Shoot Two - Work Record

For my second exam shoot, I plan to develop the macro/documentary style that was featured in some of my first shoot. My first shoot took place in my bedroom, in which there are a large amount of objects personal to me, however, for this shoot I have decided to shoot across the kitchen and the living room, which tend to contain items that are personal to other members of my family. My plan is to create a sense of narrative using objects that don't have a story to them that is my own; I have to create my own narrative for the objects rather than knowing the meaning of them already. I am planning to shoot this shoot without the aid of a tripod, like my first shoot, as it meant I could move freely and position my camera amongst the objects to get a closer perspective.

Shot at 1/30, with an aperture of F5.6 and an ISO of 640. This image was taken on the work surface of my kitchen, on which there were a large amount of objects; this depicts a pair of green suede gloves, on which a set of keys tied to a shoelace have been placed. I positioned my camera very close to the subject, as I wanted to capture the textures in great detail, and because of both this and my slow shutter speed, there was some noticeable camera shake. This was something I decided to fix in Photoshop using the shake reduction filter. I went into filter>sharpen then selected shake reduction, which brought me to a menu. In the menu, I brought the blur trace bounds up to 98px, as this was sufficient enough to fix the camerashake I had, then applied the filter.

Below is a before and after of how the filter affected the image.

Before ^

After ^

I also applied a vignette to the image, creating some tonal contrast and focussing the viewer's attention to the focal point of the image. I did this by creating an ellipsis marquee that filled the majority of the screen, setting the feathering to 150px, then inverting the selection and lowering the brightness in the selected area. 

This image makes strong use of texture throughout its composition; the shoelace that the keys are attached to display a very rough texture, which is contrasted by the texture on the keys themselves, which is shiny and smooth. This contrast in textures represents that things used for the same task will react to years of this task differently; while the keys have been used for years and are still smooth and shiny, the shoelace has sustained lots of fraying and roughened in texture.

Here is another of my straight images from the shoot. I shot this on the same settings as the previous image, being 1/30 with an aperture of F5.6 and an ISO of 640, as this was shot under the same lighting as the previous image. The image has a narrow depth of field, in which the camera is focused on a metal print of a vintage advert which depicts a girl pouting and looking upwards. In the foreground, and kept out of focus, is the handle of a kitchen knife which comes across the frame diagonally above the girl's head. I framed the image in a way in which the girl looks as if she is looking up towards the handle of the knife. The young girl is presented as innocent, which is portrayed through her curious facial expression and the presence of saturated shades of yellow in the background of the image. The idea of her innocence is contrasted by the knife, at which she is gazing at the handle of, which suggested she is thinking about taking it and using it.

The source image for this straight image had to have a number of adjustments added to it in order to get to how it looks in the depiction above. Below is the original image before any editing.

Due to the minimal lighting in my location, I noticed the image has been underexposed, which was the first thing I fixed when I opened the image in the Photoshop. I opened the exposure adjustment under the adjustments panel, and using that, adjusted the exposure to +90, making the image appear as though it had been exposed to light more. 

While this improved the image, it still felt like it needed to be brighter, therefore I opened a brightness/contrast adjustment and brought the brightness up to +30, which added some much needed vibrance to the image. I also increased the contrast by 30 as it adds some depth to the tones and therefore widens to tonal range. 

One final thing I felt the image needed was a slight increase in the saturation of the colours, therefore I added a Hue/Saturation adjustment and increased the saturation to +12, which added more vibrance

to the images colours.

For my final exam shoot, I hope to make one final development of my focus on objects around the household in macro and documentary styles, however, with this shoot I had a location that was very dense in objects and created a sense of busyness, I hope to shoot in a location in which the concentration of objects is less dense. This will change me to create a sense of narrative by focusing heavily on the composition of the image and using techniques such as leading lines.