Narrative photography sounds us in our everyday lives. So the design brief for this assessment is to tell a story through a sequence of coloured images. The images must feel as one collection of work while still looking unique and different from one another.

The chosen phrase for my narrative “on the journey, we meet”  is simple and sweet. I wanted to show how the little things in life bring us the most joy. In a world that is more connected than ever with the internet and social media, people have never felt more alone than now. In our busy lives, it is often overlooked at how important making time for relationships is. Even if it is as simple as sitting down with a few friends for a cup of coffee or milkshake and having a chat. The simple message behind the narrative is the happiness that is brought by getting out and about, meeting up with friends, eating delicious food and doing fun activities.

I used the phrase “on the journey, we meet” because the storyline was the same but kept things open for the characters I was going to shoot. As one of the hardest parts of shooting this story was organising times for the models. It was quite a challenge as people have busy lives and eat street is only open from Friday to Sunday night. Unfortunately, my original model Amy got sick before the final shoot so I had to organize another model last minute to replace her.

Working on from my WIP my plan was to have one female as the main character and she meets either a friend (female) or her boyfriend (male) at Eat Street. The shots will all still be the same and tell the same story. Yet, the 5th shot was open for a male or female character. 

I visited the location 5 times to plan, practice and shoot for the final images. It allowed me to test out my new lens, work out the best times to shoot because of the lighting and crowds and to test the type of shots that worked and did not work. So when it came to the final shoot with “Yuki” the new model I knew exactly what shots I needed and what props and location I wanted her in. This made it really efficient to plan out my final shots.

I took a series of location shots on a day without the models there. I went to Eat Street early on a Friday as that has the least amount of crowds. The models could not make it early on Fridays because of work commitments. But it was the best time to shoot images of the location as people were not getting in the way of the shots. I found the most challenging part of shooting at Eat Street was dealing with the crowds and trying to time the shots so you do not get people in them or in the way of people walking by. There were so many I location photographs I wanted to use but was able to cut it down to, two of the best images. 

As the shots were taken on different days and they were taken as the sun was setting all the colours of the shots were very different. Using Lightroom I edited the colours to intentionally to all have similar tones to make them feel apart of the same collection. 

I was very happy with my overall final shots. I was able to produce 7 images that reflected my goals from my WIP. I was able to capture the dreamy, bokeh aesthetic that I was inspired by and able to tell a narrative of a girls journey through Eat Street. You can see how shooting at Eat Street has that modern take on vintage diner photography and it shows how the simple things in life make us the happiest.

Output and Printing

A printed image is a moment of time captured and saved for people to appreciate and remember. It is one of the best ways for photographers to share their work. However, the colours you see on the screen will always look different from what is printed. Shadows can print too dark and whites can be overexposed, often making the image lose detail. There can even be a shift in the tones of the colours. Therefore, there are many methods to make what you see on the screen resemble the print as close as possible.

RAW Conversation

In order to prepare RAW images for output, they must be processed using RAW conversion software. Raw conversation software comes in many forms, such as those from your camera’s manufacture and third party companies too.

This to consider when printing:

• Print size and dimension
• Colour Mode
• Resolution
• Paper/print media

Print size and Dimension

Print size and dimension is one of the most important things to understand and get correct when it comes to printing. It can often be quite confusing for new photographers as there is a lot to remember and every printer and print job is slightly different. You need to get the right dimensions for the photograph relative to the size of the paper that is being printed on.

Colour Mode

The colour mode has one of the biggest impacts of how the colours will turn out when printed. It is critical to always check what colour mode the printer uses as each printer is different. The colour modes include grayscale, RGB and CMYK, among others.

Resolution

The number of pixels in an image is referred to as the resolution. The resolution is defined by the width and height and the number of pixels per inch (PPI), e.g 100mm (width) x 200mm (height) and 300ppi. This is critical to know when printing to make sure you get a sharp high-quality image and no pixelation when printing. Pixelation happens with an image gets printed to large for its resolution creating small squares in the image (its because you can see the pixels that make up the image).

Paper/Print Media

The paper/print media will always impact the colour and texter of the final printed photograph. Print media comes in a range of sizes, thicknesses, and finishes which all change the final colours. A gloss finish will make the colour pop and look shiny where a matte finish soaks in the colour and makes it look more flat and dry.

Colour Management

There are so many factors that affect the colours of a printed photograph but the colour management will essentially determine if the image will print close to what is seen on screen or if they will come out incorrectly often looking muddy and lose in quality. In this case of printing our images, we first need to make sure our image is set using the correct colour space to suit. In this case we are printing sRGB photos and one day to manage this colour is by Colour Calibration.

By downloading the Print Profile of the printer you can use it to correctly color calibrae your image. Colour Calibration aims to adjust the colour of a device to the known state of the printer. Using Photoshop or a colour reader you apply the preference to your file. The reader uses software to adjust the image to best suit the printer.

Portraits

Portrait photography captures the personality of the subject it can be of just one person or a group of people. It can be one of the most challenging forms of photography because the subject needs to appear natural whiles reflecting their personality. Quality portrait photography takes years of practice and skill.

The two most important factors to consider when choosing a lens for a portrait is:

• Focal Length
• Aperture

The focal length has the potential to either compress or distort your subject. The aperture will blur the background to make the subject stand out and removing unwanted distractions. It makes the subject the cleat focuse of the image.

