Fantastic Fruit ( 4 0f 4 )

Fantastic Fruit

I had many ideas for this image, but as time went on nothing materialised. I was waiting for that frame of mind together with excitement in what I was going to photo!

I had looked at close-up images of fruit as visual research and initially I had liked this idea and with fruit ready for the shoot I proceeded. There was so much to explore with my choice. I firstly started off with the bowl of fruit in soft light. Textures of the skin were the next lot of images I started to take, some before and after being cut in half. The succulence of the fruit was something I also wanted to capture.

The other ideas were combining fruits, fruit with shadows appearing on the black surface and finally a mixture of all of the fruits and colours on the chopping board. I also tried many different light angles to try and capture just the right amount for visual effect. The collage created shows 13 images of techniques I used.

Selection of 13 images

Final 3

These are the three it came down to for choice. My intention for all of the assignments has been to be original, also try to think outside the box. I’m not too sure if I accomplished that here but maybe placed a twist on them?

I found it hard at first to be able to choose one out of the three. I liked the light and detail on all of them. I think the black background definitely helped me to achieve the outcome.

Chosen image

I choose this final image for so many reasons!

*the sharp detail in the outer skin, and seeds.

*the juiciness draws you in from the sides into the centre.

*the small details of light that glisten on the seeds and glaze.

*the idea of the larger it is printed the more detail you can see.

*it reminds me of the sun and summer.

With nature, it can be so easily taken for granted. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think that if the beholder is mostly living life in the fast lane, then they are surely going to always miss the wonderful details of the surrounding world that they are a part of. I also like the concept that as a photographer we are privileged to be able to see things and the world differently and in a little more detail than possibly the average person. It is not until we draw others’ attention to such things do they then stop, think and really view the world around them.

Just like the saying "HEARING BUT NOT LISTENING” it then becomes looking but not seeing.

Green screen ( short advert )

Green screen filming

(Conversation with yourself)

I had written down a few short ideas, but in the end we decided to do this project in pairs. The script was chosen and we had a model that was willing to be filmed. Creating the advert took no time at all, once we had filmed it. A story board was created to accompany the short ad and script. Although as usual scenes did change a little to that of the end product and shoot.

Due to not being familiar with the computer software this became a task in itself, the other part of the team thankfully was more confident than me so once I was shown, we both took it in turns to edit as we did in filming.

The downfall for me was not being able to work at a pace where I could digest how to use the computer software confidently and comfortably on my own. Due to limitations in the college environment it felt like the project was rushed. Despite this, the short ad was accomplished and includes all that was expected from the start with a script and visual outcome. I have made a collage to accompany it to show us all on the day of shooting the ad.

Lock off camera and Panning ( make into ad posters )

LOCKED OFF MOTION

Research and my mind mapping ideas

The collages are of a selection of locked-off motion shots.

We were asked to choose one which we could make into an advertising poster. We also had to make up a slogan to accompany the ad we were producing. I chose the roundabout photo because I felt that there was more choice in what slogan I could use and logos I could produce.

At first I thought it would be a good idea to make use of the England flag colours of red white and blue to advertise something British. I found logos of Ben Sherman and British Airways. I also had to think about the picture so I changed my theme to “Adventure”. I made this connection due to sometimes people use the fair ground as adrenalin junkies seeking a thrill. With the company they also do exactly that and I had come across their website when I was looking to find something new and exciting I wanted to experience.

Once I had made the decision of which logo to use I then went through the process of finding a slogan. Deciding what font, colours to use and where to place them. Once I had completed many variations of the ad I then placed them in a collage to show the process that I had gone through to take me to make my final decision.  

Four images taken in lock off camera

 

The many variations show the ideas that I had about the different fonts, colours and where I wanted to place them. Sometimes, it’s not until you actually see your ideas as a solid form that you can then see if they do or don’t work. From what I had produced it became easier for me to quickly eliminate what I felt didn’t feel and look right.

I also wanted to take full advantage of the fence and use it as a kind of place where adverts may be tied to. As a designer I feel there is also a responsibility with you, that in order for anything to sell you need to have visuals that attract people and encourage them to stop and look at the ad.  I find that I do tend to pass posters and flyers that contain a lot of writing, many people are visual and curious about what they see not necessarily what they read. Isn’t this then the way forward to help design ads?

