Ethics essay and professional practice

Spoke to my tutor regarding my ethics essay and professional practice.

She told me that a photographer I e.mailed recently Craig Ames is coming to give the MA students a talk in early December.

http://www.craigames.com/photography/home.html/


She also kindly offered to look at any questions I might wish to ask Craig in advance.

Craig recently exhibited work at the ways of looking exhibition, the work had similarities to my work in that he visited sites of emotional importance to him and tried to make sense of what had happened there using photography.

I felt very inspired by his work and feel it will be very helpful indeed to communicate with him.

I feel like I am progressing in the right direction, lots of ideas in the pipeline. Just need to focus those ideas and follow through.

Fashion brief

I have been doing lots of research for the fashion brief I intend to carry out.

Fashion photography is not a particularly interesting subject area for me. I'm more interested in informal photography. But my tutor suggested trying to push yourself into a new area & in my opinion this is a good idea. I'll not get the chance again.

The research is going very well so far. I have managed to find 2 willing models, a stylist / make up artist and even props if I need them.

To help all 4 people (myself included) communicate with ease. I have created a private Facebook group. This has helped everyone feel more involved and has worked very well as an ideas platform. I feel the biggest advantage will be that everyone will feel as though they know each other a little bit before the photography has even started.

The other advantage is that everyone has put ideas forward. Most people in the group have suggested ideas, posted inspiring images, etc.

I have posted some of the images posted by the group below

Spotlight portraits

I Recently enjoyed shooting spotlight portraits of some new students at college.

Spotlight images are images used by the acting profession to help them select actors prior to casting. 

http://www.spotlight.com/

Before we shot the students we shot each other, we experimented in tungsten lighting, with a 50mm portrait lens as we liked the result that it produced.

I also looked at headshot websites like this one below : 

It's important to remember to alter the setting afterwards in camera raw. Otherwise the image will come out with a colour cast like the image below : 

Image before editing white balance in camera raw

The image below has had the tungsten colour cast altered, it makes a big difference. This casn be done in any image and is particularly helpful when working with street lighting at night.

Editing tungsten studio images in RAW

This is how the image should look after colour correction and editing to convert to black and white. By creating a simple, but interesting lighting set up there is depth in the image and the subjects persona is able to shine through.

I was pleased with the end result that was achieved. Hope the students are too. Here are a selection of the final images below :