APD2 Assignment 4: Composites

Assignment 4: Photo Story/Series

For my photo story/series, I knew I initially wanted to shoot portraits, but didn't know how to actually have some kind of story/them to the images. While trying to think of a concept, my friend Kevin (pictured below) randomly texted me wondering if I could hang out with him over the weekend 'cause he was in town. We'd been best friends since we were about 8; he lived where I would go during my summer vacations as a child until I turned about 16, swimming in Gratten Lake nearly every day for hours on end. I didn't have many friends in Montreal at the time, and would go up on weekends  to see him and others who lived in Gratten Lake; it was essentially my second home. However, as time went on, we saw less and less of each other; he had moved in with his girlfriend, was working full time, and I was a student here in Montreal  working as well. Him texting me out of the blue like that was pretty impeccable timing, come to think of it. When we were kids, we never had much in common; he was into dirtbikes and cars, I was into music and drawing, but we were still great friends. We talked before we hung out and told me about how he was getting back into unicycling after nearly a  year of not practising and how he was taking it seriously and dreamed of becoming a pro. I realized that finally for once, our new interests had finally become things that we could finally do together, not that that had ever stopped us from being close before, but gave a different meaning to our relationship as friends. I could do what I loved to do while he did what he loved to do; we'd be helping each other out basically. So  these photos are essentially me helping him out (he gets to practice/have photos of him to advertise if need be), and him reciprocating (gives me an interesting subject to shoot, and to practice on). I decided to shoot horizontally for action shots to ensure I get everything in  one frame and can be relatively close. I'd have to be fairly far to shoot horizontally due to the fact that I'm using a cropped sensor camera and I like shallow depth of field in images, so focusing at 1.4 or 2.0 is much harder when the subject is further away as well. For the portraits, I used a square crop and bokeh panorama/expansion (for 2 out of the 3) because I love square crops and find them to be the best crop for portraits. I hope you like them.

1/400 f/2.0 ISO 400

1/240 f/1.4 ISO 400 

1/160 f/1.8 ISO 400

1/500 f/2.0 ISO 400

1/640 f/2.2 ISO 400

1/160 f/1.4 ISO 400
I had to include a smoking shot of Kevin; he started young and I always remember him smoking or wanting to smoke when he'd be stressed or tired haha. It seemed fitting, and shows his character/persona as well in my opinion.

Travel Photography

The Decisive Moment (Street/Event Photography)

f/2.0 1/500 ISO 100

For this image, we were situated behind a building where students protesting were on top of, and Police were trying to get the students to come down. I was standing on the sidewalk with the protesters and saw this guy standing alone, and immediately took the shot because there were no distractions near him, and I knew that shooting with a low depth of field would work well here. 

f/2.5 1/300 ISO 100
This image shows the police talking with some of the protesters, again trying to convince them to tell their friends to come down from the roof they were on. When the officer approached the crowd and these 4 approached the officer, I immediately followed near them and snapped several shots like these, but chose this simply because of the emotion in everyone's faces. The fact that the policeman is touching one of the protesters made this an ideal image to choose during the editing stage as well, along with the expressions on all of their faces.

f/2.0 1/500 ISO 100

I chose this image for the girls expression . She was standing next to the boy who I took a photo of previously (originally I was trying to shoot him from a different angle but she got in front of him) and she looked uneasy as we waited for the rooftop protesters to come down. Also the red square on her jacket stood out very much (even in the RAW image), and I really liked that.

f/2.5 1/320 ISO 100

This was while the protesters were actually coming down from the roof from the side of the building. The crowd cheered when they came back, and began to hum songs from the Star Wars trilogy (singing the Imperial March whenever Police came nearby, Darth Vader's theme haha). This boy turned and looked at me a midst the crowd cheering and clapping so I snapped the photo quickly and thankfully the results are good (in my opinion).

Overall shooting street/event photos was interesting for me because it got me to be on my feet the entire time, always looking for something to shoot. I've shot several concerts before so I have some experience doing this, but this was much easier for me as well due to the fact that the lighting was constant and it was bright outside despite being a cloudy day. One thing I had issues with was focusing; I love low depth of field images, but with large crowds like this sometimes your focus can be way off (especially when shooting around f/2.0). The experience in general was enjoyable though, and brought a new perspective for me since I don't particularly align myself with the protesters view but can respect where they're coming from and agree with some of their contentions.

f/3.5 1/1000 ISO 200

I went to the Palais De Congrais to try and find some nice indoor shots for this assignment, but unfortunately was kicked out despite telling them I was a student and wouldn't use the photos commercially. I made sure to snap some photos of the structure holding up the windows outside quickly without being seen, since I fund the lines and repetition interesting.

f/3.5 1/30 ISO 200

I shot this at the Windsor train station (or what used to be a train station) near the Bell  Centre in Downtown, Montreal. I've shot other photos around this area before and remembered the ceiling beams and over mood of the room to be cool so I decided to head down and shoot some photos. I specifically love the clock here, so I made to center it in the frame. I also tried to balance the light from outside with the indoor lighting here by overlaying an extra exposure.

