Sunday, May 29, 2011

Quick Photo Shoot

I have been asked to design a cd and packaging for a very talented musician. Unfortunately, she didn't have any promo pics of herself so I offered to take some. Here are some of my favourites (I'll post a pic of the design once I complete it!)...






Week 2

This week was pretty tricky. It was all about shutter speed. My pea brain still is struggling to remember how to set the setting properly to get the perfectly balanced exposure. The first part of the assignment was not to create the perfect composition but to try to capture motion. Whether it was frozen-in-time motion or implied motion with a bit of motion blur. We uploaded one we'd like to improve on and one we felt captured motion. This was my captured motion pic (again, don't judge the composition)...



The second part of the assignment was to use show a creative use of shutter speed. I like the following photo for the drip of water off the toe seemingly in slow motion but then the spray and bubbling water between the toes. Of course, there are lots of things to improve on but I was okay submitting this one. I have a feeling shutter priority is going to be something I will have to continually practise to get better at!

Friday, May 13, 2011

Week 1

It's all about composition... Learning how to frame your subject, getting rid of clutter in the background, rule of thirds, trying to step back a bit and tell a story rather than just snapping a picture. And it's not as easy as it sounds. I think from my years of designing I have the framing part down but it's training my brain to look for other things, things I would notice in another photographer's shot and could direct them to fix. It's a whole other can of worms doing this yourself. One part of Week One is uploading a photo you feel is successful and why, and a photo you would like to improve on. Here are a couple I shot (I think they all could be improved upon but I wouldn't be able to submit anything if I didn't let go a bit).

The first 2 are my favourites. I think the top one tells a story. I love the eyes in the second one but I think you need to see some of the cone to get a story.




These two I like as well. I think the left would be more successful if Addison was making eye contact. And the right one could be simplified a bit by getting closer so you don't see as much of the back of the chair and maybe a bit more of the cone.



Monday, May 2, 2011

And it begins...

This week is Week Zero for Snapshots of a Goodlife. Apparently this is supposed to be an easy week to get to know the website, how the forum operates and then to upload an 'emotionally perfect' photo which we had taken already (so not a new photo). So as a diligent student, I went through my digital collection to try and find that perfect image. It was a bit disappointing. There were image that I had an emotional connect with but were before I got my DSLR so the quality wasn't that great. They also had tiny, child-sized smudge prints on the lens. I didn't think that was so great.

I did find a series of pics of Addison in her fairy wings being mischievous. They also reminded me of childhood innocence and imagination.

So Week Zero image is this...