Looking towards submitting my work for assessment, I wanted to return to part 4. I submitted the images above as part of Project one, exercise 4.1: Daylight.
When looking back through my work, I remember taking these photographs and being particularly happy with the weather at this point. I was looking for inspiration on how daylight / natural lighting changes through time. whether that be time of day or the time of year. On this particular day, I was in a country park. The many trees provided a lot of cover but also created a lot of opportunity to capture this dappled lighting. I like how the whole scene is not lit evenly.
In photographs 1 and 4, I like the feeling that you are looking through something first to see the lit part of the photo. The light allows you to be drawn deeper in to the image before coming back to take in the whole frame.
In images 2,3 and 6, I do wonder whether they are just a little too dark. Does that add to the image because that is how it felt on the day and you have to look a little harder to find the details. Or, does it take away from the image as you don’t just ‘see’ it. This is when I considered the work of Eugene Atget.
When researching natural light photography, I looked at the work of Eugene Atget. In some ways, my darker images above remind me of the work of Atget. The two images below show how he used daylight to create a different kind of image. I have put an image of my own next to the work of Atget to show my different takes on daylight too.
Environs, Amiens – Eugene Atget [1]
Although my image here is darkened slightly by the border in the foreground, you can see both were taken with little / no shadows. The sun was shining brightly across both scenes and no shadows were cast by anything overhead or surrounding trees etc. Although a bold, bright way of taking a photo, I wonder how interesting my scene would be without the border. Although there are things to look at throughout, is there enough to really grab a viewer? However, I still thought it was a good comparison to Atgets Environs, Amiens. I wanted to flatten my scene with the even light, as Atget has done, but also give it depth with the border.
Parc de Sceaux – Eugene Atget [2]
Looking at my photo next to that of Atget here, the shadows within both create more interest within the scene for me. You discover new things as you look around the frame and I feel the shadows give you a reason to look at what has caused them and how the light trickles through. For me, these photographs are more interesting and keep you engaged for longer, in comparison to the two above.
For this assignment I would have liked to re look at exercise 4.2: Artificial light, using a high street as I really like the work of Sato Shintaro. The bright colours and graphic novel like feel in his ‘Night Light’ collection was something I found inspiring. I would like to go out and photograph artificial lights on the high street but, unfortunately, with a 6 month old baby, I can’t see me having the opportunity to do that with an early bed time routine, an unpredictable morning wake up and later sunsets at the moment. For that reason I continued my research in to artificial light to find a different source of inspiration.
In my research I came across Todd Hido’s “Homes at Night” collection. I liked how these photographs captured the normality of a light in a house, but at the same time, made you question what was happening inside. I wanted to use that inspiration to create my own series, in which I captured homes from my home.
I feel my photographs work as a set, as they have a feel of the neighbourhood they were taken in and have similar tones and lighting. However, if I were to do this again, with the freedom to just go out whenever I wanted, I would expand this to more of a ‘one square mile’ type of set. I think that would allow me to capture more variety in my work with a larger area of different photo opportunities, whilst still keeping the neighbourhood type feel to the set.
In my work for exercise 4.2, I photographed things inside my house. It was quite difficult to find the time to go outdoors to take photographs for part 4. For that reason, I used candles and lamps, indoors, to create the artificial light. This was also new to me as I’d never photographed within my house before. I always felt that I needed an outdoor setting to get a good photograph. Perhaps because of the genre of photography I liked but also through an undiscovered creativity to find an interesting frame within a household setting.
This assignment has been a challenge for me. It’s one I thought I would enjoy when starting the exercises, particularly when looking at the work of Shintaro. However, with the restrictions of being a new mom, and also still being in lockdown, and the pressure of a looming deadline, I felt the need to rush to get something that works for this brief. Although I’m happy enough with the photographs I have, I’m disappointed with my work as a whole. I don’t feel I’ve had the time (with or without the deadline) to do what I really wanted to for this assignment. The last month has been a struggle and I don’t feel I’ve had enough free time to take photographs. That is, therefore, the main reason for my set being homes from my home, as I found I could get a little time here and there on an evening to capture what I could see from my house.
