Photo 1 - Harvey Aged 5



Age Group 0-11- Final Photograph for Printing and Presentation




Auto colour option selected



Original image no cropping or autocolour

I had a fantastic opportunity for my people theme when attending an 8th birthday party.  I took my Canon 450d camera with 18-70mm lens.  I did have an external flash gun with me but did not use it.  As previously mentioned on my blog, after listening to Peter Gennard speak I became more observant of backgrounds and in the garden of the party this white brick wall shouted at me to be used as backdrop.  I chose Harvey as he is a young man who loves to be dramatic and do a bit of acting.  The glasses suddenly appeared and I knew they had to be used.   The picture is taken on 2nd October 2010 at 14.38 pm.  The sun was out and was to the left hand side of Harvey.  The colour of his shirt stands ago against the white brick wall.  The feather in his pocket had been there all day.   I set the shutter speed to 1/200.   ISO was automatic; aperture was set at F8.   There is some shadow to the right hand side of Harvey and he is positioned just off the centre of the photograph.   The image is sharp, with detail in the wall being clearly seen, as can Harvey's nails.  His eyes are dark brown and you can see the white of them slightly.   The white wall is not washed out, or grey (in my opinion).   The photograph has been cropped after taking and the only manipulation is selecting autocolour in Photoshop.  

Project - People

I have chosen people as my theme as my favourite type of photographs are portraits. We had to have a theme within people so my initial thoughts were doing age.  I did a diagram which the word people in the middle and age and how I would approach this.   I thought of birth to death and everything inbetween.  Pregnant woman, conception, birth, school, job, retirement, death.  Quite simple I thought.   I thought I could photograph children in school uniforms, jobs that required uniforms (fireman etc), death could be a vicar.  These are my thoughts. 

Update - Sunday 24th October - 11.17 pm

I feel i am starting to get the hang of the blog but am also doing a scrapbook for pictures and leaflets etc.  My PC is temperamental at present, and I have run out of CDs to backup my pictures and think I am probably better off buying hard drive to back them up to.  Therefore as I cautious i'm going to lose everything, I have uploaded lots of pictures.  Lots of text is to be added and also what text is there, is to be amended and checked.  I just wanted to feel like I had made a good start and not getting behind.   I have been looking through various books at photographers, the history of photograpy and photographers' pictures.  

Composition - Angles



Angles in Uttoxeter

I did a round trip around Uttoxeter which lead me straight up to the church that I had first started taking pictures of when I arrived an hour or so earlier.   I took more pictures angling the camera up high as I liked the effect it gave. I was standing right next to the old Uttoxeter Advertiser building - paint peeling off and and an old sign hanging off the side of it.    I photographed the sign trying also to get the painted signed above the old building included which had paint peeling off.  I moved the camera around, aiming it high and the church tower became included in the picture.   I feel this is an effective composition showing high angles.   It is not a good example of exposure as I feel the church and sky are over exposed.  The depth of field is fairly shallow with the foreground sign in focus and as your eye travels up the red brick building the bricks are less in focus.  The camera settings were: shutter speed 1/30 as the light was not good as I was in an unlit ; aperture 4.5; ISO 400; 18mm focal length to get as much in of the angle as I could. 

Task 2 COMPOSITION - Trip to Uttoxeter

Armed with the Canon 450d camera and 18-200 lens I noticed this shop window with its eye catching display.  It wasn't intended to be a frame within a frame shot but I have selected it as one.  On looking closely into the picture you can see the double yellow lines of the road in front of the shop window.  I took three shots, the first two at shutter speeds of 1/100 and 1/50 and aperture of 6.3 and decided this was under exposed so I slowed the shutter speed down to 1/30 and set the aperture to 4.5.  The focal length was 33mm.  The time was 18.27 pm.  I feel this gives a good balance of the colours in the shop window; the white of the curtain isn't too white, the pink is just right and the black of the handbag is such that you can tell what it is and it doesn't blend into the background. You can also see the pearls on the bag.     The under exposed picture is shown below.  Looking back on this picture now, 3 months later I do wonder if it is obvious it's a frame within a frame - should I have got some of the window frame in?

Frame within a frame

TASK 2 - COMPOSITION - Colours



COLOURS (Composition)

Taken on 4th October 2010 at around 1.45 pm using the aforementioned Canon camera.   It was bright sunshine - not a cloud in the sky and the colours on the leaves caught my eye and the way they weaved around the windows.  There are shadows on the curtains inside the windows.  Camera was on auto for this task but the settings were: ISO 200; aperture F13; shutter speed 1/250; focal length 33mm.   This photograph also has lines with the window panes and also the reflections of the window frames curving on the curtains.  Could the photograph have been sharper?   You decide. 



TASK 2 - COMPOSTION - Lines

This picture was taken on 4th October in Rolleston on Dove.  The time was 1.35 pm and the day was bright sunshine.  This bus stop shelter has a preservation order on it!   The lines on the shelter go in all directions, but in squares and there are 3 large rectangles containing these squares.   There are further lines in the fence leading your eye to the bus stop shelter.   I took this photograph using my Canon 450d camera, with 28 to 70mm lens.   It was taken on AUTO but the settings were: ISO 200; shutter speed 1/125 and the aperture f7.3.  The white fence draws your eye to the bus shelter and beyond.  The sun is on the side of the shelter and through the gap in the break in the bushes and also on the white fence - there are then shadows on the grass and the white fence where the buses are blocking the sun.

