My Equipment

Equipment


The equipment that I will be using for this course and my projects will consist of the following:

Cameras:

Canon 400D DSLR
Canon 7D DSLR
Fuji F11 Compact Digital
Lg Viewty camera phone for Macro shots

Lenses

Lenses : Canon 70-210 F4 zoom lens

Canon 18-55 Wide angle zoom lens

Other Equipment

Velbon tripod

Compact Flash memory cards

Phototoshop CS3 software for image manipulation

Desktop pc and Sony laptop for image manipulation and downloading images

I have also listed my equipment in other blogs. (Please see statements of intent blogs)

Famous Photographers (portrait)

(Under Construction
)


Annie Leibovitz


Photographer. Born Anna-Lou Leibovitz, on October 2, 1949, in Westbury, Connecticut. She was one of the six children born to Sam, an Air Force lieutenant, and Marilyn Leibovitz, a modern dance instructor. In 1967, Leibovitz enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute, where (although initially studying painting) she developed a love for photography.


After living briefly on an Israeli kibbutz, Leibovitz returned to the U.S., in 1970, and applied for a job with the start-up rock music magazine Rolling Stone. Impressed with Leibovitz’s portfolio, editor Jann Wenner offered her a job as a staff photographer. Within two years, the 23-year-old Leibovitz was promoted to chief photographer—a title she would hold for the next 10 years. Her position with the magazine afforded her the opportunity to accompany the Rolling Stones band on their 1975 international tour.


While with Rolling Stone, Leibovitz developed her trademark technique, which involved the use of bold primary colors and surprising poses. Wenner has credited her with making many Rolling Stone covers collector's items, most notably an issue that featured a nude John Lennon curled around his fully clothed wife, Yoko Ono. Taken on December 8, 1980, Leibovitz’s photo of the former Beatle was shot just hours before his death.


In 1983, Leibovitz left Rolling Stone and began working for the entertainment magazine Vanity Fair. With a wider array of subjects, Leibovitz’s photographs for Vanity Fair ranged from presidents to literary icons to teen heartthrobs. To date, a number of Vanity Fair covers have featured Leibovitz’s stunning—and often controversial—portraits of celebrities. Demi Moore (very pregnant and very nude) and Whoopi Goldberg (half-submerged in a bathtub of milk) are among the most remembered actresses to grace the cover in recent years. Known for her ability to make her sitters become physically involved in her work, one of Leibovitz’s most


famous portraits is of the late artist Keith Haring, who painted himself like one of his canvases for the photo.


During the late 1980s, Leibovitz started to work on a number of high-profile advertising campaigns. The most notable was the American Express “Membership” campaign, for which her portraits of celebrity cardholders, like Elmore Leonard, Tom Selleck, and Luciano Pavarotti, earned her a 1987 Clio Award.


In 1991, Leibovitz’s collection of over 200 color and black-and-white photographs were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Later that year, a book was published to accompany the show titled Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990. In 1996, Leibovitz was chosen as the official photographer of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. A compilation of her black-and-white portraits of American athletes, including Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson, were published in the book Olympic Portraits (1991). Widely considered one of America’s best portrait photographers, Annie Leibovitz published the book Women (1999), which was accompanied by an essay by friend and novelist Susan Sontag. With its title subject matter, Leibovitz presented an array of female images from Supreme Court Justices to Vegas showgirls to coal miners and farmers. Currently, many of her original prints are housed in various galleries throughout the United States.


In 2005, the Brooklyn Museum of Art did a retrospective on her work entitled "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005." As busy as ever, Annie Leibovitz continues to be in demand as portrait photographer, often capturing arresting images of today’s celebrities.


Annie Leibovitz is the mother of three children. At the age of 51, she had her daughter, Sarah. In 2005, her twin daughters, Susan and Samuelle, were born with the help of a surrogate mother.

Titles

Does anybody know if we have to supply titles to our final 10 images?

Gaffwood and Bright photog tours

Hi blogs n togs

A few of us have been having a chat about the next Photog outing. Saturday July 24th was suggested for this day out and at the moment 3 of us can make it on this day.Can you all let Eric or myself know if this day is convenient for you all. Destination still to be decided but we will go with the majority decision if everybody is ok with that.