From this, I’ve learnt that I won’t always be entirely happy with my work, and perhaps I won’t always be able to submit the perfect set. But, I can use that to figure out new ways of working, and allow myself to critique work which I’m not entirely happy with. Sometimes, deadlines & obstacles will force a different result from what I’ve imagined / hoped I’d be submitting. There is still the option to re work the assignment if it really isn’t good enough, and that is OK. It’s not really the way I like to work, but if I can work to make something better, I will.
Thoughts following Tutor Feedback
The images submitted for assignment 4 were the images I was least happy with throughout this course so far. I felt I had not got the time within my personal life to create the set I really wanted. Due to Covid-19 restrictions and my own restrictions with a really young baby, I found it really difficult to go out to photograph this assignment. For that reason I was pleasantly surprised to find such positive feedback from my tutor.
When considering how my photographs were captured, I was pleased to see my tutor thought they worked well for this assignment. With the fact that I took them indoors – through windows – I am glad they worked to give the unsettling type of feeling I was hoping to bring my from influence found in the Todd Hido collection.
My error within the write up of this assignment was in not discussing the image quality. I did not include in my reflection that I had taken these images through the windows of my home. Perhaps this is something I should have looked in to more and used it to my advantage to add to the lockdown type feel to these images. I wanted to show an eerie set of images. After reading the feedback, I could have discussed the noise, and the halo in image Three. I could have let these things add to the isolated feeling of being stuck at home, looking out, rather than ignoring them as an issue.
This feedback has really shown me I need to look at my photographs and not only acknowledge the imperfections, but embrace them! Not all images come out as we expect, and not all photo opportunities are as we want or plan them to be. This is something which is so great about photography (also a little stressful for someone who likes to plan). We have to take the shots as they are. For that reason, this set should not be one I am unhappy with, they should be ones I was not expecting and should have looked at the positive within them too. Looking back at assignment 4, there are things I would have changed but at the time it was the best I could achieve with these limitations and my write up could have expressed the reasoning / results better. This is something I will take forward with me.
My tutor also expressed that my reflective writing is an “asset” which I am very proud of. I find that writing reflectively now helps me focus on what I did well and what I want to improve. At the start of this course I didn’t feel that way, so it is something I have worked on and I am glad it has shown to be worthwhile.
Within part 4, I really struggled with the studio type lighting. I did not have the right things in the house to create what I wanted / thought I was being asked to do. This was not made easier by retailers not being open, meaning I could not go out to buy props as I normally would have done. Looking back, I would have tried this exercise with less natural light in the room. I feel that could have given me a better set of images. Artificial light and night time shooting is definitely something I am keen to explore in the future.
When first reading this breif a photo came straight to my mind. ‘Leap of Faith’ by J.A Hampton. I have a print up in my house and I’ve always loved it. However, after my research, I thought it best to find another, as I didn’t think I could create a homage to it as well as I’d want. When looking at the images from the ‘Office at Night’ by both Edward Hopper and Victor Burgin, I realised they were a lot more similar than I thought I would be able to capture to the ‘leap of faith’. The breif says we can create the image rather than discovering it through the viewfinder.
The only thing I could find online about J.A.Hampton was another post on WordPress by Ashleigh Mahoney [2]. I was surprised that no search seemed to come up with any information for this photograph or its maker.
This is something I will keep in mind for a future project.
So this weeks, has been spent trying to sort our house out to put it up for sale. After booking in with an estate agent, he called to say he had a positive test for covid19 and therefore could not come to our house to photograph it for marketing.
After initially being disappointed by this, me and my husband were talking and he asked why I couldn’t do the photography for us? I hadn’t considered it an option, as surely the estate agent has somebody to do that for them… but no, he works alone. As it turns out he was “200% happy with that” plan.
So today was spent taking many photos. The pressure was on to create a good looking home. To produce great photos which could potentially be seen by hundreds, with the aim of them selling a house for us. My photography has never had to achieve anything for me before.
Overall I really enjoyed it. I used knowledge I’ve picked up through this course to help me through. Things like reviewing in the viewfinder instead of assuming its OK, changing settings to even out the light and show a room at its best.
I haven’t photographed indoors much so I enjoyed using this to work in manual mode and explore the correct settings. I cant help but wonder how differently the photos may have turned out if our agent had taken them instead. I’m awaiting his email back to say they’re OK to use. I’ve always been very critical of my own work, so to have to give it to a stranger to publish online is quite scary to me!
