Photography Workshop.

22/09/2015

Key Words
Exposure - is the amount of light per unit area.
Long-exposure -  involves using a long-duration shutter speed to sharply capture the stationary elements of images while blurring, smearing, or obscuring the moving elements.
Aperture - the photographic lens can be adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or image sensor. In combination with variation of shutter speed, the aperture size will regulate the film's or image sensor's degree of exposure to light. Typically, a fast shutter will require a larger aperture to ensure sufficient light exposure, and a slow shutter will require a smaller aperture to avoid excessive exposure.
Depth of Field -  A camera can only focus its lens at a single point, but there will be an area that stretches in front of and behind this focus point that still appears sharp. It’s not a fixed distance, it changes in size and can be described as either ‘shallow’ where only a narrow zone appears sharp or 'deep', where more of the picture appears sharp.
High-key lighting is a style of lighting for film, television, or photography that aims to reduce the lighting ratio present in the scene.  High-key lighting is usually quite homogeneous and free from dark shadows
Low-key lighting often uses only one key light, optionally controlled with a fill light or a simple reflector.
ISO - common short name for the International Organisation for Standardization. The ISO setting on your camera is something that has carried over from film. You would buy film rated at 100, 200 or 400 going well up into 1000's, the number refers to the film’s sensitivity to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive to light the film is. Low sensitivity means that the film has to be exposed to light for a longer period of time rather than a film with a high sensitivity in order to properly expose the image. With a lower sensitivity you also get a better quality image.

During the first activity of the workshop, we paired up to take photographs of each others hands using a monochrome setting. We used our hands to form different poses that presented different patterns and lighting. Me and Olivia worked against a window, creating a great effect of shadowing on the hands. While doing this we experimented with the ISO of the camera.

We then changed the camera setting to portrait to take photographs of our hands showing our personality. We used materials such as ribbon, string and tissue paper to express this. We picked the trait 'shy' and used ribbon to wrap around and place on top of our hands to show very little flesh, trying to show that when you are shy you rarely like to be noticed or seen.

As a group, we moved into the studio to experiment with lighting. We set up the studio, placing the camera onto a tripod and placing lights to shine onto the subject, ie hands. We used a rotation setting so while one person from the group was modelling, another would set up the camera while another would change the setting on the light. We also used a reflector to reflect the light so it hit parts of the hand the bulb could not. During this we also used materials such as string and pegs. Again we played around with the aperture and ISO setting of the camera.

The last activity we did using the camera was long exposure. We put the shutter setting to 30. We again took it in turns to be the model, sitting on a chair facing the camera then placing our hands over our face after 15 seconds. Doing this created the effect that the face would be slightly visible through the hands. We also covered half of the face with black paper and after 15 seconds swapped the model and covered the opposite side of their face with paper. This created the effect of a person with two halves of a face. Using the hands theme and this effect, we moved our hands about in front of the camera, pausing for various seconds to experiment with the effect it would create.
Using long exposure we also tested light-writing. We posed our hands in different positions and using a torch on our phone drew around the hands. This created an effect of a continuous line of light weaving around the hand.

To complete the workshop we edited the photos we had taken throughout the day of photo shop. In photo shop we copied an image of a backdrop eg.wood and edited it so it was inside the hand. However, this did not work for me.