Evaluation

In this assignment i was asked to look at photographic theory and practice, around the theme of culture. First i took look at some photographic techniques and began to research them this was things such as the light meter, aperture, ISO and the shutter speed and how they affected my images by adjusting these elements such as aperture affects the depth of field in the image and how much of the image is in focus. This creates atmosphere to the images they way aperture works is the smaller the number the lager depth of field such as 5.6 would be a wide aperture letting a lot of light in creating a lot of blur in the background of your images. Apertures range from f.5.6 for largest and f.22. ISO is how much light is sensitive to your camera by increasing your iso this will lighten your images but the higher you go more noise will be added to your images making you images look grainy so it is best to have your iso on a low number such as 100. Shutter speed looks at how quickly your shutter opens and closes if you are on a slow shutter speed without a tripod your images will just blur where as with a fast shutter speed you can capture high speed action. I did some practical work on shutter speeds looking at fast and slow, my slow ones were mainly painting with light as i felt these looked so effective. I also looked at how aperture changed the depth of field in my images and how it changed the mood of my images. I then went one to look at different theories such as compositional  elements such as rule of thirds leading lines, perspective and rule of thirds and how these effected the images to. All are the above a really separate things we put together to create good images and are the called "rules of photography" however sometimes the rules can be broken and you can still have some amazing images.


I then began to brain storm some ideas about culture and what came to mind when i thought about culture i did find this difficult as culture and pretty much be related to anything so i became to brainstorm the most distinctive ones like food, languages, religion and fashion i then began to think broader and i came up with subcultures i liked this idea as this could link in with society. I have done research on subcultures in another assignment and found it really interesting. I started to brainstorm different subcultures i could think off such as hippies,punks and mods. I chose to go for punks as it is still a strong subculture in today's society and i think they are very unique and confident individuals. I then started to brain storm different things i could explore like music clothing and hair i then realized i could link them all together. My uncles friend is the lead singer in a punk band called fight back who were performing in Derby. I thought this would be a really good place to take some images as there were a few punk bands.

I then went on to look at some photographers work who i thought would be inspiring for this kind of photography or photographers who i liked the style of there work.I looked at the work of Diane Arbus i really like the grittiness of her images they were very real and dark. They were mostly portraits who people in society class as odd or unqiue which i feel is the attitude some people have towards punks in today's society.Her images are very high contrast and have amazing detail to them, I also looked at the work of sally Mann this had mixed reviews as some people thought it was offensive as she got her kids to do adult things such as smoking. Her images i find quite flattering even if they have a quirky narrative to them her images are very soft unlike Dianne Arbus. Mostly all of the photographer i looked at were portrait photographers and very quirky i think these were a good choice as they all mostly had a quirky element to them.


To my shoot i took my camera my standard lens and i also took my 70 to 300 ml lens as i thought i may need this. However when i got there the location was really small and was also lit by purple light this made it really hard for me to get my settings right however i just kept trying different settings out till i found the right one the settings i ended up using were f4 1/60 and iso 400 this made my images quite grainy. I ended up just using my standard kit lens as the venue was too small to wear my 70 to 300 ml. The location turned out to be a lot busier than i expected so it was quite hard to move around and get different kind of shots and angles. I got the kind of portraits i wanted though. Some of shots came with a blur as there was a lot of movement. Also the lights kept changing colours which made it difficult to shoot to as sometimes the light was directly behind the subject choosing my images were really hard as i shot over 200 so i had to narrow down bunches a few time till i got the 12 i wanted i chose to print in A4 as i felt this was the right size for portraits as you could see more details. i feel i got my theme across threw my 12 images.

 I learnt a lot from this shoot i do feel like i may have done some more research into event photography and i would maybe look into prime a lens if this was something i wanted to go to into this kind of photography in the future such as a 30mm prime lens good for wide shots to get lots of action in i would also look into ways to cope with different colour light so i maybe my images wouldn't be so grainy because my iso was so high i could of used a flash however i feel it would of been very disruptive. It was really hard the fact i could not edit them in Photoshop as this assignment was doing everything in camera. Overall i am pleased with my final images however i feel they could of been better if i had done some more research into photography and i would consider going into event photography as i did enjoy it but it was a bit of a challenge.