I chose my final poster because of its simplicity of design, no overcrowding of writing and eye- distracting colour. I think I used the fence to its best advantage and it has become a non-too obvious addition to the photo. On some of the ones rejected I had over-used other different yet similar company ads together. On others the fence was not made full use of and created an obvious space.

Chosen image with logo and slogan

Final chosen image

Panning camera

Logos researched and slogans thought about:

I had spent much time on panning and when I sifted through the many shots, the collage was the best that I had. I had not intentionally   placed the subjects off centre and this I then felt was a good thing, due to it giving me leeway to show speed. I find many categories of cars stunning visually and exciting to photograph. This was also the reason why I chose the Lotus. Through choosing this I then limited myself to researching logos to accompany the ad.

I then wrote down ideas for slogans to accompany the advert after relooking at some on the list. I realised that some were already in use today with other ads. The aim of my advert was to try to sell the car to people from all walks of life and not limiting it to one particular group. After all we all have dreams of what we like no matter who we are.

I then tried to think that if I owned this car what statement would I want others to be thinking. That’s when I came up with “More than just a car”! This is what it would be to me. It would be a symbol of personal growth which would bring me pride in myself and a sense of personal achievement.

Three images in panning camera

Chosen image with logo and slogan

Chosen image with logo and slogan

 

On the previous page I have tried out various positing of the logo and slogan. I only tried a few different colours. One I tried was to get the writing the same colour as the car because I felt that due to the many different colours in the photo it would have looked a little sickly with yet another one and the focus would be taken away from the car.

Another idea I had was to try to make the yellow logo look as if it was the sun in the sky and making the writing look as if it was a part of the road. All of the variations helped me to make a choice by a process of elimination. Although I initially liked the idea of the large Lotus logo, when I looked at it more closely it began to take the focus off the car which would have defeated the whole purpose of the ad.

I choose the poster I did because the black logo tied in nicely with the writing colour. I wanted to take advantage of the dead space in the top of the photo. This was caused by the sky on the day I shot this photo being drab and dreary - initially not a great day to go out and take photos! The writing I chose was to indicate the progress of speed and this I felt worked well by giving it a better visual appearance. This was all achieved by using elements of the Picasa and Photoshop computer software which have different ways of using fonts, sizes and angles. 

Veg Vision ( 1 0f 4 )



This was to be a scenario where we were to produce images that could be used in food magazines. Each had a wonderful title to accompany them. The other option I could have gone for was to produce images for a fashion magazine. MMMMM! that option to me was like asking a farmer to be an interior designer. No offence meant to either I just needed an example of extreme opposites!

I find that with any assignment that doesn't have many restraints to them, a little hard due to there being so many possibilities. Often they come with other project briefs to complete and time limits. Inspiration and do able ideas are not spontaneous for me, and can become an impatient waiting game. Just like waiting for veg to grow when you have just planted them!


 So I took the initiative and decided to go to the Llangollen Food Festival and try some shots outside of the studio. I got the permission of the stall holders and quite happily started to snap away. I had prepared by writing down a few ideas and had also done some visual research.

I came back and sorted out the wheat from the chaff so to speak! The idea of compiling a collage for all my final work, to show the process I went through to choose the final piece was a great help. I found it much easier to compare the images to each other.

The chosen few

The next stage became a closer way to analyse my images, to be the process of elimination. 

I eventually got the choice down to the images above

I have chosen these 2 because I liked the idea of the dip as an accompaniment.  It was something visually that I hadn’t thought about photographing. I also liked the array of colours and the way in which it was displayed. The other photo I was drawn to because of the way the display had thoughtfully been composed. The colours were varied and didn’t seem to be in block, some also still had the soil attached hence it being organic.

Final image chosen

This chosen photo was slowly drawing me more towards it, the reason being that the other picture although I at first liked it, I realised that not everything was in focus, which made me quickly re-evaluate my choice! Strange, but my gut feeling was also to favour this photo.