Yesterday evening, I read an email from my tutor, asking whether we consider ‘Expressing Your Vision’ to be too academic. The original post inspiring this question, asked “I thought this course would be more about taking pictures and less about writing”. So, the tutors question – does it lean more towards an academic approach rather than practical?
Reading through the replies, there are contrasting views. Some people agreeing with the original post, that there is too much focus on the academic side of photography, and some arguing the opposite.
I consider the course to be quite academic over practical. When reading from a response from the tutor that EYV marks are only 25% for the research/ written, I feel perhaps that should be made more known as I was unaware. Perhaps I would not have put so much pressure on myself to do more in depth research if I had known that (maybe my own fault for not finding that information sooner!).
Having said that, I can see completely, why research is so important for this course. After all it is a degree level qualification. I have found my research so helpful and it has definitely shaped how I am learning and how I then go on to photograph things. I think without that, I couldn’t have moved further forward with my photography as there would be no inspiration on how to better myself!
I enjoyed part one of EYV most. This is because I felt as though each exercise was ‘here’s an example, take a photo’. I enjoyed that because it felt as though there were more opportunities to photograph something in particular. As I’ve moved through the next parts, to me there is more focus on the research and being told to ‘read this’ and then write about it, rather than to photograph in response to it.
Perhaps it is just my perception of the course, maybe I am more academically minded than I thought and therefore feel the need to do research more thoroughly than needed.
These photographs were taken while out for a walk. I wanted to include them on my learning log as a way to show progress made and document my images whilst progressing through this course.
“If you’re not completely sure how your light meter works, try this exercise. Set your camera to any of the auto or semi-auto modes. Photograph a dark tone (such as a black jacket), a mid-tone (the inside of a cereal packet traditionally makes a useful grey card) and a light tone (such as a sheet of white paper), making sure that the tone fills the viewfinder frame (you don’t have to focus). You might be surprised to see that the histograms for each of the frames are the same. If there’s not much tonal variation in your subject you’ll see a narrow spike at the mid-tone; if there is tonal variation such as detail you’ll get more of a gentle curve. If you find the tone curve isn’t centred on the mid-tone, make sure that you have your exposure compensation set to zero. You may see an unpleasant colour cast if you’re shooting under artificial light, in which case you can repeat using your monochrome setting.”
Black card. F/20 – 4″ – ISO 3200Brown card. F/6.3 – 1/1 – ISO 800White paper. F/29.0 – 30″ – ISO 100I wasn’t surprised to see that this histogram came out slightly to one side, as there seems to be a blue tint to the photo – this was shot from above, to avoid shadows, with a window to the side. 3 above all together. F/20 – 1/5 – ISO 32003 obvious spikes – I photographed the 3 tones together, which I had previously photographed individually. Just something to see the result on the histogram.
Exposure compensation makes a photograph brighter or darker. In auto modes, the camera chooses the exposure compensation. The camera, however, cannot always guess what you were trying to achieve. It will set as auto to not over/under expose a photo, but in some cases, that may be exactly what we are aiming for. Therefore, there is an exposure compensation meter, on which you can choose to set it to zero, or to a +/- exposure.
When taking the photos as suggested, the first time I took the photo of the black card, my histogram was way off to the left. I had set the camera to 1/4000, to allow less light so the image would come out black.
The exercise says if this happens, set your exposure compensation to zero and try again. I have to be honest, I did not know what that meant or how to do it! So I had a look and found a YouTube video to explain. [1]. When i went to retake the image of the black card, it was later in the day, and I used AV mode rather than TV, which gave me the peak in the middle rather than to the side.
This exercise reminded me of another in part one. We had to look at the histograms of photos. I’ve re read that just to remind myself. The post can be found here. [2]
● [1]Canon rebel tutorial: How to use exposure compensation (2011). [YouTube video]. At: https://youtu.be/ZBOo1aOb3IE (Accessed 21/08/20).
For this task I had originally chosen “leaves” as my ordinary subject. When doing Google search, as expected, the images show leaves on trees and leaves on the ground. There are also a couple of illustrations of leaves and some yellowing of plant leaves.
I thought leaves would be an interesting subject to photograph as there are so many different colours, shapes and textures. I also thought there could be a way of photographing in an unexpected way rather than the standard leaves on floor type photographs that a Google search pulls up, as pretty as they are.
