Photo2Q1.6: Best Photograph + Two

At this time, I feel that this photo is my best because it is one of the few that is capable of painting a textual image into viewers without the help of facial expressions. By taking it almost entirely away, the photo raises questions; what is she looking at outside the window? The lighting just so happened to be so bright on this day that when exposing for the subject, the outside became overexposed (but that's fine because it works with my goal with this image). A bit of retouching in Lightroom helped this image looked nice in a subtle way. I also used this for my graphic design project.

First quarter was very engaging and fun. Although I definitely fell behind due to external personal causes, I found all of the projects/assignments to be interesting and fun. I enjoyed the fast shutter water day where we all got wet for the sake of art and photography. I enjoyed my last homecoming at this school and captured some really great photos that I will likely attempt to get into Yearbook somehow, especially for the homecoming spreads.

I still feel that I am incredibly reliant on Lightroom, but that's okay for the beginning. I know that my goals early on this year were ambitious, especially with the current workflow I use for post production. I hope to utilize second quarter to my advantage and expand my skills in photography further.

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Photo2Q1.5: Fast Shutter Part 1

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My project theme was originally "displacement", but it is such a vague term in retrospect. I was particularly interested in achieving the shots photographers are able to get with using food coloring, and simply expanded into a broader perspective from that point. They looked very neat and there's a lot of opportunity as to what one can do with the photos that result from it (like an overlay onto a graphic, for example). Also, from watching slow motion YouTube videos for quite some time (The Slow Mo Guys), I was interested as to how certain objects can very briefly displace or interrupt the motion of another or combine with another object to create a very brief but incredible image. Thus, anything that could displace another object (often going to be a liquid and a solid) was a constant with this project, whilst the primary variable I changed was the actual objects being used.

Flourescent light flicker difficulties

Now, initially, I thought that my camera was broken because when photographing the images at faster and faster shutter speeds, I noticed that these yellow fuzzy bars were running across my photos. They didn't show up on the viewfinder, so I did some research and found out that these actually occurred due to frequency of the fluorescent light. Having a faster shutter speed results in the flicker effect of the fluorescent to be captured more severely, but I could somewhat counteract this issue in post production. However, only up to a point. Thus, some images may show a dramatic change in temperatures, but these were all made with the intention of counteracting the effect of the flicker as much as possible. I limited my shutter speed to around 1/500 to prevent this flicker effect as much as possible. I did want to go to faster shutter speeds, but the effect would appear as shown in the image above.

1/500 f/1.8 ISO 1600

1/640 f/1.8 ISO 1600

1/1250 f/1.8 ISO 1600

1/800 f/1.8 ISO 1600

BTS

BTS

I set up the above shoot using some construction paper I had lying around (they're kinda like plastic paper, not sure what they're called), two glass vases I found from Target (the wider one will be used in a later fast shutter project), and food coloring I bought from Safeway. This concept was largely a technical demonstration of fast shutter, but was unfortunately sidetracked due to the fluorescent lighting issues. The biggest challenge with this sub-concept is the difficulty in the fluorescent light and the focusing. Using a f/1.8 aperture, there was a very shallow depth of field for all of these images. I didn't want the vase to be much of a distraction, nor did I want any excessive particles on the paper to show up in the images, hence the large aperture. I chose the photos listed as my top photos as they achieved the focus the best and had the least amount of lighting issues, and they looked most appealing to my eye.

On a scale of 1-10 in terms of knowledge of fast shutter, I feel that I am a 9. I understand a large majority of the components in regards to it, but I knocked off a point personally because I have produced a very small amount of content that actually relates to fast shutter, or had a fast shutter in mind as a primary focus for a photo.

AP classwork has complicated a lot of the time that I wanted to use for this project, thus my artistic stretch is low for this sub concept. I attempted to incorporate at least some sense of artistic stretch through the combination of various colors and angles of the vase, but the colors were quite limited so I did what I could (4 total vials were provided). I feel that, moving into part 2 of this project eventually, I will definitely need to up the creative innovation through having a wider range of objects and camera angles, and perhaps even diversifying the sub concepts from their current primitive states.

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Photo2Q1.4: Pre-Fast Shutter Speed

All of the above images were grabbed from Pinterest.

In order to demonstrate my understanding of fast shutter speed, I will be doing "displacement" as a theme for my project. I am electing to focus on this because they, like many things in life, are brief moments in time that often go unnoticed because they are simply too fast and are "second-hand" to the beginning and end of the action. I feel that using various food coloring droplets into water will help illustrate that.

Based on the feedback, I feel that the main stretch will come in how I incorporate the supplies into this project and attaining the necessary materials in the first place. I've acquired the glass vases, wallpaper backgrounds, and food coloring, but not yet the necessary materials for dropping fruits and other objects into water. In all categories, lighting will be a big stretch as I don't have the greatest equipment, but I think that using Lightroom to manipulate some of the properties of the photo would help, but I'd like to shy away from that as much as possible.

I feel that the biggest difficulty with this project will just be execution. I have a general idea of what I want to do in order to achieve these photos, but really rolling this out is going to be interesting. It's definitely possible to pull off though.

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Photo2Q1 (Bonus): Homecoming 2018

These photos were from the class cheer competition and homecoming parade. Was fun; seniors won the overall competition so that's all that matters.

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Photo2Q1.3: One Hour Photos in a Bag

This activity was very interesting and fun to do because of the difficulty that was added to it. The objects were very interesting and difficult to incorporate, however I feel that in order to grow as a photographer, sometimes you need to be given limitations and constraints. Mainly, my idea with the objects I was given was to mix them together and literally integrate them into nature somehow I intersected items together and put them with nature and tried to see how they interacted with each other.