 I liked the composition. The use of light shining on the tomatoes and the small glimpse of the kind of string bag it was lying on. It gave off more of a feeling when looking at it, in a strange way maybe a nostalgic feel of memories attached to the different vegetable displayed- like Christmas with the parsnips or summer days with the salad!

 Maybe memories go as far back as childhood with the broccoli. Whatever the reason it does have a certain warm, safe feeling as if to say “you can’t go far wrong with fresh food?”

Vine and Dine ( 3 of 4 )

Vine and Dine

For this shoot I wanted a Mediterranean feel - something light and healthy. I liked the patterns on the salmon that seemed to add to the look and gave more detail to the image. There were so many photos that I had taken but unfortunately I was having a bad day in getting the light right. I tried different ideas of having the glass empty, full and half full. I tried taking the photo of the bottle of wine with a large proportion of it on show, but that seemed to suggest that the selling of the wine was to be the focal point. Not being a wine connoisseur I did not want to be caught out by people noticing that I had placed the wrong wine with the food! Hence that is why many of the photos have the label on the bottle not in full view. I found myself placing all of the salad on the plate and had to stop   myself and keep a sense of order. Before I got totally carried away I then emptied the contents of the salad on the plate. This of course looks so much better visually in a controlled jumble, the sprig of parsley seems to place that added finishing touch to the salmon. Some of the images were a little out of focus so they were quickly eliminated. 

Initially I thought that the shoot started off well. A few hundred photos later I became deflated, as I still realised that the lighting needed improving.  The background did not appear white enough for the image that I was trying to produce. It was becoming a nightmare of a photo shoot!

Other elements were becoming problems, such as not getting the rice correctly in focus, and I felt that there was something lacking. Visually it was looking rather flat and badly composed and I thought that this was due to the lack of any garnish and better presentation of the dish. 

For the final 3 I went back over my images and reconsidered one of the shots that I felt was a little out of the box.

 I had initially quickly dismissed this due to feeling that the focus was too much on the wine glass, and the food was dismissed too much in the shot. With the help of Photoshop was able to get the back ground more to my visual liking and the imagery to what I had in mind. The salmon had that great humbug swirl quite visible and everything seemed to balance each other by being evenly in focus .

As for the Indian meal photo I eventually found one that I was contented with.  The main reason why I didn’t choose the other two images were that the Indian meal was still a little out of focus and visually the plate and the wine bottle looked merged together.  I was swaying more towards the salmon salad photo but my eye was always drawn to the large open white area top left. On all of the last 3 images I had put them through Photoshop to accentuate the white background I wanted.      

                                                                                          

 The final image became surprisingly the one that I had much earlier dismissed!

 I was drawn to the “thinking out of the box” approach I took when experimenting with angles and set up. I liked the subtle hint of the meal beyond the glass of wine. I think that the balance between the both is equal and neither is looked at more than the other.

Samaritans / Enviroment Agency ( Design a campaign poster)

Campaign poster

(SAMARITANS)

I chose one of my posters to be for The Samaritans and it was to be aimed towards people with suicidal thoughts, particularly teenagers. I started off by writing a few ideas down and scenarios that teenagers may find themselves in. The issue I wanted to silently touch upon was teen pregnancy and falling school grades. It is hard to place in one photo all the issues and would become one big jumble. I thought about locations and was aware that most of their time can be spend in the bedroom. As a kind of haven, I wanted to use soft light and make it look like it was taken in their bedroom at the work desk. I was torn between a tidy desk and a cluttered one and over time tried different both. At first I really liked the idea of having the desk lamp in it but on many photos it became too dark and too distracting.

The suicide note was also brought in, it was meant to show that it was unfinished by the individual. This was to enhance feeling that they were not able to fully communicate with anyone, even their mother. I began to realise that most of my focus was aimed towards females which was a touch gender biased. Males also have suicidal tendencies, so I had to re-think how a male desk may look. I wanted to explore different methods of suicide hence the photos with a knife, gun and razor blade.

Due to the amount of items on the desk I had to be aware that I didn’t want anything in particular to be drawn to the eye and become distracting.