TASK 3 - Narrow Depth of Field

Pig In Uttoxeter 

I went to Uttoxeter on 11th October arriving on the outskirts just before 5.30 pm armed with Canon 450d camera with 28-70mm lens, battery fully charged and 2gb memory card.   The sun was still out but starting to go down.   My first stop was at the roundabout just before Uttoxter where two huge vocal pigs live, pinky brown in colour with hazel coloured eyes.   I had intended to stop many times before but never had.  They were behind a metal fence with equal squares of about 2 x 2 which the lens of my camera just about fitted against to get a clear shot without the bars.   I took pictures trying wide depth of field so as to include the bars of the fence, the pig and some of the background which included a shed.  I also tried narrow depth of field whereby i have the bars in focus and the snout of a pig.  I did get a slightly better shot than this but managed to ruin the file by renaming it incorrectly and it is now unusable!   Another lesson learnt.   This final picture though shows narrow depth of field with the background completely out of focus and the foreground in focus. 

TASK 3 - Wide Depth of Field

This task was to show use of camera controls to obtain wide depth of field.   The day I shot this picture was sunny, and it was 25th September at 11.43 pm in Yoxall.  With my loaned Canon 450d camera and 18-200 mm lens I set out this to regularly spot in Yoxall that I know as I knew it would be an ideal depth of field shot as there is foreground and background in abundance.   The ISO was set to auto and 400 was selected; the shutter speed was 1/125, F16 aperture to obtain the greatest depth of field and the focal length was 72mm.   The bales of hay in black plastic and the house are all clearly seen in the background as well as the cows in the foreground.  There is a some shadow on the tan/white cow lying down, and its head is over exposed.

TASK 3 - Slow Shutter Speed

I was tasked with taking photographto show use of a slow shutter speed.  We went out of College with my loaned camera Canon 450d camera, 18-200mm lens with UV filter on as previously described.  It was about 6.15 pm and we went out to shoot show and fast shutter speeds; there was plenty of light to be taking photographs however there wasn't a lot moving fast or slow except for traffic at that time of night in Burton.  It was 22nd September at around 6.45 pm when this final photograph was taken.  The shutter speed was 1/25, aperture 5.6, focal length of 59mm and ISO 400 (this was set to auto).   The slow shutter speed means the lens is open for a longer period of time.  The slower the shutter speed goes, the more likely it is that a tripod is needed or something to lean the camera on so as to prevent camera shake.  You will see the effect the shutter speed has had on the wheels of the car and the lights they have blurred and there are no sharp lines on the car.

TASK 2 Composition - Reflection

My chosen reflection picture was taken in Rolleston on Dove as described earlier on 4th October at 1.27 pm on a bright, sunny day .   I have chosen this picture as it's simple, I feel the black and white on the depth stick and it's reflection draw the eye straight into the picture.  My eye then automatically goes to the right of the depth stick and follows the wall around as it goes back towards the grass bank.    I have cropped it very narrow as I felt it lengthened the picture, but it has not been altered in any other way.  The camera was set to Auto as we were told for this task we could do this.  On reviewing the settings though they were: ISO 200, Shutter Speed 1/60, Aperture 5.6, focal length 59mm.

Research 3 - James Mollison

I visited the Herbert Gallery in August as I had seen advertised an exhibition called Face to Face.  This consisted of portraits by James Mollison.  He had photographed chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos and gorillas in different countries: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Indonesia.   He did this because "While watching a nature programme on primates I was struck by their facial similarity to our own.  Humans are clearly different to animals, but the great apes inhabit that grey area between man and animal.  I thought it would be interesting to try and photograph gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans using the aesthetic of the passport photograph - its ubiquitous style inferring the idea of identity" (quote from www.jamesmollison.com)


All the photographs in the exhibition were 3 metres high x 2 metres and what a striking impact on walking in the door.  They all did look similar but each primate had it's own story - often very sad.   On looking at the pictures I thought if you were to cover the eyes and just have the mouth showing, it could easily be human.   I went round each one trying to decide if it were male or female and I got quite a few wrong.  What i thought looked female just wasn't.  For example the picture on the first row below, 2nd from the left I thought was definately male because it is dark and ferouscious looking and I thought a female couldn't possibly look like that.  I was wrong.

I said in my introduction that I loved photos that are natural and unusual and these definately are.  I have looked at other work that James has done and some of his other exhibitions include "The Disciples", "Cocoa Pickers" and Hunger.    James was born in 1973 in Kenya but grew up in England.  He studied Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University and then film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design.   He moved to Italy to work for Benetton in their creative lab.   Whenever I have seen a Benetton advertisement they are vivid in colour, sometimes controversial and unique.  James' project "The Disciples" reminds me of Bennetton work: he spent 3 years photgraphing people outside of concerts. He then presented these images on gigantic boards with upto 6 people on, sometimes the same person.  His work has been published internationally in magazines; he has published books and exhibits his work in galleries all over the world. 

All of the work I have seen of his is portraits be they of humans or animals (primarily humans). I also feel there is an underlying theme of wanting to show the world how our fellow human beings (or animals) live and suffer or are abandoned in some way - his project hunger is about the famine in Ehtopia; his project about Pablo Escabar was about one man and his effect on other people through the drugs trade he ran; The Cocoa Pickers working in Côte d’Ivoire and Where Children Sleep a book for children to show them where other children around the sleep.  

One of James' books was reviewed in the Telegraph - click on the link below to see some of the photographs in this book http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/8063624/Where-children-sleep.html.

All the pictures shown and information about James are taken from http://www.jamesmollison.com/