Lighting Techniques Proposal

Assignment 2:
must use lights on location, use strobe settings, photograph a person, and direct shoot.
I have two ideas for this assignment. I would like to do both anyway, but for the proposal, maybe you can tell me which one makes the most sense with the assignment. At first, I thought I would do an athlete portrait sitting on location of their respective sport field. My two ideas that I would be able to do without too much trouble are field hockey and baseball players. I will take a travel light out to the field and shoot an on location portrait of the athlete. I will take in to account their location on the field (circle, end line, goal cage, pitcher’s mound, dugout, bench, etc), and their outfits (practice clothes, uniform, winter or summer outfit workout clothes, hat, gloves, shin guards, etc). I would bring out the lights for dramatic lighting, and shoot probably earlier in the morning or at dusk for extra side lighting. For field hockey, I could do a series with a group of players on the baseline, ready to sprint before the whistle blows. This would make sense to shoot in the early morning as the sun comes up because that is when we usually have running tests. I could also shoot more still portraits that show the ‘inner athlete’. I would try to capture emotion in the athlete’s stance, and facial expression. Ideas for the baseball player would include dugout single athlete shot and a bat over the player’s shoulders to show defeat. I would like to change up the camera angle. I think shooting closer to the ground would be good if I am trying to make the player look intimidating and tough.
I still would like to try this, but I think a more experimental and interesting project idea would be to try a time exposure and freeze action with the strobe. I am pulling inspiration from Harold Edgerton where he photographed tennis, baseball, football, golf, and lacrosse players. What I see happening is taking 2 travel lights to the field hockey field at night, and capturing fast action by firing the strobe. I will have a team mate come out and take shots and lifts and I will set up the lights and have my camera on a tripod. At first I will have to have the model light on so I can make sure that the action will be inside the frame. Then, I’ll turn the model light off, put the shutter speed on 10 seconds, press the shutter, say go, fire the first strobe, then the second, and if they power up quickly, I will fire them again.
This is just the general idea that I have; I think that it will turn into something different once I am out there experimenting. Of course I won’t be able to take as many repetitions of the strobe as Edgerton, but if I can get the athlete to slow their action while maintaining form, I will do that and then fire the strobes more than once. I will have to wait to start this assignment because I can’t plug in the strobes at the field.

Portfolio Option 1 for Black and White Photography

For my portfolio long term project for this class I am going to continue along with the same theme as Sequence as a Story. However, I am going to go much more in-depth with my shooting, and focus on water to the fullest. I am pulling inspiration and ideas from these three artists: Clark Little, Harold Edgerton, and William Neill. I would like to use my camera as a way to capture images that we don’t normally see with our naked eye.
First, time exposures offer endless opportunities to get interesting and cool results. I am interested in shooting time exposures of moving water as it glides over rocks and sand. Ocean, lakes, rivers, bays, puddles, rain, clouds, fog and ice are all variations of water I would like to explore. Because this is a semester long project, I am able to show all of these different stages of water, from ice to warmer water. I like William Neill’s images of moving water. They give off a ghostly feel which I would like to imitate.
Clark Little shoots most of his images from in the ocean. That concept interreges me, and I would like to try something similar. This isn’t going to happen in February because the ocean temperature is around 36. In April, temperatures should reach a high of 50, so I will attempt this later on in the semester. I understand that he shoots in Hawaii where the water is beautiful and clear and colorful; this is why I won’t be doing underwater shooting, but shooting above the surface. I will try to go out with my wide angle lens. I will use like five of the best plastic bags I can find, and cut out around the lens opening and duct tape.
Finally, I will use Harold Edgerton as inspiration because I want to try to ‘stop the action’ of water. I understand that he used fast strobes in his work the pause action. First, I will try to just take images using a faster speed film and as fast of a shutter speed as the light will allow. After that, maybe I will try to bring some flashes into the images to freeze the frame.
All of my concepts are involving the interaction of light and water. How does the lighting situation change the look of water? How does the shutter speed change the look of the image of water? How does the result change with shooting position change from in water to out of water? These are questions I would like to look further into and answer using photographs. After I have taken film shots, I think it would be fun and beneficial to scan them and manipulate them digitally. I am using these three photographers as inspiration to develop images similar to their; however, I want these starting points to branch off and grow into my own ideas and impressions of light.

