Selection of imaged for final portrait

portrait research

here is the research I have done for my portrait photo-shoot

First I looked at the National Portrait Gallery's Website to see the different styles of portrait photography and what if any images I thought would be appropriate for my photo shoot. http://www.npg.org.uk/

I have also looked at fashion photography blog as well http://www.fashionphotographyblog.com/ and i looked at the photography 101 section, although I will probably do something different to this I still would like these images and they have given me an idea as to what i may want to do.

Product shot

Product shot research Shampoo/conditioner research

As both my products are linked with the same research i will put it in one post.

First of all I looked at TRESemmé’s official UK website http://www.tresemme.co.uk/ to establish how they promoted their products visually and I noticed that pretty much all of the images were shot against a dark black background,

As well as looking at TRESemmé’s website, I thought it would also be usefull to look at the products if their competitors

although i have only uploaded an image from http://www.headandshoulders.com/en-US/index.jspx I found when doing my research that most if not all the other competitors shoot their images on a white background and that TRESemmé do not conform to this usual way of photographing their products. Perhaps this is to give consumers the illusion that TRESemmé products have something thats much different when compared to competitors.

this is research that I looked at for the conditioner

I have looked at the Pantene website http://www.pantene.co.uk/complete.html at an image on there and found as with many of the shampoos thats the background was white.

the images below were sourced from http://www.tresemme.co.uk/ http://www.herbalessences.com/en-US/hair-care and Radox for men website http://be-selfish.co.uk/men

Lighting workshop

In this workshop, I learned about various different methods of lighting a portrait photograph in a studio.

Side lighting only lights up half of the subjects face, and is often more flattering for someone with a broader face.

Rim lighting is similar to using a kicker, however the light is placed directly behind the subjects head creating what looks like a rim of light around the hair.

A Kicker light can be used to highlight part of the hair and give it a glow that stands out a bit from the rest of the portrait.

Broad lighting shows the whole face, however it is not often flattering to a subject who has a broad face.

there are some light drawing images from the studio here

all these images were taken using long shutter speeds to create an interesting effect that you can really play around with.

Lighting session

At uni, we have had a session on lighting and the effects you can create using lighting and long exposures, there are some images what I will place on here that I would like to talk about.

All the images in this post were taken using different shutter speeds and lights, it is interesting to note though, that none of the lights used for this were professional studio lights, it was mainly desk lamps and torches that were used. though a speedlight was used for the top image.

Shutter speed assignment

For this image I stood in the middle of the bridge near sale golf club to use a long shutter speed to achieve the interesting effect with car lights.

ISO 200, f/22, 15s

shallow depth of field

in this image I show the shallow depth of field using a row of AA batteries do get this DOF the f stop is F5.6 this method of photography can very effective when you want to highlight only a certain part of an image/subject.

visual hierarchy

There are a few photographs which I have taken to try to create a sense of visual hierarchy.

Foreground Vs Background

I have also looked at how the aperture effects what is in focus in the foreground or background of an image.

The top image shows how a wide aperture has a very shallow depth of field and only a small section of the image is in focus. in this case the first bottle is the main focal point. the F stop used was f3.5

This bottom image I used F22 this allowed for all the bottles to be in focus as the small aperture has a very deep depth of field.

Depth of field Assiegnment

The purpose of this exercise was to better understand the use of the aperture, and the ways in which it effected the depth of field, there are several images that i will be showing to demonstrate my work.

The image shown above is F4.5, 1/125s, ISO400. The Wide aperture allowes for more light to expose the Film/Sensor however this will result in a very shallow depth of field, and this is really good for just showing a certain part of an item, however would be undesirable if the photographer wanted the whole subject in focus.

This next image was taken with the f stop set to F8, 1/13s and ISO400

this image was taken at F11, 1/6s, ISO400

this final image was taken at F32, 0.8s, ISO 400. with this aperture setting the whole of the subject is is focus, the downfall of this is that the aperture is fully closed and a long shutter speed is required, therefore you cannot achieve this without a tripod.

Practice using Nikon D90

As I had never used a Nikon D90 before now i thought it would be appropriate to add an image to the blog of my first try.

f/5.6 ISO200 and 1/640

I know the image isn't great but hey, all things come with practice.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog.

This blog will contain photos that have been taken for assignments which are there to be looked at and hopefully for some feedback, and also research artists images and any analysis I make of them I will post on here as well.