Colour settings

Original


Digitally processed


Original


Digitally processed


All I have done to enhance these images is simply alter the colour temperature and exposure in Lightroom, exported them to Photoshop where I've messed with the colour balance, saturation, levels, curves etc in order to try and create a soft white background and a bright, interesting foreground. I really do like how I've played with individual colour's saturation, luminance and hue to create lovely green coloured stigma's.

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is More Panoramics.

I wanted to see what would happen if I shot a panoramic with the same subject moving throughout the individual pictures. I was hoping that it would all blend together, but when I ran the automated stitching facility in Photoshop it practically erased all of the cars except a couple as you can see. So I gave manual stitching another go, I used the Skew and distort tools on each individual layer to help line up the images, then I decided to mask off parts of each individual layer so that the car could flow in and out of each image softly without much distortion. I think I pulled off the effect rather well. I then desaturated the image and added some noise to imitate a traditional black and white image.

Final 8

After some hard work for the past few months in this module I feel that I have arrived at a very strong set of images that show both my development of photography skills and my knowledge of the 4 subject titles; Time, Light, Focus and Viewpoint.

I started out with very few ideas of what to do for each title, but with time and development of my work I came up with photos which I am proud to present as my final 8.

Time

It was relatively hard to pick out 2 photographs for this title. Even though I am happy with the work I produced I don't feel that I managed to produce the perfect photo that I was planning to, each one I would take would be slightly off what I really wanted when I got home and reviewed them.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/2.5 | 1/2 second | Canon EOS400D

The reason I chose this image over some of the others that I took in the same outing was because I felt that this one portrayed the feeling of movement much better than any of the others, When I study this image it doesn't take long for me to feel like I am travelling down the motorway at speed. It is the shutter speed which creates this feeling, it has nicely distorted the road to create this feeling of movement. I also believe the composition of the image helps to create movement, unlike some of my other photos the majority of the road is still visible instead of trying to compose just for the central reservation, the only downfall that this composition has brought to the image is the inclusion of the lights. As I said when reviewing the images earlier, even with the aid of a tripod, the car still doesn't ride smooth enough to create relaxed light trails, and due to the relatively short shutter speed the lights aren't able to blend into each other like they would possibly do with a much longer exposure (road would need to be nice and straight as well).



ISO100 | 55mm | f/7.1 | 1/6 second | Canon EOS400D

I took quite a few photos of this same waterfall in Markeaton park with various settings, the reason I chose this one over all the other candidates is mainly due to the composition, It's nice and up close to the foamy water allowing you to take in the flow and movement of the subject. Since I wasn't using a tripod (bad planning I know) This was easily one of the crispest photo's with nice smooth details in the water. If I was to try and shoot this shot again I would like to try a longer exposure at around 1-2 seconds and try and hold the composition as similar as possible, but for now, this is easily presentable for my final 8.

Focus

out of all of the 4 titles I think this was the one I had most fun with, I had so many ideas of how to exploit this title and whilst trying to portray my visions proved slightly tricky I think I managed to pull off plenty of shots which I am exceedingly happy with.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/1000 second | Canon EOS400D

This was a fairly obvious choice for my final 8, when I got back to my flat and uploaded this image I instantly noticed that the final picture had put through all my ideas and opinions on "focus" and I already knew that this would be a strong contender for my final 8. The composition is strong, roughly keeping to the rule of thirds. I really like how the focus pulls your eye into the leaves and then leads it out towards the glowing grass on the left. The out of focus background and lower third subtly bracket the focus of the image to help aid the composition. Above all I think that the colours of this photograph helped me to choose this image, the colours are not too warm and also not too cool, they perfectly reflect the feeling of the Monday morning it was shot on.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/100 second | Canon EOS400D

As I said much earlier in my blog, I wanted to create a contrasting image to the leaf shots that inevitably became a choice for my final 8. And this is what I came up with. I have already described earlier how I have developed my ideas to arrive at this photograph. Your eye is guided in to the focal point of the centre of the flower from the out of focus petals inwards towards the centre. The only real improvement I would like to make on this would be the viewpoint, I think it could become a better image if you could see more of the centre of the flower and also some of the transition between in focus and out of focus in the foreground.

Light

With this title I have been keeping my eye out to see if I can capture any interesting shadows, reflections, bends in light or silhouettes to present for my final 8, I chose to do it this way instead of taking the general cliché route of just shooting sources of light, I think that I have acheived my goal, and here is what I have to show for it.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/320 second | Canon EOS400D

This photograph highlights both my points of reflection and shadows, it was shot at sunrise so even the short grass is able to create remarkable shadows. There is a good variety of interest in this photograph flowing from the focal point of the large brown leaf through the rest of the picture weaving in and out of the luminated blades of grass and other fallen leaves. To me this photograph screams Autumn, one of my favourite seasons due to the elegant, warm colours and crisp objects. The reflections of the sun in the Leaf is what first attracted me to this photograph, it was exactly what I was looking for to represent my ideas in my final 8, it has incorporated both Reflection and Shadows into the image. For now, I'm really unsure of how and why I may want to improve this image, I am currently 100% happy with the outcome and I hope you are too.



ISO100 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/6 second | Canon EOS400D

This photograph is under this title due to it's shadows, I think they are some of the most dynamic shadows I have ever photographed, it was lit by two lights from above and due to the structure of the Lily plant it has created some very interesting shadows on both the plant and the backdrop to create an impressingly soft image. The only thing I would really want to change in this photograph is the colours, I feel that the white balance may have been a little bit off and it has brought down the image ever so slightly due to the bland colouring. I think I may have to fix this problem digitally for my digital image making coursework.