As it’s coming to autumn there are changing colours around us, and leaves are starting to drop from the trees. I’ve always liked photographing trees with the sunshine coming through, and autumn has always been my favourite season for the colours and the crunchy leaves. I was hoping this exercise would give me a chance to photograph something I already like, but in a different way.
My initial ideas for this exercise were to either photograph leaves indoors- as none of the photos from my screen grab show that, or, to use leaves as my background and show the mess that is being made within them by our litter. I thought this would give the element of the “reality” which sits amongst the usual leaves we see and perhaps look past.
Although I liked my original idea of leaves, when doing the research part I felt as though I could create something better. For that reason I chose not to go with this route. However, I wanted to include the work I had done for leaves so far, so as not to waste the work, and perhaps as something to bare in mind as a revisit.
Screengrab
Below are the photos I had taken.
The work I chose to submit instead can be found here.
I like to have a look on the OCA student websites every now and then to read through some articles recently published.
Tonight I read a couple relating to photography. I read one entitled “OCA wellbeing: Photography” .
In the article, Edward talks about taking photo a day to update his Instagram account. This is something I have also considered. It is not something I have done though. I probably do take a photo almost every day with my phone. When I see a moment or a good photo opportunity, I pull my phone out of my pocket, and ‘snap’. Mainly these photos are of my new baby girl.
In modern society, its socially acceptable that we take photos of anything and everything. From our babies, to the food we are about to eat. From our best friends laughter, to a pretty flower. I am probably guilty of ‘over snapping’ at times. I do like to update my Instagram account often, but, I don’t like to over share personal photos and I don’t have the opportunity to take other photos every day.
However, I want to capture moments for my daughter to look back on. There will come a time when the people who surround her now, will no longer be around. For that reason, I try to get candid photos of her with people as often as I can.
Edward starts the article saying he wanted to share his photos to show that he/ they are still working, that they are “still here” for students of the OCA. By the end of the article, he describes how he was also using his photos to show his Grandma, to “reassure her that everything was okay“. Sadly he goes on to say “When she passed away I couldn’t bring myself to make the daily postings, I needed to let myself off the hook for a while”.
I think most people can probably relate to this. For all kinds of reasons, we all have to take a break sometimes. The pressure of trying to get through a degree whilst in lockdown is hard, other things come along in life too. I’ve certainly found the need – after some guilt/ stress to get my coursework on track – to “let myself off the hook for a while”.
I hope my selection feels like a coherent set, as they were all taken within the woods and have a feeling of nature throughout. I wanted to use the theme of our permitted daily exercise to also create that feeling. I tried to ensure all photos had greenery within them. I had originally picked a couple of different photos for my final set, however, I thought there were too many of people and they all looked pretty similar. I then went to take more photos over a few more days to get a better final set.
From my research, I was really taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s approach. I loved that he could take one shot and that would be it. When I submitted my “one square mile” assignment, a comment from my tutor was that he liked that I hadn’t taken the same frame over and over, I just took it and moved on. Perhaps that’s something I’ve moved away from whilst moving through this course, by trying to find the ‘perfect’ photo. Also after submitting ‘one square mile’ my tutor recommended I go out more than once to take photos rather than expecting to find everything in one take. I definitely found with this assignment that shooting in the same place over and over gave me so many more opportunities. I am glad I took the time day by day to have another go. Overall that let me have more images to choose from and made each walk more worthwhile knowing something different could come along. I took a few of the different routes through the woods so I had more chance of seeing something different. (My ‘One square mile’ can be found here).
While trying to get the photos for this assignment, I’ve found that I’ve had to take more than one shot to get the ‘decisive moment’. I don’t think this is the right assignment to take the one shot. Snapping something and seeing that each frame is different gives a lot of choice when looking through possible photos to submit. However, to capture the decisive moment, I felt it necessary to take multiple shots to see how the person/animal moved over that short period of time. Allowing me to capture the movement and pick the best frame.
When first shooting for this assignment, I also learnt an important lesson. When you’ve taken a photo, look back at it on the camera to check your settings are correct. Maybe do a ‘test shot’ in new light. I found that I looked through the viewfinder to take what I thought looked like a great shot, only to find out when I had walked away that the shutter speed was too fast and there was not enough light let in. Therefore the photo wasn’t usable like I’d thought, without editing the brightness afterwards. This led to me using a slower shutter speed to ensure more light was able to be captured.