Clark Little

I first came in contact with Clark Little's work in Sierra Magazine. He says:
"I enjoy the power and beauty of the thick bombs that roll through. Now I can capture some of those heavy moments without getting slammed. Well, most of the time." His url is: http://www.clarklittlephotography.com/

I absolutely love his work. I think its stunning in every way. I think it would be great if I could do similar work, but NJ water is a lot different looking than Hawaii. He had to 'suffer' sometimes for his shots. I don't know if that makes them any more valuable to him or others, but I think it makes them more unique because a lot less people would be willing to gets shots like these, which is probably why they are so special and unique.

Lighting Techniques: Harold Edgerton

http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/iconic-----
this is where all the images I talk about are coming from.
"While electric lights were used with some success as early as the mid 1900's it was with the Harold Edgerton's 1930's invention of "Stroboscopic" photography that controlling light and time became a photographers greatest tool." I am totally intrigued by his work with strobes and motion in the studio. His athletic portfolio of work is stunning especially considering the time period. The strobe fired rapidly to capture the people's movement. He captures things that we can't see normally at all. He invented to strobhttp://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/iconic/athleticse light and combined science and photography. I like the tennis players because it shows the motion of the racket and the ball. Another kind of actin photography he did was Stop-action. In the photo of a man hitting a softball, he shows how when a batter hits a softball, the bat bends and the ball caves in around the bat. This athlete had an additional challenge. The photo was taken in a darkened room, with the sound of the ball hitting the bat triggering the flash.The golf swing is amazing also because it shows the entire swing of the club and the rotation of the athlete.

Every image I go to I am constantly saying wow! Because these are stop motions that we can't see with the naked eye. I like the diver because it shows each change in direction he makes and shows his athletic ability. His most famous images include the bullet going through the apple. I like the one where the apple is being split, and then in the next image, the apple is exploding. He freezes the motion to show us something we have never seen. I keep saying this, but I think it's main reason for his work. I am also interested in his water droplet series. It isn't just 1 photo, it is a series of images that create motion; each one has been frozen in time. The playing cards!!!! wow, this is amazing! the cards appear to be flying through the air from one hand to the other! I def. want to try to recreate some of his works. It can be called copying, but I want to see how he does it!

Matt Sartain

http://www.mattsartain.com/
Matt is a digital photographer who also does a lot of photo manipulation to create surreal images. He is only 25 years old. I really like his images because he makes them look real, even when they seem impossible. For example, "The Librarian" shows a man walking around with a huge stack of books, way taller than could ever really be held up by a person; however, the way he positions them looks as if they are being balanced by this guy, and as if they could topple over at any point in time. "The Paper Airplane" reminds me of Maggie Taylor's work, but it looks real. It looks like this scene could actually be happening, and yet looking at it, I know it is many photographs stitched together. The majority of his images are backlit, which makes me wonder if he uses similar sky photos for a lot of different images. "The Balloon Ride" looks very surreal as if it should be an illustration for a movie or kid story book. A man dressed in costume with a mask on is talking to two boys who seem interested about going for a ride on the hot air balloon. I think the shadows are very well done. They are long on the ground, showing the lateness in the day, soon to be nightfall, and they are crisp, meaning it is not a cloudy night. "The Shipwreck" is kind of funny, but sad at the same time. The man looks exhausted as he paddles away from the sinking ship, but he is paddling in a little gun powder barrel that barely fits him. I like to see a successful photographer who is young and not a wedding photographer. He is using his imagination and photoshop skills to develop and piece together scenes that I've never seen before. I look forward to seeing more work by him, and trying some of his techniques on my own.

