Assignment 3

I've received feedback for Assignment 3 from my tutor - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104013160/SBAOP3.pdf

The submission can be found in my Dropbox - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104013160/Assignment%203%20-%20Steven%20Briggs%20-%20510812.zip

My email response to my tutor is as follows:

"Hi David

Thank you for your feedback. I was a bit surprised by your feedback re the format (particularly the grey titles), of the submission as this is the same format as I used for previous assignments. Either way, I’ll try and make it clearer going forward.

Re the lamppost, I’d not spotted that it was out of focus until you pointed it out. I would have expected that the reflection was the thing to be focussed on rather the reflected object. I think that’s quite intriguing so I’m going to do some experimenting on that to try and get my head round it.

I completely take your point re the out of focus chair in the Cup photo. I spent quite a bit of time on the composition, but the out of focus chair is probably a bit distracting. I attended a talk with Peter Fraser a few months ago - http://stevenbriggs7.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/peter-fraser-red-eye-lecture.html and remember him talking about his desire to get edge-to-edge sharpness in his photographs in order to increase the sense of objectivity.

Re my blog I think the absence of articles over the last few months reflects the fact that I took a break from things, but I’ve had positive feedback form you previously for the blog, so I’m figuring I just need to return to the levels I was doing previously. The links you provide will be useful.

With regards to producing prints for future submissions, will that definitely be necessary? I’ve always preferred the idea of doing completely digital submissions. I’ve never really printed my photographs and so I’d be starting from scratch re experience in this area and I think it might become a bit of a distraction from me actually concentrating on the other areas which I find more interesting. If you do think it’s necessary to print, would you recommend buying a photo printer or paying to get them printed?

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."

And his response to me:

"I shouldn’t worry too much over the grey titles and obviously I hadn’t found it a problem previously wither.  However, I do know that assessors view a lot of work each day during assessment so if I can make the slight slip when slowly working through an assignment, an assessor could certainly make it when trying to get through their days quota, and anything that might annoy or confuse an assessor is best avoided.

Prints aren’t required for assessment but I did note when sent to observe the assessment event in March that assessors grumbled more when having to view submissions online. It shouldn’t affect a grade at your level though.  One thing I should add is that this is a degree level course so at some point you will need to learn all about printing.  A lot of the learning comes from experience so I recommend starting to print as soon as you are running a fully colour manage workflow.  At first I would recommend outsourcing to a lab (a lot of students use http://www.digitalab.co.uk/ as the quality is good and their Fuji frontier prints are cheap).  If you then find yourself wanting to experiment you could investigate buying your own inkjet, but this is by no means necessary."

I've started with the Part 4 exercises and I'm looking forward to working toward the conclusion of this course and then onto the next."

Part 4 - Exercise 6

Variety with a low sun

In this exercise 4 shots were taken at low light (evening). One with frontal lighting, one with sidelighting, one (well actually 3), with back lighting and one with edge lighting

The first 3 shots are backlit. In the first it is the background (which is very bright), which is exposed for. So the subject is very dark - silhouetted. This emphasises the shape of the subject. What is also interesting is the halo effect around the edge of the subject.

The second shot is exposed for midway between the background and subject.

And finally I exposed for the subject. So the background is completely burnt out.

Next is frontal lighting where the subject faces the light head on. It was very difficult to keep the shadow of the camera out of the shot. There are limited shadows here, though there is shading - which is actually more flattering than I thought it would be. Unsurprisingly there is no real shadow or variation in tone in the subject because the whole thing is actually in shadow.

In Side Lighting the lightsource is at 90 degrees to the subject, so the face is cut vertically between light and shadow. This creates a dramatic, but somewhat unflattering effect. Clearly form is emphasised here.

In edge lighting, the light is at an acute angle so just the edge of the subject is lit - very starkly. This emphasises the form of the subject in a way which is potentially more interesting than straight forward sidelighting.

Part 4 - Exercise 3

Judging colour temperature 1

This exercise concentrates on studying the way that colour temperature changes during the day.

In each instance the white balance of the camera is set to "sunny day"

In the above photo, the white balance is correct for the scene. The white balance shows the white of the ball as pure white. The scene is exactly as I saw it.

In the shadow the photo takes on a blueish tint (the camera would ordinarily compensate for this by increasing the temperature of the photograph - warming it up a bit)

In the above photograph the scene is decidedly warmer - the ball is decidedly yellow rather than pure white. Interestingly this isn't much different to how I remember the scene - the light was very warm, but not quite as warm as it is in the photograph. Again, if the white balance had been set to auto, it would have cooled down the scene a bit, thus making the ball closer to pure white.

Part 4 - Exercise 2

Higher and lower sensitivity

For this exercise the ISO was increased in order to increase the sensitivity to light of the camera and thereby mean that higher shutter speeds and/or higher apertures can be used but still the same exposure is achieved.

