Workshop Experience : Photography Studies College Week #9
A very busy time prepping our first major assessment submissions being : A Shutter Speed control series, our weekend location photo-essay (shown below - mine was around the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne), and our series interpreting the Cranbourne Botanical Gardens.
So we spent some more time in the digital lab to hone some additional LR and workflow skills to help us along. Certainly being led down the path strongly by Scott that "less dial manipulation is more" and thats why we all need to submit our images in RAW, such that he can track our manipulations and ensure that they are being kept to a minimum. I like this discipline even though its hard and exposes as lazy you become when you have such great software was LR and others..
Scott is not a firm "straight outta camera man " but he has taught me that composition and exposure can and should all be pretty much straight out of the camera tool, and upon import do the usual lens corrections, profile setting and some straightening if needed. Then you do some small adjustments around highlights and shadows depending upon the image you wanted to take in the first place. Finish off with some clarity adjustments and thats it. Done!
I have really enjoyed trying to follow this discipline and it has made me a better image taker already. And much more to go ....
NGV Photoessay, Leica Q, various exposures
In our creative stream with Lucia on the Thursday we went about discussing Abstraction, the side of photography where nothing is as it seems. How you go about making the world seem obscure, and the normal look totally different to what it really is. Abstraction can be full or partial, and take various Shapes (2D/flat/circle/etc) and Forms (3D/Depth/Sphere/etc).
We looked in to how you use DOF to get abstraction, via blurring foreground, or the use of negative space to create a shape via tonal contrast. Perspective is also a massive tool to help abstract the normal, or use silhouette to get shape.
Removing reference points that make the brain connect to what the image is really showing is the key.
© Bill Brandt
Lucia finished up by summarising the key ways in which to obtain Abstraction, then sent us out on to the streets for a night abstraction shoot. A great session..
Abstraction techniques :
- High contrast shadow and tonal to make shapes
- remove points of reference
- change perspective
- play with light
- use back lighting
- use -Ve space creatively
- controlled framing