Viewpoint

As I said earlier, Viewpoint has been the hardest title for me to photograph for, I just can't seem to envision a shot before I actually go out and find a subject. I'm always on the lookout for new, weird and wonderful viewpoints that will shock and amaze the viewer, unluckily I don't think I found anything quite as dynamic as what I was looking for but I hope my selections will satisfy their viewers.



ISO200 | 50mm | f/1.8 | 1/40 second | Canon EOS400D

Whilst this viewpoint of the train track isn't substantially dynamic or even elegant, it does do well in meeting the needs for the title "Viewpoint". It nicely shows the use of perspective, if you allow the image to control your eyes you will see that the train track leads you over a bridge, around a corner and into unknown territory, something that of us have to do on a regular basis, take risks. I think this viewpoint can stir up a good amount of conversations on theory and that is why I am choosing to present it as one of my final 8. Again, there are a few changes that I would like to make to this photograph, one is the colour again, the photograph overall appears to be a little on the bland side, that couldn't really have been helped at the time due to the time of year but it is something that I may choose to fix in post processing later. the other thing that I am not quite sure on is the depth of field, at the time, I couldn't really stray from a wide aperture due to the need for light on this early morning and because of that I have got an image where parts of the image is out of focus where I want it to be in focus, so if I was to shoot this again I would make sure that I bring a short tripod so that I could keep the same sort of viewpoint but use a smaller aperture and a longer exposure time to compensate.



ISO400 | 28mm | f/16 | 1/500 second | Canon EOS400D

With this image I was able to use a rather small aperture due to the bright, natural light available, this allowed me to have pretty much everything that I wanted in focus. The main focal point, the sawn down tree grabs your attention and then pulls your eye through, down into the photograph and along the see, the composition of the photograph helps the objects do this. I am extremely happy with this photograph, but there is still a few things I would like to tweak, unfortunately for some reason I used an ISO value of 400 for this image when I certainly didn't need to with the amount of light available, because of my mistake I have ended up with a slightly grainy image, this could have been easily avoided. Thankfully, other than that mistake I would be able to do the rest of my ideal changes in post processing there's nothing to really worry about here, I would like to remove some of the distractions such as the two boats and the random rock in the water and I would also want to fiddle with the colour balance so that I could enhance what is currently in the photograph.

Portfolio

Time

Last night I went out and decided to try and improve on my earlier time images like I suggested in this post.

So I cleaned the windscreen of Colin's car, set up a tripod in the passenger seat and away we went towards Nottingham. I first set up my camera for a shutter speed of around 10 seconds, but my plan wasn't fool proof. Even with the aid of a tripod over hand held, there was still enough shakes to make the lights go all wobbly and induce sickness in the photograph as you can see here.




So I decided that I should speed up the shutter speed even more like I foresaw in my previous blog post on this subject. As I gradually shortened the exposure time, the lights became much more manageable, but I still felt like they were out of place and not producing the kind of image I was looking for.






What I did notice from these pictures however were that the road and central reservation were quite attractive and that the colour of the lights was a little too overpowering. So to develop from this reflection I decided I would try shooting in black and white or mess around with custom white balance settings and also compose the image with more focus on the central reservation and road, trying to avoid the sickly lights.












I feel that from my development of my original idea I have managed to arrive at a usable set of images for my final 8 of this module. I just need to decide which one to pick. All of them portray the subject title very well with their soft motion blur due to the 0.5-2 second exposure time and they also put across the development of my skills over the past few months.

Portfolio

Viewpoint
Portfolio of Viewpoint images

I've personally been having a few problems with viewpoint. I can't seem to effectively plan a shot for this focus like I can with the other 3. Instead, I have been going out, looking for shots for my other 3 focusses and have spotted something than can attribute to my Viewpoint portfolio. Because of this, plenty of subjects from the other 3 sections have bled through into Viewpoint for me to experiment with interesting angles and viewpoints such as from above, from the side, looking under, over, through etc.

Over



Side




Under



Through



Whilst I feel I put a fair bit of thought into all the photographs above, I don't think that any of them really stand out and be worthy enough to be presented as a final 8 photograph. I really need to develop on some of my previous ideas and create a much more dynamic image.

I know that under this headline of viewpoint I have the possibility of turning something rather boring and mundane into an exciting and unique image, I just need to keep my eyes open.

Portfolio

Light
Portfolio of Light images

Light has been one of the trickier of the 4 subjects to photograph. When a camera takes a photo all it is doing is recording the light that it receives, so technically any and all photographs I take can be eligible for this section, but I have been looking for something special. I've been looking for shadows, reflections/bends in light, skies and silhouettes.

Here are some of my earlier photographs of skies




Whilst the skies in these images are moody and dramatic, exactly what I'm looking for, there is generally little interest in the foreground and the photo can lose a lot of it's detail.

Trying to expose for both the Sky and a Foreground object can be rather frustrating without the use of ND Grad filters or digital processing means. So photos can end up turning pretty bland such as this one where I attempted to expose for both.



I decided that maybe Silhouettes could provide some decent building blocks for developing a photograph for my final 8 so I decided to wake up early and head over to Markeaton park at dawn to catch the sunrise. It was a pretty successful outing and I hope I will be able to pick something out that catches interest. Here are a few of the pictures that I took that morning.





















There are a fair few which catch my interest, such as the ones with reflections in the lake or the simplistic moon shots with high contrast. There are also some very striking photos in this selection where the suns rays are burning through the trees causing an almost ethereal feeling, this could be even further exaggerated with the presence of mist. But I'm afraid that I am not aware of any fog/mist warnings in the near future so I will have to make do with this set of images, I have no doubt that I will be able to choose one from this selection but it's proving quite difficult to single one out at the moment. It could be due to the fact that all the images are rather simplistic and the only things separating them from each other is their composition.