Mixed images that I liked

Chosen 2 images to convert

I was aware that the above two photos, that I eventually chose, were female orientated. I decided to also minimise the clutter and focus on the subject matter. The idea of the teddy bear was to give the image a more subtle approach. The school tie - I didn’t want it to become a large part of the photo just a hint. As the good saying goes “less is more”

I liked the light on the chosen two as it wasn’t too dark and cast a nice shadow on the teddy bear. The focus on the photos slowly draws you in like the tide coming to shore - more so with the school report.                                                           

  

I made a collage to show ideas of using mixed colour of writing and positioning of the message.  The borders are in white to enhance viewing of each photo without them becoming blended in to the green background. When taking the photo I was fully aware that the logo and writing was to become a part of the image. With this in mind I also knew that I didn’t want the image obscured by the tag line. There are not many examples with experimental colour and this was a conscious decision I made. With the logo being only two colours I wanted to try and incorporate them, and this, as I discovered, didn’t quite work. So I made the choice to stick with the white as being the main one. 

Images with logo and tag I tried out

The chosen final image

The final choice for the campaign poster was made in the same way as I have adopted for the previous projects. Analysing, scrutinizing and gut feeling! I became more drawn to the white writing with the black outline because it became isolated from the other whites that appear on the image such as the tablets, suicide note, school report and the pregnancy test.

Although some of the letter is obscured by the edge of the tablets it can still be read. I also liked the aspect of the build-up to the act, which are the failing grades. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of the poster and I think it takes you into the mind of the teenager and you can feel a sense of despair.

Campaign poster

(Environment Agency)

I had written down a few ideas as to what I could photograph and conducted visual research to coincide with the topic. I chose this to develop as a campaign poster because, it was a large problem I saw when growing up. The nearby fields became a dumping ground by the locals. There would be such things as carpets, grass clippings and wooden furniture amongst other things. This was also the case on an old abandoned railway line - children’s old or broken toys were another familiar sight in this area.

There is one question I always ask when I see carelessness like this - WHY?

Sometimes I can fill in the gaps and in other times I don’t understand the wasted effort people go through to do this - they may as well go that extra mile to the skip! Strangely you can tell a lot about their life style from what people have dumped. I went to a location that has disgusted me from the time I first saw it.

I took many shots of the vast array of dumped waste, from many angles. The collage shows the images that I considered for the poster. Some are shown with and without a border just for a visual satisfaction of display purposes.  I tried to produce a mixture of long shots to show the vast amount that had been dumped, and close up shots to show others the mixture of items that are dumped. These images were produced very early in the project so at the time I hadn’t considered the logo or the tag line. I did however take a few shots of children’s items, but quickly dismissed these as they became too much of a focal point. 

Image taken that I liked

Images with logo and tag that I tried out

The selection shows various typographic ideas and positioning of the tag line. I only tried three variations of coloured writing due to the green becoming lost in the image. The red however, which I used to accentuate the danger, became too overwhelming and disjointed from the image. It wasn’t until I re-looked at the images that I noticed that most of them were overpowering the poster.

I then took what I had learnt and applied it to more trial images.

Four I liked but wasn't satisfied with

The chosen 4 images were better visually due to the fact that I had tried a different enhancing program which gave me more options to experiment with the positioning and manipulation of fonts.  The images still seemed to be lacking something; some parts of the composition of the logo and tag still appears to be domineering the posters outcome. A re-think and advice was the next step for me, to gain that satisfaction with what I was producing.

The final chosen image

The chosen image came after a discussion on how I could re- think and about taking another approach to positioning the logo and writing. This helped a lot and gave me a new direction to getting the poster to look and feel right. Where I eventually placed the logo and tag, it didn’t spoil the view or message wanting to be put across to the public.

Times are a changing ( pt2 )

Warning:

Reading the following may make you feel old, especially if you remember many what could be classed as the old ways.


I couldn't resist copying and pasting this from a friends Face book page to share with you all.Its a little long but highly amusing. Photos kindly borrowed from the Internet for illustration only.

Checking out at the supermarket recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. I apologised and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days". the cler......k responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations". She was right about one thing--our generation didn't have the green thing in “Our” day. So what did we have back then?After some reflection and soul-searching on "Our" day here's what I remembered we did have.... Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles repeatedly. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day. We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 240 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day. Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Wales. In the kitchen, we blended & stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then. Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we older folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?