The price that must be paid for this increased sensitivity is (in digital photography), increased noise.

The first shot above is f3.6, 1.5 sec, ISO 200. The low ISO is forcing a large aperture and low shutter speed - so depth of field is low and there is also camera shake. The 100% magnification shows the blur from the camera shake and also that the candles are heavily out of focus.

Going up to ISO 800 still only gets me f5.0 and 1/9 sec . One of the reasons I chose my camera is the particularly good image quality at high ISO. So actually there is little noticeable noise at ISO 800.

ISO 2000 gets me f5.0 and 1/20 sec. Still not much noise. The bird has good detail, but there is very little depth of field here - so the candles in front of the bird are out of focus.

ISO 3200 gets me f8.0 and 1/15 sec. This is probably the best compromise point for me - there is reasonable depth of field and the shutter speed is just fast enough to minimise camera shake (with the lens' optical stabiliser also assisting). At 100% zoom there is some visible noise in the flat coloured areas, but this is a price worth paying for the increased depth of field and shutter speed.

ISO 6400 gets me f10 and 1/20 sec. The noise is starting to show here and actually making the image slightly blurry when viewed at 100% - this is probably the noise reduction kicking in as the camera generates the jpeg.

Part 4 - Exercise 1

Measuring Exposure

This exercise is all about measuring and altering exposure and seeing the effect it has on the resulting photograph.

Part 1

Part 1 consists of different subjects, each of which are deliberately lighter or darker than the average exposure.

I had to under expose what the camera recommended for average metering in this shot. this is due to the large expanse of dark background. In practice I should probably underxposed by another 1/3 stop as the skin of the subject still looks slightly bleached.

I had to overexpose here by 1 stop due to the large expanse of very bright sky which the camera wanted to compensate for - this would have left the fence very dark.

This phot also needed to be overexposed - this time by over 1 stop.

Here the photograph needed to be underexposed so that the white objects weren't bleached out against the grass which was quite dark in the shadow of the house. This required 1 2/3 compensation.

This dark phone on the very bright windowsill required a full 2 stops overexposure.This way the brightness has been captured.

The camera wanted to compensate for this dark scene by making it brighter. I had to underexpose by 1 2/3 stops in order to capture the scene as I saw it.

This photograph needed to be overexposed because the camera wanted to darken the bright white scene. By overexposing, I captured the scene as I saw it.

Part 2

Part 2 consists of taking 5 different exposures of a number of different subjects [In practice I only ended up doing this for one subject, but I thought I'd learnt enough on this already].

Each of the below subject start with the "correct" exposure at average metering, followed by +2/3, +1 1/3, -2/3 and -1 2/3 (these were the variants which it was easiest to do on my camera).

This photograph has the "correct" exposure, the white of the ball is bright white (perhaps completely bleached out at it's brightest point), the black handle is also completely black. There is a balance of tones inbetween.

Despite being slightly overexposed, this shot is perhaps closest to what I think I saw - perhaps because it was a very bright day

At over exposure by 1 2/3 stops, the scene is very bleached out in areas and quite a lot of detail is lost.

This shot contains the most detail in the subject, but the power of the sunny day is lost and the grass is quite grey

At 1 1/3 underexposed the photograph does not look too dark necessarily but is definately different to what I saw.

Starting Part 4

Finally finished Part 3 and I'm about to start Part 4. This Part is about light which I find pretty interesting in general, so that's good. There are a lot of exercises, many of which are very basic/simple - but probably no bad thing as I need to pick up the pace for this part.

I've already started thinking about subjects for the Assignment. I'd quite like to do portraits of a particular person (but I'm not sure who would be willing to do it), or there is the tree that I particularly like (though I'm not sure that the sun will position itself in the ways needed to get backlit shots), or I could find a nice barn when I'm on holiday in a few weeks (but I'm not sure my family will let me get away with this!). Anyway, plenty of time to think about it......

Assignment 3 - Reflections

Well I've just submitted my 3rd Assignment. This has been a very protracted Assignment - I started it about 8 months ago, got most of it done in the first month or so and then pretty much did nothing for about 5 months. Even when I started again I wasn't particularly focussed. This has undoubtedly lessened my enjoyment and sense of satisfaction. On the plus side though it has allowed me to take photographs in winter and summer.

Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills

I think I've demonstrated the skills required to identify colours and use them within my photographs. I would like to have found some more subtle instances of colour as well as well as being able to capture naturally occurring still lifes (something like Peter Fraser) rather than having to set these up.

Quality of outcome

I think my submission is of fairly consistent quality.

Demonstration of Creativity

I think I've shown the most amount of diversity with this Assigment and have used a more diverse range of subjects.

Context

My blog isn't as strong this time round. I think I need to spend more time on this for the next Assignment.