Digital Imaging - Smoke Trails!

So our task for last week was to photography smoke trails. I was abit optimistic about photographing smoke trails as I have never tried to shoot smoke before, especially trials which are usually shot at close range and which are very detailed. I always thought it would be very hard to get the perfect picture. But I spent abit of time (which was only about 20 minutes due to work commitments!!)setting up a backdrop for some 'trail and error' photography smoke trails.

The setting for my images were my window sill funnily enough! I propped my laptop on my window sill as the black backdrop and used the flashlight on my phone as a 'softbox' on one side to light up the smoke, if you can picture that! Almost like a miniature studio for tiny people! It actually worked better than I expected as I wasn't expecting to get anything first time round! I got my dad to light the match and blow it out so I could focus on capturing the smoke trail in detail in which I only managed to get one good image in the short time I had! But I will be trying this technique out again after Christmas to see if I can get some more to add to my collection :) for now here is the smoke trail I shot which I am really quite pleased with!!!

 

 

 

 

Laura xx

Studio Shoot

 During my first year at University our group did a lot of work with the Media Make-Up students, getting to know them and shooting in the studio with them and their models for various assessments and to build up their portfolios. I found that working with them during the second year was very limited, due to shoots being not as often or me focusing on my other assignments. But on Friday some of us had the opportunity to shoot around 8 models that had been made up by the Media Make-Up students for one of their upcoming assessments. I was very excited to get back into the studio and start shooting again! We got into the studio an hour early and set up all the lighting and backdrops ready for the models!

The students could choose what the theme of their model was, we had models sporting recycling, a flower, a circus dancer, a butterfly, a royal in the Victorian era and a few more! It is honestly amazing what the Media Make-Up students can do in just a few hours! My favourite one was a girl who was made into the theme 'the earth'. The Media Make-Up student added on fossil and earth-like things onto the girls body and it looked beautiful! She really made a brilliant effort and the model was so easy to work with! So for now I am just going to post a couple of my favourite images from this specific theme as I believe they really stand out as a group of images which I will be adding into my portfolio! I am so happy with my images, especially these specific ones, I'd like to think I captured the work of the student well to get some really lovely images that I am proud of!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had so much fun shooting on Friday and cant wait to shoot again when the opportunity comes up!

Laura xxx

Digital Imaging - Splash Photography

So this weeks task from one of our lecturers was to experiment with the word 'splash' and create images around 'splash' photography. Splash photography is very interesting and can create some very beautiful and striking images that you wouldn't normally see through the human eye, instead, through the camera lens, you are able capture a still life image that presents a lot of detail and technique.

I wanted to use something everyday to create a splash so I just picked up an apple from my fruit bowl, some spare black A3 paper and filled up a glass bowl full of water and off I went to my kitchen to start shooting! I did drag my mum into helping me so she could drop the apple into the bowl whilst I focused on capturing the image! It took us a few attempts to get it right but we eventually got some good shots!

I am very pleased with the outcome seeing it was my first attempt at this type of photography!! Some images are below, enjoy :)

 

 

 

I really loved experimenting with 'splash' photography and it is something I would definitely do again. If I were to do this again, I would change the object I was dropping into the water, or I would perhaps use a different glass, or a see through box so I could photograph the object falling into the water from the side of the box to get the objects splash from inside the box etc., just to do something different. I also like experimenting with angles and the different splashes you can achieve from the angles from the camera lens, so experimenting with that further is something I would like to practice.

 

Until next time :)
Laura xox

Who doesnt love a film camera?!

So during my weekly visit to my grandparents house, my grandad thought he'd surprise me by getting out his old Canon AT-1 50mm film camera! I was so excited when he opened up his old camera bag to find inside this little beauty! We sat there for an hour or so talking about the camera and what he used to shoot with it and so on! He has a big pile of old film back in the day when him and my nan went on holidays and outings! Although I am a Nikon fan rather than a Canon user, I found this camera absolutely fascinating, to the weight of it and how heavy it was to the way it almost looks like a toy camera when you hold it in your hands!

 

 

I love the old fashioned way of turning the dial to set the correct aperture and shutter speed, although it requires a lot more thought, it just shows how photographers used to work and what they had to work with back in the day before digital cameras were even invented! It was also amazing the condition the camera was in, being almost 50/60 years old, all the numbers were still perfectly bold without any that were worn away! (It must have been in the back of the cupboard for a while haha!) My gramps still had the old fashion camera flash unit to pop on top of the camera body too!

A short but sweet blog today, showing you the wonders of a vintage family film camera! I absolutely love this old film camera and I honestly cant wait to try it out!!


Love,

Laura xxx

Digital Imaging - Experimenting with exposure

For one of our homework tasks for this week was to shoot some images that we have purposely under or over exposed. Then it was our job to open up the images and fix them using the tools we have in Photoshop.

I really enjoyed this task due to the fact that when I shoot, I wouldn't think twice about using an image that perhaps had a lot of dark shadows in it or if the image was so over exposed all the detail was washed out of it. I would almost always think about deleting them straight away. But our lecture this week taught me that even if an image isn't perfectly lit or exposed when originally shot, you can still make it look beautifully detailed and exposed when recovering it in Photoshop.

So this week I went out shooting in different lighting situations that would make the image look purposely over or under exposed by 1 or 2 stops and shooting in RAW. I was really excited about getting the images into Photoshop and seeing what I can do with them.

These are my outcomes:

Under exposed by 2 stops

Over exposed by 2 stops

 

I really enjoyed doing this task, it was something I had never done or even thought about doing with an image that looked over or under exposed before so it was definitely something that really interest me. I love the colours and detail you get out of Photoshop after shooting in RAW, it gives the images a lot of depth and vibrancy after recovering the image, especially with the leaves and branches in each image. Even though this was only a short task, I am definitely going to carry on with this specific skill and work on images that I have shot with the incorrect exposure, it will allow me to keep practising the technique and also teach me not to just delete images just because they don't look perfect, without working on them first.


Laura xxx

A change of scenery

So I usually blog about my favourite genre of photography, that being fashion and portrait related and upload my newest images which I add to my ever-growing portfolio. But for this specific blog I wanted to blog about a different genre of photography, that being landscapes. I started off my love of photography shooting almost everything and anything that looked interesting or beautiful. But the one thing I used to do the most was to go up into my sisters bedroom at the back of my house, I live on a hill which means when looking out from the window I can see for miles and miles over to Lacock from my house in Pewsham! I can see all sorts from the railway and trains passing by in the distance to hot air balloons floating around the sky in the summer! The sun sets almost everyday in the horizon of Lacock from my sisters bedroom window which is perfect me, allowing me to capture lots of different landscape and sunset images with a variety of colours throughout each image.

I would love for images like these to one day be sold on canvas, hung on walls or something similar, I think they would look very striking blown up on a beautiful canvas around someone's home.
Below are just 3 of my favourite sunset images which I think look absolutely beautiful!