A Thousand Words For One Photo
With today being the first day of photography, I was excited
to see what we will be doing and what artists we will be researching. We started
much like we normally do and that's with a discussion of the brief and what we
will be doing over the next six weeks. With the subject being identity, we had
a group mind map. We each gave ideas on how people identify each other and what
forms our own identity. Looks was one of the first things that came up as this
is how most people identify each other and that we also form opinions on people depending on
how we dress. Among many other things were family, jobs, hobbies and
aspirations. All of these can be part of our identity and mould who we are.
We were then asked to do our own mind map with things that
make up part of our own identity, I found this a little hard as I don't really like
to share a great deal with people I don't know. Luckily the tutor reassured me
that we all could share as much or as little as we like about ourselves. With
that said, I still couldn't think of much to put on my mind map.
After the mind mapping was over we each given a 35mm SLR
camera and an explanation on how it worked and a talk about the controls.
The film speed, which is the rate the film is able to
capture and react to light, starts at 6 (very slow) and goes up to 3200 (very
fast). This is important to know if your shooting in darker areas or at night
because a higher film speed or ISO, will take in and react to the little light
that is there. Having a higher speed will make your photos less clear and more
grain will be on your image. This means the more you blow up the photo, the
less defined it will be. Today we set it at 100 as there was a lot of light in
the studio.
Shutter speed is the length of time the shutter on the
camera stays open which determines the amount of time the light is on the film.
Most of the time it's a fraction of a second. It starts at B (the shutter stays
open as long as you hold down the button); 1 (the shutter stays open for a second),
1/2 (half a second), 1/4 (a fourth of a second) 1/8,1/15 and up to 1/1000 sec.
The lower the number the longer the shutters stay open which means that any
movement by the subject will be picked up by the camera and the image will be
blurred. This also happens if there is any camera shake. The important thing to
remember is a slow speed means more light at the risk of motion blur. A fast
shutter speed means low risk of motion blur while sacrificing light. You have
to make sure you have the right balance to achieve the photos you want.
After the exploration we went to the photography studio so
we could have a go at taking photos using the 35mm SLR camera. We also had a
quick talk about the flash and the lights that were there as well as safety issues
when using them. It's important to never to point them at someone's face. We
were also some umbrellas. The white one was for diffusing the light and
creating a softer glow normally used in baby photography and soft portraits. The
black umbrella is used for reflecting the light. It bounces the light off the
inside of the umbrella and spreads it over the subject giving a strong, but
wide light source.
With all of the technical talk over we could start taking
photos. We took it in turn to do silhouettes of each other in different poses. This
allowed us to get used to the camera and learn how it works. After the group
had done all the photos, it was time to call it a day with a reminder that we
had to bring in 5 items to photograph next lesson.
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