Start of Lighting Techniques and Black ad White Photography Blog

I am excited about taking these two very different courses. I haven't worked with film since freshman year here, so it's been a while, and I have never used the darkroom at Monmouth. I have a couple lenses for my film camera that I want to experiment with for some projects. For the 2 projects I can develop on my own I want to do some new techniques that have to do with time exposures. Everyday I walk past the flag pole on the great lawn and see the flag waving. I wonder if I took a time exposure at night for 10 seconds what it would look like. I think they are fun experiments that I could maybe get cool looking results with. Also night photography could look really good with grainy black and white film. I am nervous but excited about shooting film again.
For the Lighting class, I want to learn about different ways to light people for portraits. I did 1 photo shoot over the summer with 3 people, but I was just playing around and trying new things. I learned a lot from just shooting for that one session. I did some things well, and other things I should have changed. I want to learn where to position people to make them look the best and show their personality. I want to know how to go about positioning a larger group of people who want their portraits taken. Just having different heights can create an obstacle to fix. Then placing one person in front of another means you have to think about focusing differently. I want to learn about shooting food, and making it look good, and what type of lighting is best. I will probably try some products shooting. I have done 1 shoot on peanuts and wine. It would be good to try some more for my portfolio. I want to experiment with the strobes and model lights. If the room is all black, and the shutter is open, when the strobe is fired, a solid image of a figure can be made. Then, the figure can move and another strobe can be fired, making the same person appear twice in the same image. On the other hand, just using the model or hot lights, in a low lighting situation, the person can move and jump around and the camera will capture this motion that we can't even see with our naked eye.

Conclusion of Sequence As a Story Blog

I really gained a lot from writing this blog and researching photographers that interest me. I am really drawn to nature, wildlife, landscape, pattern, water, and time-exposure photography. I think that I got a lot of inspiration for my own work by looking at the artists I have written about here. My goals are to try to experiment a lot with time-exposure photography on different types of water. It is so easy to get stuck in the automatic mode of a camera, and I forget sometimes to change it up and shooting on manual.
For my projects,
I enjoyed the documentary the most. I really am happy with the topic I chose and I had fun going out exploring, and shooting. I hope that my images are beautiful, striking, intriguing, concerning, and action provoking. I want to get across the message that the environment is a beautiful thing and we need to protect it. And right now, we need to do a better job of it.
I am happy we got to work in groups this semester. I think that group thinking is good for brainstorming and team work. I like working and collaborating with classmates and seeing what their ideas are, and making things happen.
For my blog,
I want to travel to all of these National Parks and photograph. But it makes me wonder if I would be able to get anything relatively close to what these photographers have captured. I mean, you can't get better than that! I think that photographers have to find their own style because in landscape photography, it can be easy to duplicate works.

My ultimate goal in the future: I am going to China after I graduate college. I am going to photograph giant pandas in the wild. It is really difficult to do though.Firstly because they are extremely endangered animals. An estimated 1,600 live in the wild. I could just photograph them at the reserves, which I probably will end up doing for a bit, but I want to go hiking in the mountains and really capture and observe them in their natural habitat. This has been a dream of my since I was a little kid. Before, I just wanted to go and see them in the wild, but now I want to photograph them. I think this is really unique. There are a large amount of photos out there os pandas int he nature reserves, but very very few of pandas in the wild. I have been talking to a zoologist who is trying to find wild pandas and put radio collars on them to study their behavior and natural living. She has been going for 5 years and has been unsuccessful in finding one in the wild. This is not promising for me, but I will not be discouraged. I want to purchase more professional camera equipment including a longer telephoto lens and a dslr sensor camera. I am staying with canon forever. I will also need a tripod, a mac, a lot of memory cards, and a really good camera bag. I know it will be expensive to do. I am paying my own way and I am proud of it. There is still a lot of research to be done for my trip, and maybe the first part is researching wildlife photographers so I can work on my own projects.
I am so excited to see where this interest of mine takes me. I don't want money to hold me back. It would be amazing to have the opportunity to travel around the world. I am making a list of locations and parks that interest me, and it is getting really long already.