Usual requirements,beer money,marmite soldiers,a sense of humour and a decent camera,Nikon's may be considered!....lmao

Saturday Meal

Hi Bloggy Togs

I'm up for the meal hope everybody else can make it. The thai sounds a little expensive but i'll go with the flow

As an alternative there's the Spread Eagle at Rollston, a nice pub with good food. It has grounds outside with tables and chairs in a nice setting,great on a summers night and the forecast looks good for next weekend

Checkout the menu below. Good prices a lot of meals under £10. It has a good reputation for good food

http://www.vintageinn.co.uk/thespreadeaglerolleston/


We all need to tel Eric asap because we will need to book in advance

Happy Snappin!!!!!!!!

Blog 27 Resouces,tutorials,video's,web pages,inspiration and tips

Resources, tutorials, inspiration etc (under construction)

Shown on these pages are some of the resources I have used for tuition and inspiration to expand my knowledge of my subjects while studying this course.

I have used various sources of research, including books, web pages, videos, and gaining inspiration from practical days out to museums and exhibitions

Shown below are some of these resources



Webpage and Video's
The screen grab below shows a photography website, "Photo Answers" a resouce which I regurlarly use and visit which shows a vast amount of photography articles, video's, tips and tuition. I have taken some extracts from this website shown below which shows a video of how to produce a low key portrait,which is my first subject I'm studying on this course. The video shows how to direct the light source onto the desired area of the subject.

I tried to emulate some of the lighting effects contained in this within this video and found it to be very educational

Click on the link below to view the video
http://www.photoanswers.co.uk/Video-Tutorials/Search-Results/Imaging-Techniques/Transform-Low-Light-
Portraits/




Website
Low key lighting is perhaps my favorite style of studio lighting. There’s just something about the mood and drama that is created when you have a dark background with the subject standing out against it. I hope to combine this lighting with some creative and dramatic posing to achieve some good results

The extract above was taken from a website called subline light.com which which gives some tips and basic tuition on lighting setups for low key portraits. Click on the ling below to view the site

http://www.sublime-light.com/index.php/2007/09/26/portrait-lighting-for-beginners-low-key-lighting/


These websites have given me some really good tips on producing my own low key photography. I was inspired by reading these sites and analysing images and tutorials contained in their pages



Exhibitions

This link below takes you to the website of the National Portrait Gallery website  in London. The gallery hosts a range of exhibitions from photographers of around the world. My classmates and I visited this gallery to view the exhibition of Ervin Penn the famous portrait photographer

http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/irvingpenn/exhib.htm

Please visit my blog titled





Website for motion blur inspiration
This website below shows some really great motion blur shots. I was particulaly inspired by the photography on this site and have tried to emulate some of the styles contained within. Click on the link below to view the website which includes a vast amount of quality photography.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/24/45-beautiful-motion-blur-photos/



Shown below are some images taken from various websites which have inspired my photography. I have included some of my own images which show some comparisons of these images.

The above photo of Motion blur was taken from the website smashingmagazine.com above. I was inspired by the photography on this site. Shown below are some of my images on similar themes taken from this site

My Images

Above are some of my images taken taken on a day out to the coast in wales

 I spent a lot of the day just produceing motion blur shots. The image from the webpage gave me a source of inspiration which encouraged me to produce these images using slow shutter speeds

Website image

This shot above was obviously taken with a long exposure to produce the couloured light trails. There seemed to be an abundance of light sources which has also added to the overall ambiance of the shot

My Image

Using long exposures of 15-20 seconds allowed me to produce this night shot of a street near Big Ben in London. I tried various exposures of different lengths before I was happy with the end result

Website Image

My image

Again another one of my night shots from a visit to London. I used my camera low down in the gutter to produce this effect using a long exposure of about 10 seconds

One of my favourite images. I would like to try and emulate this kind of shot when I get more time in the studio

Another website for motion blur

http://abduzeedo.com/stylish-motion-blur-photography

Another motion blur website

http://digital-photography-school.com/blur-movement

Books

Shown below are some of the books I have read and have been inspired by which have hepled me to produce my photography on this course

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2nd Subject Motion blur conclusion after shoot N04

Motion Blur

My second subject I have chosen for this course is motion blur. This is a subject that I am particularly interested in which I find very interesteing

Again, I have found this to be another challenging subject,one that I think has tested my ability and creativity.