I think again with this assignment, I spend too long second guessing myself. I am a serious over thinker and that makes me procrastinate with starting the physical “go out and take photos” part of the exercises and assignments. Because I over think what’s being asked of me, I spend a long time thinking about what I can do, until I think “that’s it” and decide what I’m going to do. From this, I think I need to use those thoughts as part of my learning log. At the moment, I go round and round but I my in my own head. Perhaps putting some of the thoughts on paper would make my decision making easier and inspire something different. It would also show my thought process as to how I get to what I do. I think this assignment has helped me to perhaps change my approach and I feel more prepared when going out now.
For images 5. ‘Pigeon Flying Off’ and image 7. ‘Squirrel Spotting the Camera’, I slightly adjusted the brightness to allow them to work as part of the set. I didn’t feel they looked right as they were darker than the rest. Image 4. ‘Squirrel Scratching’ was taken in landscape. I wanted to use this as part of my final set, but felt it would work better if all of my images were either landscape or portrait. Therefore, I cropped this one. I used Snapseed on iPad to do this.
The good I have taken from this assignment, is going out prepared to take photos. I have often looked at something and thought it was a good photo opportunity, but missed it because I wasn’t prepared. I hadn’t considered that I needed to change my approach before. However, since starting this assignment, I’ve found myself getting to my destination and straight away getting my camera out ready. This was down to my research on HCB. As I said, he was described as always being ready, I think that’s really important now, looking back on the amount of times I have missed something. Even at the start of shooting for this, I thought I could get my camera when I saw something, but by then it’s often too late.
When starting part three, I really struggled to find the motivation to do it. I’ve always thought of shutter speed as being the hardest technique to learn. However, I’ve enjoyed learning this new skill. I feel quite confident in this mode now, although I wouldn’t say I know it well enough to get it right every time yet. However, it does give me more confidence to move in to manual mode for part four. I haven’t shot in manual really since buying my camera. I did have a play at first but couldn’t get the right results, hopefully this will change now I’ve worked through Auto, AV & TV. Shutter priority is now a mode I feel I could use fairly confidently in the future and will look forward to doing so. With some practice I could capture better photographs.
Thoughts Following Tutor Feedback
When first seeing the feedback for assignment 3, I was a little concerned about my work being described as having a “childlike simplicity” to it. To me this felt as though childlike was meant in a way that a child could have done it? However, when going in to the full report, I no longer felt it was a negative when reading “I like most of all the childhood simplicity you’ve acheived”.
I’m pleased my work has achieved the decisive moment, and therefore fit the brief. I’m also very pleased to see my reflective writing is described as “highly developed”. I really tried to make my reflective writing one of my main focus’s this time, as I dont feel I’ve done it particularly well previously and wanted to use this assignment to better this skill.
Understandably, part of my feedback to improve on going forward, is creativity. I felt very pushed for time to get this assignment submitted as I’d already taken such a long break from my work whilst pregnant and in the first weeks of babies life. I knew when submitting my work that, although I was pleased with the final photos, I hadn’t pushed myself. As I said in my reflection, I have always seen shutter speed as the hardest part to master. This made this assignment scary to me. For that reason, I was just glad to produce a set of images that were not blurry. Perhaps that’s why I did not go down the route of capturing motion, and instead froze it? Perhaps that is why it isn’t so creative? I was too set on getting the right shutter speed to freeze the moments, that I forgot to enjoy it and ‘create’ moments.
Having said that, I really did enjoy the work of HCB and that influenced how I took my photos. I loved that he just captured what he saw as he saw it. no setting up of photographs, no pretend scenes.
My main feedback to work on next time is to link my research more explicitly, and to be more adventurous. Hopefully I can take both on board and move forward with them when producing the next assignment!
Tutor feedback, Robert Bloomfield, 10/08/20.
Reflection Writing
In my learning log, I wrote about the importance of reflective writing and what it means to me after finding an article on the OCA forum. My original write up can be found here. I found the article really useful in helping me to understand the importance of writing reflectively and how that can help my progress going forward. My notes on reflective writing are now in my notebook, which I always have with me whilst putting my work online.
- Sarah Gough OCA Blog - 