Format festival, getting involved

After finishing off the Saturday shop in Derby last week, i made a point of visiting some of the venues for the Format international photography festival, lots of interesting images to look at... not sure I get some of them or the reason behind the thought process, but for me that is a great reason to take time out and stretch the grey matter.

Another area to view and get involved on a personal level is to visit the website - Mob Format.

Under this Mob Format area you can upload your personal photos to be shown online, six themes to chose from, the best uploaded images (ongoing process) will be selected by a jury panel and exhibited in an evolving exhibition throughout the festival, i have had a go and so far my email in box has stayed empty...

On the beach at Crosby

One hundred life-size cast iron figures have been placed along the beach at Crosby, Liverpool, the collection created by British artist Antony Gormley, the art  installation stretches for 2 miles along the Beach with each sculpture standing in isolation looking out into the sea and at high tide many are completely submerged.

New bit of kit

Just bought a new bit of kit, a Kenko Teleplus MC7 DGX 2x Canon AF Teleconverter.

This is a cost effective way to increase the abilities of my 70-300 mm lens without the expense of purchasing a more expensive telephoto lens, I will be test driving the new addition this weekend when I try to capture an image of the Terra Marique unloading a transformer at Preston.

Ass 207 - Task 1c - Portraiture gallery

the final selection of 10

Ass 207 - Task 1c - Portraiture selection

first selection

Intentions/purpose of the photography to be undertaken :-

For this photographic session I am going to take a series of portraiture shots of Lee in his work clothes, during this photographic shoot I will focusing on the head and shoulders, I might also try and incorporate some work props in to the session.

Reasons for selection of theme (including inspiration from the work of others) :-

I have been looking at the images of Ian Winstanley, he seems to be able to capture the personality of each individual sitter the use of strong lighting technique and good composition helps to create great portraiture shots time after time. I will be using his shots as an inspiration source to try and improve myself during this session.

The photo imaging equipment and medium that will be used and why :-

For this photo shoot I will be using my Canon 500D camera, 18-55mm lens, shutter release cable and a hot-shoe adapter linking the camera configuration to the studio lights, during the shoot I will use a single Barn Door light, by using the door reflectors panels I can control the direction of the light and how it falls acrosss the Lee, I will also use silver light reflectors to bounce light back at my sitter.

Techniques that will be used and how they will help convey the visual message :-

For this photographic session I will be moving the light source to alter the way in which the light falls across the sitters, I will also move the position of camera from time to time to try and capture different viewpoints and to see how this alters the image composition.

Once I had discussed and it had been agreed with the tutor we set-up a black Colorama background in the studio, I wanted to keep the background as dark as possible so black background was always going to be the choice. The photographic session lasted just over an hour and quite a lot of shots were taken during this time.

Once I had downloaded the images from my camera I was able to take a closer look at each individually shot, once I started the selection process I graded the images to help narrow down my choice to a selection of 45 images, the chosen images had to meet with the following requirements; good focus on the face, balanced lighting, good posture and composition, the selected images were imported into Lightroom where I was able to batch processed them. Once I had exported the images from Lightroom in to a new folder I reviewed the images once again and eventually made a selected of just 12, these 12 images were then opened in Photoshop ready for the next stage. 

The selected images were opened and copied acrosss into a new file which had a layer mask and picture keyline, each of the images were then reduced or enlarged to fit the picture area so that they would have a co-ordinated look and consistent size, once I was happy with each image I then individually applied some layer filters to help create the bleached look I was hoping for, the final part of the process was to save each image individually as a Hi-res and Low-res file ready for up loading to my blog.

the chosen 12

Eadweard Muybridge Pioneer

exhibition booklet and ticket

During a trip to London over the holiday season I visited the Tate Britain to view an exhibition about the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, I had just recently watched a documentary about the life and carrier of Muybridge and had found it extremely interesting, to view his photographic work and the equipment he used  myself was an opportunity not to be missed.

Muybridge was an photographic pioneer who exploited commercial opportunities continually throughout his carrier, his innovative approach to photography helped capture American and European culture in the 19th century and his pioneering work on animal locomotion pictures propelled him to international celebrity status.

This was an exhibition well worth the time to visit.

Eadweard Muybridge 8th September - 16th January 2011, Tate Britain.

Ian Winstanley photographer

Ian Winstanley is a commercial photographer working in the Midlands and throughout the land, he started working in the music industry and has since moved professions to become an accomplished photographer.

Working for nearly 15 years in many photographic areas such as reportage, landscapes to lifestyle portraiture, either on location or in the studio, for me the images that really stand out are some of his portraiture shots, the way he lights the subject and how each image is cropped adds to the individual image.