Lens^2 

Global Warming

Greenhouse Effect

The Ball(oon) Family

Photographing with impromptu items was great and insightful for incorporating prompts into any of my projects. I think that using incorporating gestalt organizers (graphic design concepts) into my photography will really be able to change the way I see framing in photography, and I felt that this project was great for that. I would have liked there to be more textured choices in objects (as almost all of the objects I used were quite "dull"), but that would somewhat remove the limitation aspect of the assignment and cause one to be less creative, but that's just me. I enjoyed the freedom in theme/topic as it allowed me to be more expansive, but for other assignments this probably wouldn't be ideal as most of my photos end up dealing with people, and most of the time people need a theme. I'd definitely like to do something open-ended like this in the future.

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Photo2Q1.2: Camera Tasks

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I often utilize my ISO settings last and prefer to keep it at around 100 or 200. Obviously, situations change, but most of my photos require natural and good sunlight (something Hawaii provides an abundance of). Thus, I use it last. For darker, evening, and indoor environments, I may bump it up higher in the 400-1600 range, but I highly shy away from those as I like adding my own grain; not the destructive color grain that comes with high ISO on most cameras.


The aperture is the very first thing I adjust when I'm trying to expose for an image. Attaining the right depth of field for your image really all depends on what type of photo you want to take. For example, for portraiture, you usually would want to isolate the subject. Thus, a lower f/stop (wider aperture) number would be logical. If you want to get as much of your photo in focus, like a landscape photo, then you'd go for higher f/stop numbers (smaller aperture). You adjust the other parts of the exposure triangle accordingly.



When conducting the equivalency slant charts for indoor and outdoor photos to expose the same photo with different f/stops and shutter speeds, one can certainly take note of all of the aperture changes and especially how slow/fast the shutter is at different speeds. I have a large background in exposing for the right situation, but these equivalency charts definitely helped me to understand just how risky it is to aim for slower shutter speeds when you're shooting handheld.

f/6.3 1/25

f/22 1/4

To achieve these shots, I merely had to use slower shutter speeds. I tried using the shutter priority mode, but I did not like how drastically it changed the aperture (for example, f/22 is far too small of an aperture for my liking for these photos). Choosing a moving object and a constant background proved simple and are reflected in the simplicity of these photos, but if lighting was not as available as it was on this day, I'd definitely try to play around with aperture and ISO to balance out. A tripod may have also helped.

f/18 1/40

f/18 1/80

For these photos, timing and motion of your body is essential. You definitely need your vestibular sense and kinesthetic sense to be able to "track" it with your subject, or at least moving the camera accordingly. I did not have good success with tracking a close human subject and it was quite rushed, but with a car it is slightly easier as they are more distant from the camera.

f/1.8 1/640

f/2.0 1/1250

In poor indoor lighting condition, it definitely would make sense to stretch out the capabilities of one's ISO settings to capture the images without sacrificing depth of field and shutter speed. I felt that the second photo of the two proved successful in capturing great shutter speed control and isolation of the subject (which in my case was simply trying to capture the detail in the popping/spurting bubbles).

f/2.5 1/3200 

f/3.2 1/3200

f/5.0 1/1250

Capturing fast shutter was relatively easy as you have less "moving parts" to worry about camera-wise, but more moving parts to worry about real life-wise. On this day, lighting was in great abundance, so all we really needed to worry about was how we were going to setup the action/photo itself, how we splash water onto the subjects, etc. It's less technical difficulty and more conceptual difficulty.

Overall, this project was a nice refresher mainly in the fast shutter avenue. The other exposure controls were very familiar to me, and I feel that this project proved that. I definitely hope to incorporate the fast shutter concepts into my own projects in the future as it is fun and interesting to create those kinds of images. They may prove difficult, yes, but the challenge is great and could potentially expand my range of photography beyond just portraiture and street.

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Photo2Q1.1: Best Photos

1a

1b

I enjoy taking street photography the most. I feel that people are most natural when they aren't posing in front of the camera--they are at their most genuine selves. This can usually only be achieved when they're in a particular setting. The street is the most opportune place, as there is ample lighting most of the time to achieve whatever effects I want to achieve. (1a)

In addition,  I'm not sure how to categorize this, as it is more of an aesthetic, but I enjoy taking photos that have either a very focused in and particular subject matter, or an extremely minimal setting (as shown in 1b). Minimalism is perhaps the most sought after aesthetic that I want to achieve despite the difficulty in getting it spot on. (1b)

2a

This is still my best photo from earlier this year when I was in Photo 2. I still feel that this is my best photo because everything was just captured right. I like the way I edited the graduated filter in the top right, the depth of field is spot on; everything just "works". (2a)

2b

As an effort to provide a different best photo alternative, I also feel that this recent photo for my friends' homecoming queen campaign (in which she won yay) can be considered one of my best photos for very similar reasons to 2a. Only thing I'd change is that I'd remove the black bag in the background that's there for some reason. (and yes, I know, all my best photos usually have the same model in it) (2b)

3a

3b

This year, I'd like to expand my abilities in taking photos that involves very controlled lighting. I feel that I rely heavily on natural light and using Lightroom to drastically improve my photos from their raw state. Although it is definitely advantageous to use the tools you have, the point of having such remarkable technology is to use them when you can't achieve them in real life with ease. I'd like to be able to become a more flexible photographer, and I feel that challenging myself with controlled lighting would be a great start. (3a, 3b)

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