Candle Shoot

For our last brief before we broke up for christmas we had to shoot a lit candle in the style of a product shot. We also had to do this on location. As I am not from Wakefield I don't really know much of the place and so I just did my shoot at my flat in my living room. I shot this at night and closed the curtains and only used my christmas lights on my sideboard for bokeh and a table lamp to the front right of the candles to create highlights to show the shape of the tealight holders. I also had to hold the camera to shoot this as my tripod wouldnt go low enough for the angle I wanted and my coffee table (which the candles are on) isn't very tall.

I don't think this really looks like a product shot but I felt that if you don't have a brand name on the candle then most pictures end up looking like just a good picture of candles. This was shot on my canon 450d with a canon 50mm f1.8 lens. The only editing I have done on this was put the clarity up a little and exposure up by just 0.05.

If I could do this again I would use some white card to bounce some of the table lamp's light back onto the left side of the holders as I think they are a little too dark and you loose the grain of them. It would also help to defuse the harsh highlight spot on the right sides.

Bianca Robinson & Jasmine Davis

My 1st year dancers were Bianca Robinson and Jasmine Davis. They were friends and so they both wanted the same thing and wanted to be shot at the same time. I thought this would be good at first and make them feel less awkward if they had a friend in the studio at the same time but it ended up being a distraction. Also with these dancers it was very hard to arrange meeting up with them as something tended to come up on either side. Eventually though I shot them in the studio. The white background was left up from the previous shoot.

After taking a few headshots and looking back at them some of the shots the background was turning out grey which looked better. The dancers preferred it to. However when I started shooting I found it hard to keep the background grey in every picture as I wasn't sure what was causing it. I then turned off the backlighting to dim the background. Eventually I also ended up turning off one of the softboxes. To get the grey background I ended up having a very dark exposure on all the studio pictures so when editing I had to lighten the exposure first. I am happy with the result though and I think they show off the dancers well and showed part of their own style and attitude also which was part of the brief.

I changed the outdoors pictures to black and white as I love black and white photography and it was an overcast day again. Although some of the pictures looked fine in colour they just gained a bit of punch with black and white which was done using a preset on lightroom.

Chelsey Goodman

At the start of November we were given the task to shoot the dancers from the college as they need images for their portfolio. At first we were told that we would have a dancer or two each but it turned out that both the 1st years and 2nd years needed pictures and so we ended up with 3-4 each. I was one of the lucky ones that only got 3 but it was still quite a challenge. Our brief was to produce a headshot, a half body shot and a full length shot for each dancer, both in studio and outside. They also had to show their personality at the same time.

Chelsey Goodman was my only 2nd year dancer. When I met her I got the impression that she wasn't interested and didn't want her picture taken. She offered little suggestion to what kind of style she wanted and how she wanted to portray herself. I therefore wasn't as enthusiastic as I should of been when it came to the shoot day. However to my surprise she came in very excited and was very easy to shoot. We each had an hours slot to shoot our 2nd year dancers on that day but I only needed half an hour which was helpful as it was a squeeze fitting everyone in for the day. The studio set up was two large softboxes at the front to light the dancer with flash. Two constant spots were on furthur back to light the background. I shot these on my Canon 450d with my 50mm f1.8 lens as it was relatively new to me at the time and I wanted to try it on portraits. I used the same camera and lens for the outdoors pictures. It was an overcast day and so the skys are all just blank white but I tried to change the sky to blue on one picture and with the tones of it it looked better white.


There was two headshots that I like. For the purpose of this brief I chose the first shot (top) as it shows her face better but I also liked the second one. The dance teacher also liked it alot and said that I did well as Chelsey can be quiet around new people so I was glad that she came out of her shell on the day of the shoot. This was my first experience taking pictures of a stranger and I really enjoyed it and I think that I have learnt quite a bit from it. I have made some errors in focusing etc but I have learned from that for next time.

Cupcakes - Final Shots

These are the final shots from the food shoot. I shot these on the Canon 5D in the studio with 2 softboxes, one above and one acting as a background behind. I also had a small softbox to the right which we lowered to light the underside of the cupcake cases.

Cupcakes - Test Shots

These are the test shots from our Food Photography brief. I took these to try out angles and different depths of field before putting on the chocolate butterflies on top because I realised that the heat from the softboxes were going to melt the chocolate very quickly. We were told to take in a background and any other props. I didnt take in a background because I didn't want to take away from the design on the cupcake wrappers. I borrowed this white plate from a class mate as the reflections stopped the images being as flat as they were when I did them on just white paper.

Elgin Cathedral

These shots were taken at Elgin Cathedral in Scotland. We were given the assignment during our reading week to shoot an old building to show its character. I chose Elgin Cathedral because I had seen a picture of it before an thought the architecture would be good for doing close ups to show the material and textures of the building which would show the character. Unfortunately when I went there, which was also the only day of sunshine there was out of the 9 days I was up in Scotland, I found out that the cathedral was closed. It was supposed to be open but it wasn't with no explanation. As a result of this I had to shoot through the gates and couldn't get up close to the building. I was also using the 18-55mm lens and because of the width between the bars on the gates I could only move so far left and right.

I chose these two shots because the first image, the general view, had nice colours from the leaves and I liked the reflections in the river. I have noticed that my focus is not as accurate as I would of liked it so if I could go back I would improve it that way. Over the course of this degree thats something I would really like to achieve, being able to spot where the focus is and play around accordingly as alot of the time I think everything looks in focus on my camera screen but in reality when uploaded I notice that the picture is not always as sharp as it could be. I chose the second shot because I liked the symmetry of the gates. I also think these two shots best showed the character of the building.

Royal Armouries, Leeds

For our second assignment as part of our Skills for Meeting Client Briefs module, we took a trip to The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. In preparation for this brief we had to check out the weather conditions and if we had the time, go to the building beforehand to get an idea of the scale and location of it. Our brief was to "undertake a range of image captures that best convey the style, construction materials and character of the new and old constructions".
We met at 10am and on arrival the skies were boring white clouds with no sunshine coming through. As the day went on the sun came out but it was moving quickly around the building. The majority of the building was also flat grey so the photo opportunities were slim when we first arrived. I shot all my pictures on my Canon 450D with the standard kit lens which is 18-55mm simply due to my lack of equipment. By 1 o'clock the sun had been around the majority of the building and as I only had a 2GB Memory Card I had filled it up quickly so I left then. However on seeing my fellow classmates pictures, those that stayed later than 1pm, I think I could of stayed a bit longer. I couldn't stay til night to get night shots but if I had waited maybe another hour I couldn't of taken some shots with better skies to them.

I chose the 2 shots because I thought they best fit the brief. I did take full shots of the buildings but I liked these better as the top image conveys what is inside the building and I liked the depth of field on it. At this point I had a eureka moment on how to create the depth of field as shown with my lens so I liked the photo for that too as I didn't take many shots with depth of field as I took this picture not long before my card was full. I chose the second image because I liked the sheen on the sign and I liked the different lines of the building which are shown. I converted these to black and white purely because of the grey building they were almost black and white anyway.