Photography during a break after TAOP course

I have taken a break of several months after finishing The Art of Photography Course before I start the next module, People and Place. Whilst I have not kept up with my learning log of studying, I thought it would be worthwhile to keep a note of the photography related activities I have been doing during this time.

In March, I compiled a presentation combining my photographs and pictures from other sources to accompany a friends talk on "Lord Mayors of the City of London". For this project, I had taken numerous photographs of graves, memorials and churches in Surrey of famous Lord Mayors. Whilst these photographs were primarily to record the memorials of interest, there were many problems of lighting and viewpoint. I tried where possible to obtain a picture which was visually interesting as well as a pictorial record of the memorial.

Remains of memorial to Sir Richard Hoare, St Mary's Church, Barnes

Nikon 18-200mm at 48mm: Iso 200 f5.6 for 1/20th second

In April, some of my photographs were accepted for the Guildford Photographic Society Biannual Exhibition. One was a landscape of Skomer Island just before sunset.

Nikon 18-200mm at 26mm: ISo 200 f8 for 1/1000 sec

The others were a panel of four separate photographs, which comprised four of the photographs from the TAOP exercise illustrating "rain".

I was unsuccessful however with a panel of six photographs based on the group of photographs that I used in the narrative picture essay exercise for TAOP showing various activities on a beach in Bali.

Early in May, I gave a presentation of some of my photographs entitled "Spice Island Voyages " at Guildford Photo Soc.

This presented a number of challenges:-

- to devise a narrative for the presentation which was not simply a sequence of "foreign" places unfamiliar to the audience. I tried to portray the features and atmosphere of the places that had fascinated me.

- to select the photos not just for the subject matter, but those that I felt had reasonable composition and visual interest. I wanted to avoid showing too many places and too many photos, which was a fault of some external speakers who have given travel presentations at the club.

- to include comments on the photographic problems and issues, not to just talk about the place. I wanted to emulate in a small way the inspiring presentation by Ken Scott on the subject of Mountain Landscape photography earlier in the year.

I also made a photobook "Beyond Tanimbar" of our third voyage in the Spice Islands in November 2010.

In May, I attended a studio photography workshop given by two experienced studio photographers from the club. In contrast to the City and Islington workshop that I did last year,the emphasis was on working with models. We used a couple of sets and lighting which we put together in the morning, so that in the afternoon we had the opportunity of working with two different models. One set used a pair of daylight corrected fluorescent lights, the otherset used a pair of studio flash units. The models moved between the sets with a change of clothes, allowing a change of style and mood in the photographs.

In the practical sessions, each participant took it in turn to direct the model for a short interval. We shared decisions regarding position, height, and proximity of lamps etc.

I learned a number of things from the workshop:-

- As a novice, I did not anticipate the effect the small changes to the models pose and position. During the session, I paid more attention to finding a viewpoint where I thought the light was attractive, but did not pay sufficient attention to the models pose. It was only when reviewing the photos afterwards that I could see how the position of the head, shoulders and hands affected the photograph.

- The daylight corrected fluorescent lamps were significantly less powerful than the flash set up. This limited depth of field when hand holding the camera.

- Whilst I was pleasantly surprised by some of the photos that I took at the workshop, I do not foresee using this type of photograph in the near future.

The four photographs that I selected from the workshop are as follows:-

Lara

Nikon 18-200 mm at 90mm: Iso 800 f5.3 for 1/30th

The photograph has a conventional portrait style, using the fluorescent lamps. I needed an ISO of 800 to keep a shutter speed that was borderline for hand holding. I chose this particular image as this had reasonable lighting of her hair, plus a reasonably flattering position of her arms.

Jodi 3

Nikon 18-200mm at 31mm: Iso 100 f9 for 1/125th seconds

The photographic flash set had a white background and the scene and the models dress reflected a fashion style of photograph, rather than a studio portrait. The available light meant that I could use ISO 100 at f 9 and still have a reasonable shutter speed.

This textile of this dress glistened in the lights and I was hoping to show the glossy material with this pose.

In the final two photos, Jodi performed some Tae kwando movements.

Jodi 1

Nikon 18-200mm at 70mm: Iso 100 f13 for 1/125th

Jodi 3

Nikon 18-200mm at 48mm: Iso 100 f16 for 1/125th

The lighting for this sequence was studio flash providing plenty of light to allow a relatively small aperture. Some of the postures were unstable so a fast shutter speed was essential.

I was rather more successful with this sequence for several reasons:-

- I did not need to devise a posture, these were a given. I only had to find an appropriate viewpoint and framing.

- Several of the postures are visually photogenic, as the eyes, body and hands are directed in forceful manner.

- The model seemed particularly interested in capturing some good photographs of herself, and was willing to repeat and hold poses.

Observation

A brief preview of the contents of the P&P course indicates that I will be spending some time working on these and other areas. The workshop was hopefully a useful precursor to the course.