Evaluation

At the beginning of this elective, I knew very little about Digital Photography. I had never experimented with it, and very very rarely used it in my practice as a visual communicator, apart from to document my work in a portfolio. I wanted to take this opportunity to get used to adjusting various settings on my digital SLR camera, and felt to do so it would be a good start just experimenting with scenes I found in and around West Yorkshire. This way, there was no pressure to produce anything particularly out of the ordinary, it was just a process that allowed me get used to the camera. I discovered that taking photos in natural light was a lot harder than in a studio setting, where you have the aid of extra lighting and a flash. The day I picked to shoot these was also dull, and playing around the the ISO and shutter speed didn't improve the shots much. The use of Photoshop was crucial in producing a couple of successful photographs. I had never taken photos using camera raw files before, which turn out to be much more versatile when editing as it offers you a larger range of aspects of the photograph to alter and play around with, than those found when editing jpgs.

Making use of the Photos

I screen printed the photos, after making them halftone images in Photoshop and adding text. They came out really well, and I used CMYK which made the colours even more vibrant.

Editing the Photographs

I opened a lens correction filter and used the Vignetting technique to add the darker lighting around the edge of the photos. I also turned down the saturation levels, and played with the contrast and colour balance. The first photo below is my favorite because I think the blank spacing around the face works well.

Day of the Dead Photoshoot

I wanted to play around with taking posed photographs in a studio environment. I often use the Mexican theme 'Day of the Dead' in my Illustration work, so I thought I would use this for the shoot. I borrowed a flash gun and lighting from college, and used me canon 450D. I used a blank, white wall as a back drop.

Day of The Dead Pin Up Photography: Research

The Pin Up Parlour Photography:

This is a studio that specialises in theme photo shoots, largely for burlesque dancers and pin ups. The Day of the Dead set up is a popular one and I looked at these for make up inspiration. I wanted to keep them as simple facial photos, to focus on the make up. I also plan to add text to them and will find this easier with out getting a full boy involved.

Benefits of Disposables

After experimenting with digital photography, disposables are still my preference. This is purely as someone who doesn't know enough about photography to rely on a natural photography skill to set up a great photo. lucky shots like the two below (taken by disposables from pound land in Barcelona!) are my favourite kind. The colours came out so vibrant, and no editing was required.

Digitally Editing Disposables

Editing disposables on Photoshop can improve the quality. Scanning in a disposable photograph and editing it using Adobe Bridge or directly on Photoshop are ways to give it a completely different feel. For example, changing things such as the saturation, tint and contrast.



Sometimes, a bad disposable is simply just bad. That's the benefit of having a digital camera; you are able to see the photo, judge it and retake when necessary. With photos like the one below, even after editing, there is not much improvement.





The three photos below I left unedited.

West Yorkshire

I decided to buy an all day bus ticket to explore the more rural areas around West Yorkshire, and take my Canon Digital SLR with me. Unfortunately, I did not come across any particularly unusual or interesting scenes, but still managed to capture some of the scenes which appeared to be pretty typical of areas such as Wakefield and Chickenley. I took the photos using the 'raw' setting, so I was able open them as .NEF files, which are a lot easier to edit. I opened them using Adobe Bridge and altered the exposure, temperature, contrast etc.






Editing the photos in this way also can turn a really dull, dark photo like the one I took below in to a much clearer, brighter one. I did experiment with changing the ISO and shutter speed, but it was an extremely over cast day any way, so none of the photos were particularly successful.





Cropping is another tool that can turn these pretty mundane photos in to something with a sightly better composition. I don't have an eye for making beautiful or thought-provoking photos out of standard, every day found scenes. So editing definitely is necessary.