This subject is not just about clicking a shutter on a camera you really do have to think about a lot of variables to produce the end result

The main issue associated with this type of photography is shutter speeds and recording movement and motion in your frame as the movement occurs.To do this you really need to photograph your subject with a slow shutter speed. This speed can vary dependent on how much movement you want to show or emphasize in the image 

The majority of my images were recorded with shutter speeds ranging from 1/30th of a sec to 1or 2 seconds

Shown below are some of my test shots taken through the course. The shots below were taken one day in April when we organised a day trip to the coast in wales, a place called Newquay.

I asked my model to pose on a beach and to produce some movement. The shots were taken early in the afternoon and the weather was a very warn sunny day. The lighting conditions were far to bright,this created burn out in some of my shots. To remedy this condition I asked a  class collegeue to use a reflector to shade and deflect some of the light on my models face to even up the light balance and to reduce the intensity from the sun

The reflector I use is white on one side and black on the other. This is an ideal tool to produce fill in light using the white side and reduce/shade areas using the black side.

Shown here are my colleagues with my reflector in use

The shots below are just some examples of what I was trying to achieve on the day out to the coast

I used an F stop of F22 as I was experimenting keeping the whole shot in focus. I used a shutter speed of 1/30th to record some movement in the frame . I was shooting at 100 ISO

Shown here is a screen grab taken from the software Bridge. It shows some of my test shots and exif/meta data of the particular shots taken on the day out to the coast

This shot below shows another practice shot on the same day of using a slow shutter speed, in this case I used a lot slower shutter speed of 1/8 of a sec. This caused more motion blur in the shot which creates a nice froffy effect of the wave. I use my camera on a tripod to achieve the desired effect. Holding the camera with this slow shutter speed would have blurred the image completely.

I used my canon 400d and my canon 2.8 17mm-55mm wide angle zoom lens for this shot. The rocks were quite large but there arn't any objects in the photo to compare and show the actual scale and height of the rocks. I used my Velbon tripod for this shot,this is essentual when using slow shutter speeds otherwise the shot would be blurred. 

Shown below are some test shots which I have included in this screen grab. The shots were taken by myself at a friends house where our class converted the conservatory into a studio. I set up the college studio flash heads/lighting which I leased from the college. I used 2 flash heads both 500watt to illumminate my subect but I didnt't use the flash  of the lighting as this would have frozen the motion and not given me any slow blurr in the shot. Instead I used the modeling lights of the flash heads and turned up the light intensity to N08 to provide me with enought lighting to illuminate my subject.

There was additional lighting overhead shinng through a roof window which really helped to light my subject

I used a Canon 400d and a Canon 2.8 lens for this experiment.

I used my Velbon triopd for some of the shots. I also used my "Hahnel" radio remote shutter release devices to fire the camera shutter remotely. This enabled me to move freely around my model and help to set up the shots instead of standing behind the camera.

I asked my model to create some movement swinging her head from side to side while I selected different shutter speeds

Using a faster shutter speed would have frozen the motion ok but would not have recorded any motion blur. The shutter speed needs to be slow to enable the motion to be recorded in one frame over a slow period of time.

Ths shot below highlighted in blue in the Bridge software shows my exif data used to record the shot. I used a slowish shutter speed of 1/15th of a sec

Shown here below are some of my classmates setting up our temp studio in our friends conservatory. Shown in the shot is the lighting system,flash heads and reflectors loned from college that I used for some of my photography while on this course

Our model being photographed by one of my class mates

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/24/45-beautiful-motion-blur-photos/

Shown below are my final 10 images that I have chosen for this subject (Not complete)