– Week 3 class – 

I am not sure if I am the only one who felt this way, I love photography and I carry my camera along with me most of the time, I understand what each technical terms mean but when we say for example: ‘ the longer the focal length, the shallower the depth of field’ this sentence always took me ages to get my head around. I don’t know if it’s the language problem or is it just I wasn’t familiar enough with the terms. To make sure I can understand what we have learnt so far, I have discovered an effective strategy to understand all those rules. I need my camera out, for example, ‘the longer the focal length’ I will set my camera at 35 mm and take a photo to compare with the 18mm focal length.

 – Class Exercise 2 – 

I used to hate standing in front of a camera and act no matter for what reason, I understand that we are taking turns to act or to control the camera as we are students. What Robin said in this class really gave me a huge impact, he first said that as media makers we might not have a lot of chance to ‘act’ in front of the camera in the future, so is really a good opportunity to experience as an actor. I applied this during our exercise, I imagined what I will adjust the camera if I am manipulating the camera. As the result, we completed this exercise in a short time, we cooperated very well which myself will determine where should I stand for each rule, the other two camera people will double check from the camera and adjust the three factors (focal length; lens aperture; distance the lens focused).

 

 

– Daily observation on lightings – 

 

Observation 1 – This is the second floor of my house, the windows are facing the west which made my house look amazing at sunsets. I took a lot of photographs during sunsets, and I am starting to record this moment with short video clips either. Before I participate in this course, I didn’t realise I have focused on lightings a lot more than I thought in my photographs, but as Robin said: “If there is an exposure, then there are lightings in this piece”.

In the second shot in the video above is sunlight from my bathroom window at sunset, the window has a frosted glass that makes the amount of light came through seemed to be softer than the amount of light that came through an ordinary window glass in my bedroom. The sunlight  in my house reminded me Robin’s demonstration in class when Robin put on the gel ND filter, the light seemed to be softer with the gel filter, so I was pretty sure that the frosted window glass worked the same way as the ND filter because they both seemed to change the quality of light — made it softer.

However, in order to make sure that I didn’t misunderstand this two cases, I still asked Robin for a correct answer. The fact is that I did misunderstand these two cases, the light can seem to be softer only because the gel ND filter has reduced the volume of light, but it doesn’t actually change the quality of light. Whereas in the case of my bathroom window, the frosted glass window did change the quality of light, it has made the light softer.

Observation 2 – There is a small room at first floor where we used to storage drinks, the window is facing the same direction as the two windows we mentioned on the second floor, the window glass is also been frosted. I really like to take photographs especially selfies, girls will know sunlight is extremely helpful for selfies. The sunlight always comes through soft, and since the sunlight comes from a high angle so it seems highlighting the subject’s facial expression. Here are some examples my friend took for me with an instant film camera. 

Since the lighting comes from the window on the top of the room so the line which divides the sunlight and shadow is lining on my shoulder, if I will consider using this place with this lighting in a movie, I think the sunlight suits a lot of different type of film but I think the sunlight can highlight the subject’s facial expression, even the subject isn’t a person I think it can also use to highlight the key element in a scene.