only came together at that exact moment in time and about how the photographer needed to be patient and allow everything to come together, but also semi-predict what might happen and how it might look. In the end he stood with me while we looked at each photo and made me explain "why the photo was good". After a while he started to make his own assessments. Conversely to what usually happens when I go to an exhibition with the family - they rush me round - on this occasion, he slowed me down!

21st Century American Views

In order to provide some inspiration for creating some more blog entries on other people's work my tutor gave me a list of links to some good photography blogs. The first one I followed was to www.flakphoto.com .

I soon found an interesting entry on an exhibition on 21st Century American landscape photography -  http://flakphoto.com/content/looking-at-the-land-21st-century-american-views . The exhibition includes work from a wide variety of photographers chosen from 5500 submissions. I tried to pick the ones which both interested me and had an interesting use of light.

 
GRAHAM MILLER
NICOLE
MONUMENT VALLEY, UTAH
2009

The dawn landscape scene provides a backlight to the foreground scene, which sidelights the woman in the centre in the photo. Theres clearly some light come from the front and right too as this is lighting the the woman's face.


AARON ROTHMAN
BIG BOX
ARIZONA
2006

The overexposure of the above photo emphasises the brightness of the sun in what looks like analmost desert scene. The light is pretty much direct from the front and so despite the heavily angular building there is no real shadow.


BRIAN ULRICH
PEP BOYS 3
COLUMBUS, OHIO
2009

Another very angular building, this time with the light emanating from within it. My guess is that this is overexposed in order to achieve the burnt out effect of the windows of the building. Importantly though, the sky is still jet black.


BRAD MOORE
ROSE ROOM
ORANGE COUNTY, TUSTIN, CALIFORNIA
2008

Again, the light is fully frontal so the flatness of the trees is emphasised and the geometrical symmetry maintained.


COREY ARNOLD
SLACK WATER
GULF OF ALASKA
2010

Here the sea is backlit which is producing some very dynamic and dramatic shadowsi n the water - this emphasises the choppyness of the water.


CAITLIN TEAL PRICE
T
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
2010

In the above photo the scene is quite lit from the upper right - at about 90 degrees. This emphasises the many angles in the scene, the shadows adding to and varying them. However, I think the light, smooth surface of the road and bridge surface is causing enough reflection to bounce light back into the scene and stop the shadows being too contrasty.


DALTON ROONEY
FIRE ISLAND
NEW YORK
2009

The light here is very diffused. I'm guessing that it's a night photograph. Or judging by the pink light, pre-dawn or post-sunset.


HYERS + MEBANE
HOUSE - 88440019
STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK
2008

The artificial light in this photograph is clearly coming slightly from the right and is probably just above head height. The neutrally coloured light looks like it might be coming from a single, powerful flash. The shadows are extremely crisp at the edges.


KATE PETERS
PLANE
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
2007

As with the first photo the scene here consists of a foreground which is backlit by a naturally lit landscape. Here though, there is no other light,so the foreground is darker.


CHRISTINE CARR
221.05.1.250
ROANOKE, VIRGINIA
2005

This photo is mainly of shadows. The edges are somewhat diffused by what is a fairly low sun.


RYAN BOATRIGHT
UNTITLED #5
LAKE FOREST, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
2005

The buildings here are heavily side lit to the extent that all we're left with is shapes in 2 tones, light and dark and a subtly graduated background.

Part 4 - Exercise 11

The lighting angle

For this exercise I cajoled a relative to act as my model as I took a series of shots as I moved the light into various positions around her. The camera was on a tripod. The background was a set of curtains which cover a large window - it was daylight outside so the background itself has produced a very small amount of light.

Overall, this was an enjoyable and interesting and somewhat surprising exercise. It was curious to see how much even slight changes in the position of the light could change the characteristic of the lighting, equally how small movements in the subject could change the impact of the light upon it. I was also surprised at how strong the light looked as I pointed it, but how long the required exposures were. 

I was immensely aware that I was only scratching the surface in this exercise in terms of what is possible. I'm not really very happy with my results and fell that considerably more time and patience would be needed in order to get something passable - both in terms of controlling the light position, strength and also the position of the subject - never mind the expression of the subject. I think I'd also need to spend more time getting the exposure right. 2 initial things to change would be the background (plain black or white would be better), and I'd also prefer to have the subject in some plainer clothing.

One final thing - I'm not sure what the colour cast from this light might be. I had the camera set to AWB, but I think I'd need to experiment to find out what the colour temperature might be.

I've not really processed these shots, clearly if I was after a specific effect there would be a good opportunity to do specific type of processing.

The first shot is without the light on and just the residual light of the room.

 I started on the right. The effect looks quite typical, standard fare, but is neither flattering (the shadows are too intense don't aren't complimentary to the shape of the face), nor particularly dramatic.

