Week 4 Photography: Observational Photography

This week we looked into the idea of using the camera to create more abstract images to suggest concepts of colour, texture, movement, shape and structure rather than conventional photography which focuses on using the camera to capture a still moment in time of a specific event. I achieved this by setting the camera's ISO to 60 - causing less light to be let into the camera - and moving it while the photos were being taken to give them a blurred effect which suggests movement. I found that these effects worked particularly well when focusing on bright areas such as ceiling lights and when turning the camera in a circular motion while taking the pictures - this leaves the centre in focus, but blurs the outside radially to give a spinning effect. After taking the pictures, I imported them into Photoshop to edit:
Above I have shown how I edited the raw images (top) to make them more aesthetically pleasing (bottom). the second picture from the right shows how effective rotating the camera while taking a photo can be, and the  pictures on the far right and at the first picture are photos of a ceiling light taken while I was moving the camera. Below are images I made by combining the bottom row of photos above and manipulating them further in Photoshop:

Week Three Photography: Corinne Day Study

Corinne Day's Kate Moss Portraits

My Interpretation of Corinne Day's Portrait Style

Week 2 Photography: Kedleston Hall Photo Set

Above is a slideshow of my photos taken at Kedleston hall featuring captions explaining the photos. 

It is best on YouTube in 720p with the video expanded or on full-screen

Click here to view on YouTube

Below are the images used in the slideshow along with several others from Kedleston Hall:

Week One Photography: Photos of Chesterfield College

The Dome
In The Dome, the writing on the balcony cannot all be read from one perspective as it wraps around it, however I thought that the text would make quite an interesting photo. As such, rather than just having a photo of an unfinished sentence I thought it would be better to have the text get gradually less legible - I feel this makes you want to move forward in the picture to finish the sentence, in the same way the text makes you want to walk around the balcony to read all of it...

North Block
In the area where I took this picture there is a bin and several vending machines (generally filled with everything above). I liked that this picture could consolidate the contents of the room and what it is for quite nicely without showing the room itself at all. The bin is also pitch-black (the flash on the camera lit it up), I feel this made the picture more interesting by showing something which is not normally visible...

Main Entrance
I took this picture from a perspective quite close to the building. This helps emphasize the scale of the college by giving it a closer vanishing point, which I feel makes it appear more imposing...

West Block

I chose this image to represent West Block as I feel it captures the age and general rustic feeling of the building quite well. Particularly as the stone wall (which looks like it hasn't changed since the building was built) is the only element of the photograph which is in focus whereas the window and walls  (which seem to have been painted since the building was built) to the sides of the stone are not. I like this as the same picture could have been taken when the building was new, an idea I found quite interesting...

The Library
This picture was taken on top of a book looking out over the inside of a shelf. In a way I feel that the small section of the pages in the picture which are in focus against the majority - which is out of focus - reflects the way we use libraries, in that nobody has any use for all the information that is available - it is only a small section (i.e. the part of the picture which is in focus) that is of interest to each person, and the sections we are not interested in may as well be a blur.