Beginning of the second week in the new school year

Monday 28th September 2020

It is the second week back to school.

I need to consider booking lighting since lighting is very important for the scene, preferably LED lights, I don't think flashlights will be enough. The induction schedules are up so I should start signing up for them especially as there are lighting workshops and they are 1 hour long each.

This week I need to consider how I will interpret the painting. We looked at rule of thirds today. The rule of thirds is a method to frame your photos better. An example of a photographer uses rule of third is Bill Brandt. But placing the main subject of your photo away from the centre will not always give you a nicer picture.

The task we were given was to take a series of images using rule of thirds. We were told to consider 2/3 sky + 1/3 land or 2/3 land + 1/3 sky with landscapes and maybe even with portraits. The task was to enable us to think about composition and form.

Here are most of my images, I'm not so sure I did it correctly though. You won't be able to tell since the images are cropped here.

While doing this I thought about some things to think about when taking pictures.

1. Think about the absence of a person and where there should be a person or just the absence of things

2. The pictures don't need to be face on, think about taking a picture from the side

3. And think about photographing work places

And so that is what I tried to do. One analogy that I heard today was to think of photography like performing a play there needs to be a lot of rehearsing & research before the actual day which is something I can relate to.

One thing I need to consider is the image that I want to create-why do I want to include a corner, what does the corner represent especially in the context of loneliness? What is the meaning of being open, what does a smile represent (apparently it is a universal sign). I need to think about things like that.

I asked my tutor to help me print the smiley face mask and I took some pictures to help explore how some parts of the final picture might go. It made me realise that I will need to find some string (I have some just somewhere) which is good. Using a stick didn't work well. The mask is printed out of paper after all. One thing I realise about myself is that I tend to /can only think about one important aspect at a time when taking pictures as opposed to all at once and I forget to include or think about the rest like lighting and rule of thirds/composition. The model needs to present positive body language and the lighting is extremely important. The scene in the painting is quite minimalistic. This all for the "opposites" scenario. I am thinking that maybe I should also think about changing the minimalistic feel and maybe instead of mostly light, it will be mostly dark. Perhaps I should add balloons to the picture. It is photography week so I need to take the photographs on Monday and or/Thursday.

I actually didn't have time to construct the 3D scenario thing but I was still able to have a clear image in my head. Maybe today will be the test run & on Thursday I will take the actual pictures. I made a very quick and simple 3D model and took pictures of it. I found it very difficult to create darkness & shadows since it was extremely light but then I realised that I could use my coat to try and cover the area where light shone on the paper the most then I could change my camera setting (to M) to a one that makes pictures darker and it created the desired effect.