For this shoot, I wanted to document the changing of the season by focusing on the natural phenomenon that happens mainly during Autumn, ex. leaves, acorns, pinecones etc.
Image Bank:
Photographer's Research: Janek Sedlar
Sedlar is a Czech photographer that wanders the forests near his home during the Autumn taking beautiful shots of the changing scenery from summer's green to vivid reds, umbers and orange.
He originally attained degrees from secondary art school with a focus on ceramics but later went on to borrow his fathers camera that sparked his passion for photography. He has spent an average of about 4,520 hours in nature and an average of about 192 days away from civilisation.
In this image there is a large bend in the trail which creates an air of mystery to the image. Janek Sedlar then paired this with a yellow filter which makes the image look other-worldly or some kind of toxic fog has floated into the White Carpathians which he frequents.
In this image the scarlet and gold leaves take the foreground and the small green bushes that line an old untravelled road are the denotations. The connotations of this are some kind of mystical world where dragons and fairies exist, it wouldn't seem out of place to see a horse drawn carriage rolling through. Sedlar is excellent at manufacturing an ethereal atmosphere which forces the viewer to widen their field of belief; he does this via the mist in the background of his images as this mist could be hiding anything. This transports the viewer back to their childhood when they believed in monsters and hero's.
Contact Sheets:
Images That Need Improvement:
DS7_5070.JPG:
In this image the tree isn't in the centre of the frame and so it looks like part of an image instead of the whole. This is mainly due to the branch being out of my reach and the weather being very windy; these conditions made it very difficult to take photographs. Due to the wind being so strong, the cloud coverage kept fluctuating which meant I has to be malleable with my own camera settings as the lighting was changing and my main subject (trees) kept moving which meant I needed a fast shutter speed.
DS7_5083.JPG:
This is an image of a twig with lichens growing on it lying in the grass. I wanted to have the twig in it's natural habitat so I had to perform an awkward crouch/squat to get anywhere close to the ground, consequently I wasn't very stable and so the camera shoot. To improve this I changed my footing so that I would be more steady, unfortunately this meant I was further away from the ground again. To try and compensate for my increased distance from the ground I used live view, this allowed me to have a better view of the shot I was taking but meant I sacrificed the focusing in my images. This image is a victim of this poor focus as I wanted to bring the viewers attention to the lichen growing on the twig but the end result has resulted in a very 2D image devoid of depth. I did review my images at the location and corrected my image by crouching/squatting and using the viewfinder instead of live view as it wasn't creating the effect I wanted.
Best Images:
For this shoot there was such a large quantity of images I had a lot of images that I like and so I have arranged them into a contact sheet and will then refine them further.
DS7_5138.JPG:
DS7_5147.JPG:
DS7_5175.JPG:
DS7_5208.JPG:
DS7_5229.JPG:
AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.
For this shoot my main idea was to photograph the early changes in the seasons such as the leaves turning claret and the squirrels foraging for foods to stash away. To do this I went to Pishiobury Park around two pm so that the sun would be relatively low and I've be able to take shots with the setting sun in the background. This didn't work out as well as I would have liked because there was a large ride of trees blocking the light so I didn't reach where I was shooting. There was also not as many trees as I would have liked however it is a park and not a forrest so that was to be expected.
My worst images were so because of the challenging weather and my need to constantly change my camera settings. I did take some landscape shots during this shoot, however the leaves are only just turning so there wasn't a large array of colours which would interest a viewer. I may further this investigation into documenting the same tree or area of trees so that I can see the gradual change in the leaves as the season changes from Autumn to Winter.
AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.
The weather was also against me. It was windy and because of this wind the clouds kept moving in front of the sun which meant there were long periods of darkness then a brief moment of light. This meant that I had to keep changing the exposure and ISO to match the current weather. I also had to factor in the F-stop that I was using as some images I wanted as landscapes and some I wanted to be almost macro shots.
I took my Nikon D7200 with a 200mm zoom lens. I chose not to take a macro lens as I wasn't taking a tripod and so most of the images would have been even more blurry. If I were to take a macro lens the I would have run the risk of getting the sensor in my camera dirty due to the debri being carried by the wind when changing the lenses. Not only would I risk damaging the camera I would also find framing and composition very difficult as the focal length on a macro lens cannot be moved, only the focal point. This meant that I would have to physically move in order to frame my images, this would have caused a large amount of effort for a small reward.
Despite saying this I will take a tripod and macro lens out on my next shoot or the one after so that I can take in depth images of moss growing on rotten trees or other decaying matter.
AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
I had set my camera to take both NEF (RAW) and JPG images simultaneously so that I would have a duplicate of each image in a different file type. This meant that I am able to look at the JPG's for contact sheets and adding them directly to the blogger, and use the NEF (RAW) files for editing. I did this as JPG's are the only file that can be added to the blogger; another reason is that NEF (RAW) files have a much larger quantity of data. This means that I am able to edit NEF files before they have been opened as an image in photoshop, this allows more control over the exposure, contrast and curves than if I was editing a JPG.
Editing:
First I opened all of my NEF/ RAW files in photoshop. Once this is done this screen will appear:
I then use the sliders to change the exposure, contrast, clarity etc.
I edited all of my best images this way then I re-selected all of them and clicked open.
From this point I will choose how to edit each image individually. I may choose to leave the image as it is as I will do for the image above, or I may choose to use different filters on the images to create different effects. The filter gallery looks like this:
The filter I decided to apply to this image was Ink Outlines.
Final Images:
- AO4: Present a personal and
meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes
connections between visual and other elements.
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