f/11 1/50 ISO 100

This was shot at the Old Port of Montreal. It's just a normal building (it's a bank headquarters I believe actually, the National bank) but the blandness of the building from my perspective enticed me so I took some shots of it and tried to make a very minimalist image out of what I saw.

f/5.0 1/400 ISO 100

I shot this right near the water on the Old Port, it's a lawyers office I believe, or at least is the building right next to one. Here I overlayed an extra exposure (darker) to bring out the darks on the side of the building, and to make the effect of directional sunlight really obvious. I painted out the sky on the the right side of the image on the mask to make this effect a bit more obvious as well, but didn't overdo it as to make it seem somewhat natural.

Conceptual/Still life

Still Life

The eagle in this photo has always reminded me of my grandfather , a carpenter, so I decided to shoot this at the woodshop in Dawson's basement to contrast the final product of a carpenters work and the raw materials (in the background on the shelves) that a carpenter would use to create something like this.

Narrative/Conceptual Image

From discussion narrative images in class, I found myself fond of the idea of an open ended   narrative image instead of one that  gives you every detail of what's happened, so for my image I wanted to make what happened somewhat not obvious. Clearly, something happened to someone in that room, but who is that stranger? Including the person in the doorframe was essential for me to make this photo "work" so to say so that you actually ask questions about the piece instead of just take one look and think you understand what has happened/what is going on.

ALP1 Assignment 1: Environmental Portrait

ISO 800, f/2.0, 1/80, 50mm (Natural Light)

ISO 800, f/2.0, 1/60 (Reflector)

 1SO 100, F/7.1, 1/125, 50mm (Flash Top Right of Frame, half power) Rembrandt lighting

My images that I shot (which look a bit weird colour wise, I exported them in sRGB but they don't look the same, when you view them small on the page the colours are fine but when you click to make them bigger they become de-saturated...) could be suitable for some kind of publication that deals with musicians/artists. Rolling Stone is a classic example of a magazine that employs photographers to take photos of artists in a similar fashion that I have (http://www.rollingstone.com/), but obviously the photographs and photographers are much better than myself. The main problem I had with this shoot was time, but I had a problem with flash as well. I was planning on shooting with a pc cable because I don't own triggers/receivers, so I rented one from the school, but the night before the shoot I realized that my camera doesn't even have a pc cable port. So I had to go to the studio the next morning and check if they had a hotshoe adapter (a wein safe sync) for my camera, and they didn't. Instead, they gave me this small device that you attach to your flash, and it fires when your other flash fires, essentially. So I had to use my on camera flash to trigger my off camera flash. This posed a problem for me because the flash from my camera was bleeding through the light from the flash, which was not my intention at all. So by the end of the shoot, I was bouncing the light from my on camera flash with my hand towards the flash in front of my subject, to make sure it wouldn't bleed into the photo, but still trigger the flash.

Figure/Ground

Ripon
f/2.5 1/400 ISO 400

Natasha

F/1.4 1/400 ISO 400

Library Cart

f/1.4 1/250 ISO 400

For the photo of Ripon, he was staring out the window of the classroom that we were shooting inside of during the flash demonstration on Saturday the other week, and when I noticed how nice the light was on his face, I asked him if I could take a photo of him, and the result is what you see above. I shot with a very low aperture/depth of field (f/2.5) because personally I love low depth of field portraits. When the eyes are in focus in a portrait and everything else is blurred, I absolutely love it. I shot with a fast shutter speed as well (1/400) just to ensure there was no possibility of camera shake (he and I were both sitting on one of the tables at the time). I chose the square crop and to have him in front of a blank section of wall because I wanted him to be the main focus of the photograph, no distractions in the background.

For the photo of Natasha, we were walking in one of the basement levels of the school where the janitors work (I know a lot of the passageways down there because I work in the building and frequent those areas), and she happened to stop and shoot some photos of the wiring/pipes above us, and again I noticed how nice the light was on her face, so I told her to hold her pose so I could take her photo. I shot again with a shallow depth of field (f/1.4) to bring focus to her, but let the lines stay in the background instead of moving away from them to give the photo more details to look at (unlike the portrait of Ripon where it is literally just him) and for the lines to somewhat lead into Natasha's face. Again I shot at a quick shutter speed to ensure no shake/everything would be sharp.

For the final image (in the library), I was not feeling inspired by the architecture at all (I forgot my wide angle lens, only brought my 50mm) so I ventured into the reference section where I found the cart you see in the photo, and was interested in it for some reason. I put it in the middle of the walkway, turned it horizontally, and took the photo. Again, I shot with a low depth of field because it is simply what I enjoy, but also because there are/were a lot of distracting elements in the background that I didn't want the viewer to be distracted by.