Workshop Experience : Photography Studies College Week #12 and #13
Combined write ups this week due to a bit of a backlog and also one of our major streams - Composition, Form and Perspective - has finished up for the term.
For our final composition category session we looked at Space and The Picture Plane. This is where we get in to compositional aspects such as scale, perspectives, forced perspectives, birds eye views, worms eye views, geometric perspectives, etc.
Really interesting and well known images use this element effectively, including works by Josef Koudelka, Amani, Willett, and Alex McLean.
We also noted that tonal contrast is used extensively here, with high contrast advancing, lower contrasts receeding. Placement of subjects is also key to this compositional category as Koudelka uses to great effect.
© Josef Koudelka
This wrapped up our stream around Composition, and all we had to do now was submit our 3 images by 7 categories written submission - using all our own images ! Will share and update results next time.
On to our other stream and Week 12 was all about City scapes. We basically went straight out to shoot and had a quick 3 image assignment to create - one people image, one city scape, and one interpretative city scape image. Below are my submissions (all shot using Canon 6D, 16-35mm lens, ISO100 and appropriate shutter speeds for the effect - fast and slow.
Focus was on capturing interesting fore, middle and back grounds, as well as appropriate exposure and lighting. The people capture was to show low light crisp people shots, and I exposed for the bright tops the subjects were wearing throwing the rest in to shadow.
The golden bridge image was in a natural light window of about 3 minutes, and I loved the colour that hit the bridge, as well as the sky directly above, and then repeated on the top of the buildings.
Week 13 we focused on our Personal Expression aspect of our portfolios. and we also received marks and feedback from our earlier two assignments.
To help us along our path on the personal expression series for our portfolio, we looked at some great series of work by Teun Hocks, Izima Kaoru and Gregory Crewdson. Amazing stuff and do check them out if you can. Karol's series in particular struck me - he asked models to choose designer clothes that they would like to die in, then asked them to describe the manner in which they think they will die, and he went out and shot them in that scenario.
Our tutor Scott urged us to do a series on what we are passionate about, and not worry too much about acing the portfolio or that our ideas are boring. As he rightly reminded us, no one sees the world like we do so capture it and then it will be fresh and new to others. Easier said than done ! I have a few ideas for my personal expression section but yet to solidify and start the process. Must get a move on !
Until next week !