Tag Archives: week 3

Week Three – Uses of Photography Test Shots

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Taking inspiration from Magdalena Wywrot I wanted to create high contrast pieces. However, this took me a few shots to get right. The following image was shot at a low ISO (100) and my model can hardly be seen within the blacks of the room. In this image I had two dedo lights one bouncing off the roof as a spotlight and another on the legs.

While I tried to aim the lights directly on my models face, the ISO I was shooting at was still to low. A lot of my test shots are on the dark side, so going into my second shoot I will know to up the ISO as when I shot around 800 the photos were much brighter.

 

I like the warm light in this photo but I don’t know how this will translate in postproduction when trying to create high contrast pieces. I also like the use of depth of field as it makes her body look almost dettached.

In this test shot where I used a prop to create the bokeh effect around my model. I am exicited to see how this effect could translate in greyscale as I think it could create an errie shot. However I am still shoting at to low of an ISO at this point.

The ISO here was bumped up to 800, and my shutter speed was 1/60. I was trying to capture movment however figuered I would have to go for a longer exposure.

 

 Turning to shutter speed down to 1/30 allowed me to get this shot however I want to push how much movement I can capture in my photos. I also like how the hard spot lights gives the image a natural vingerette.

The shutter speed for this image is 6 however I did not capture at the right time. I think 2 secounds would have been enough to capture the movement. This is a skill I hope to  improve on in the furture. I will also try using a tripod next time I try long exposure.

Reflection: 
Looking at these images it is easy to focus on the errors. However by completeing this shoot I now know my probable technical procedure and  also the kind of images I want to create. I like tight compostions where the model’s face is mainly in focus or long body shots where depth of field works to break up the body. I like using moition and long exposure to create overwordly images and I like the intergration of props to create something different. Reshooting these I will look to keep the ISO high (at least 800) will work to create hard spot lighting rather than soft bouncing effects and use a low shutter speed 2 to 3. Fstop changed based on what I was shooting. But could range awhere from 5 when shooting long shotx  to 36 when shooting long exposure.

Self Portrait – Reflection

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How did you represent yourself?

I was sorta afraid to talk a lot about myself, I choose to represent a past version of me, something I wasn’t anymore.I didn’t really talk about family or who I was, making it hard for people to give me feedback. I’m worried that without me really wanting to put myself out there a lot of people maybe didn’t understand what I was trying to go for. Other people weren’t afraid to get super personal. For some people I was able to see what they were trying to represent quiet well in there pictures, there stories only helped clarified a few things.
It’s uncanny how much a single photo or piece of audio can strum up a lot of memories, even though some of us really didn’t choose to share them.

Artefacts work like that, they are meant to invoke a sense of story and understanding. Nothing exists in a vortex, every piece of media you put into the world is representative of you so it’s important to understand how your artefacts present you.
For me, I felt like some of my artefacts were to literal, they were of me rather than a representation of me, which is something i’ll have to be aware of in the future.

Ethics

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When it comes to the ethics of consent there’s always an issue of what’s the researchers right to know vs the right of the subject’s privacy (Donovan, 2012, p.346).  When researching toxicity in the game League of Legends, this was a big issue as I was worried that telling players that I was researching them would cause them to act differently which it did most of the time.
In media I was told to always get consent before filming someone. The solution to people acting unnatural; is just let the camera run for longer as they would soon forget that it was even there. When trying this with League of Legends I often found I didn’t have any control when it came to how long the games would run, so I was unable to wait for players to forget I was there. I resulted to deception, by telling the players I was observing them after the game, in the end.

Another ethical problem I encountered, was my pre-existing ethical stance. Through playing the game for many years before my research I was already biased. I already believed League of Legends was a toxic game, because I had experienced abuse and players intentionally throwing the game because of rage first hand. This bias meant I had to be careful in compiling my research, so I didn’t disregard anything that proved that League of Legends wasn’t as toxic as I believed, or toxic at all.

I think it’s always tricky when we try to work around something we love, because when we are expected to give the absolute truth about the subject it’s always hard not to let bias get in the way. I way to avoid this of course is to always be ready to step out of your comfort zone, and tackle something maybe you don’t know everything about.

Donovan, K, 2012. The ethical stance and its representation in the expressive techniques of documentary filming: a case study of Tagged. New Review of Film and Television Studies, Vol. 10, No 3, 344-361.