By moving the light up and over slightly the light feels more purposeful. The shadows are still too stark to be flattering, but at least they don't cut across the shape of the face as they do in the shot above - instead they emphasise the shape of the face.

Here the light is starting to move over to the right. Again, this feels a bit pointless in terms of its effect.

I then started to move the light more extremely to the left - here it's at close to 90 degrees to the subject. This could be quite dramatic, but I think the shoulder would need to be placed more purposefully.

The light is now slightly from the below. The dynamism of the above shot is now lost.

Here the light is from above and slightly behind. The feel is definitely dramatic. But somewhat out of keeping with subject.

The light here is slightly higher. Another angle which emphasises form.

The light here is very much from behind (this is the sidelight effect which I tried to achieve in exercise 6). Another dramatic look which emphasises form.

The final backlit shot actually has the light pointing slightly toward the background. 

I then moved to positioning the light more head-on. I was surprised how difficult it was to get this to look flattering and natural. I completely failed to get the kind of look I found easy to achieve in exercise 6 when the light was straight on.

The light in the above 3 shots is really quite unflattering.

This is less straight-on, but is one of the most flattering shots. The shadows are complimentary to the shape of the face and aren't too deep.

The final shot is also fairly flattering - it's slightly more head-on than the above shot.

Assignment 4 - subject considerations

Here's some extracts from recent email exchanges between me and my tutor relating to subject matter for the 4th Assignment.

Me
"I’ve already got some way through the exercises for Part 4 and I’ve started to think about subject matter for the Assignment. I’m not sure which way to go though. In many respects I’d like to do landscape, but I think it could be difficult to find a suitable “single object”. It would also be interesting to do portraits of specific person, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to find a suitable volunteer. So I’m starting to think that finding an interesting object (on ebay or something), to photograph as still life could be the way to go. I’d appreciate any recommendations or thoughts you might have on this."

My Tutor
"Most students pick an object for assignment 4 and photograph it in a makeshift studio.  This seems like an effective approach and can lead to excellent and interesting results if you pick an interesting object.  A good example is an assignment 4 I wrote feedback on last week for one of my students, Andrew Crowson.  You can view it on his blog here: http://adcatoca.blogspot.com/2013/08/assignment-4.html"

Me
"The link to Andrew Crowson’s blog was also useful. I think I’d struggle to match-up with his studio style shots - and in honesty while I thoroughly respect these examples the idea of doing similar studio style work doesn’t excite me. I found an old  pair of boots under the bed the other day and I’m starting to think of using these as my subject in a combination of:

1. setup exterior settings where I can choose the day according to the weather and position the subject in order to control the light effect (e.g. on a roadside or something)
2. setup interior shots where I can use some studio techniques to control the lighting
3. some more typical studio setups   

There’s not much colour in them, but for the “Colour” part I should be able to emphasise the richness and sheen of the leather.

Does this sound workable?"

My Tutor

"Yes, the boots sound fine.  The goal of the assignment is to learn how to control lighting in a variety of settings to get the reults you want, so just spend some time making the photographs, experiment and above all enjoy it."

Part 4 - Exercise 9

Outdoors at night

I cheated a bit for this exercise by using a combination of new photos and ones picked from previous photos I've taken which I think fitted the brief. I felt comfortable doing this because I've done a reasonable amount of night photography previously.

The above photograph was taken a couple of months ago from the window of a hotel I was staying in in New York. It comprises many seperate points of artificial light. I deliberately took it before the evening light had faded completely.

Here the comparatively warm colours of the shopfronts contrasts with the rich blue of the night light.

The artificial light is more subtle here and the interesting shapes of the buildings are more silhouetted against the night sky.

The light here is the centrepiece of the photo, it casts interesting shadows in all directions around it.

The lights here are from LED TV screens. The movement resulting from slow shutter speed creates a slightly abstract quality which works well with hustle and bustle of the scene. This is 1/30 second - this still required 800 iso.

The above 3 photos all capture the stream of movement from moving lights by using slow shutter speeds. This creates some very interesting (and sometime surprising), shapes. They're 3, 8 and 30 seconds respectively.

The light in this scene was very interesting. The buildings in the background have a curiously flourescent green glow about them, but the foreground scene was lit by a couple of very powerful tungsten (not sure?) lights - one directly behind me and one just to left of centre and pointing right at me - I had to stand in front of it to block it with my coat and then move my position so that I blurred (over the course of the 30
second exposure) to the point where I could barely be seen.

This is another older shot which contained multiple lights. I converted to B&W to remove the varying colours and emphasise the tones that the lights created.

Again, a lot of different type of lights are in the above photograph. The street part of the photograph is almost flat because the multitude of lights nearly eradicates all shadows.