Best Portait Lens

The best portrait lenses tend to be a bit longer which are around 85mm – 1350mm with a wide maximum aperture, e.g f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8. This is because the longer lengths are more flattering for the subject as it makes them look thinner as the facial features are more compressed and enables a shallow depth-of-field.

The Eyes

When shooting portraits the most important part to focus on is the models eyes as this is the part of the image people will naturally look at first. Therefor, it is the most important part to have in focus.

Lighting Portraits

The following are some of the best ways to light a portrait photograph:

• Artificial Light
• Window Light (if you do not have sufficient artificial light) as it acts like a soft box
• Reflections or an external flash to light up the shadows of the face
• Position the subject in such a way the light falls on the face from the side
• Have your subject facd the light source

Backgrounds and Portraits

The background plays an important role in all portraits as the subjects face and eyes are the key elements in the photo. It is important to have a background that does not interfere or distract from the subject. This is one of the main reasons why portraits are shot on a wide aperture for lots of backgrounders blur.

Yet, in some cases the surroundings may need to be considered to bring our the personality of the subject.

Studio Lighting

The hair light adds detail to the subject’s hair and lifts their head off the background. It is normally places above and behind the subject. Having a hair light is particularly important if the subject has dark and against a dark background.

A background light, lights up the background. This adds a sense of depth to the photograph and can be positioned to draw attention to the subject. It is common to use the background light to create a vignette of the subject.

Accent lights are added to illuminate to emphasise a small area of the subject or to show texture. These are normally placed behind or to the side of the subject. A hair light is a type of accent light.

Lighting Modifiers

Modifiers are lightening accessories that modify the shape, strength and direction of the light. It does this by bouncing, reflecting, diffusing and/or blocking the light.

Common modifiers include:

• Reflectors
• Grif
• Barn doors
• Scrim
• Umbrella
• Softbox
• Beauty Dish

Some common lighting setups that are used in portrait photography are:

• Butterfly Lighting
• Loops Lighting
• Rembrandt Lighting
• Broad Lighting
• Short Lighting
• Split Lighting
• Back Lighting
• Clamshell Lighting
• Wraparound Lighting

Fun Fact: Rembrandt Lightning

Rembrancdt lighting is named after the iconic painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. He often used window lighting when he painted his portraits. The idea is to create a small inverted triangle of light on the subject’s cheek that is opposite the lightsource.

Studio Lighting Setups

A basic studio lighting setup to use is the three point lighting set up. The three lights are:

• Main/key Light
• Fill Light
• Accent Light (e.g hair light, background light)

Weekly Activity

This week our class activity was to shoot different types of portrait shots. I tested 3 diffrent types of lenses to see how it would effect the shots, a 30mm, a 50mm and a 100mm lens.

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The above shot was shot on the 30mm lens. Each shot was taken in the same position. You can see how this one has the full body of the subject.

This shot was taken on the 50mm lens (in the same position). You can see how it is cropped in a lot more.

Lasting this shot was taken on the 100mm lens. This is the classic portrait lens and you can see how tight it is on the persons face. Despite how tight the shot is I am standing quite far back.

This last shot was for a bit of fun. We used a face and a gold reflector to creativity a “glamy” beauty shot.

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These last shots were also very fun to take. We set the camera up on a tripod with slow shutter speed to create light painting.

A pitcher tells a thousand works and narrative photography is all around us. “photography has become the universal language understood by people everywhere.” – Martin W. Sandler

Narrative photography is telling a story with pictures. It is also referred to as storytelling photography. It is visual storytelling and often takes the form of a photo essay.

Narrative

A narrative can be linear or non-linear. A linear narrative present stories in a logical manner by telling what happens from one point in time to the next. They follow a straight line starting at the beginning to the end of the story. Non-linear narratives pieces together a story where scenes may be presented outside this single logical sequence.

How to create a photo essay

The key steps to creating a photo essay are:

• Find a subject
• Research the story
• Make a shot list

World Press Photo Awards

World press photos awards are know for this narrative photography. Some of the narrative photography ranges from a single image to a sequence of images. It is a perfect place to look for good inspiration and examples of some of the best work put there by the most talented photographers.

Digital Story Telling Contest Winner 2019

Portraits Third Prize Winner 2019

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Photographer: Lusia Dorr

Weekly Activity

This week we had to practice telling a story with photographs. So I decided to practice shooting something similar to my final assessment. I shot Amy going to the bakery. I am really glad I got to practice this as I found my 50mm lens was way to tight. I had to stand really far back to get the shots I wanted.

After shooting in class with my 50mm lens I went and did research on buying a 30-35mm lens to get the shots I wanted.

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I really enjoyed doing this activity as it really helped me practice story telling. It helped to give me ideas of how I want to shoot my final assessment.

Narrative Photography Sequence

A pitcher tells a thousand words. So narrative photography can range from just a single image to a collection of still photographs. Telling stories through visuals surrounds us in our everyday lives. Therefore, the design brief for this assessment is to tell a story through a sequence of coloured images. The images must feel as one collection of work while still looking unique and different from one another. The narrative does not necessarily need to be linear but it must tell the story of a chosen phrase.

On the Journey, We Meet

The chosen phrase for the narrative is “On the Journey, We Meet.” Which is about the protagonist Amy, a young woman and her journey through Eat Street. The phrase is a play on words with the chosen location of the narrative. Eat Street is a beautiful night market located on Brisbane river in Northshore. It is rich in food, culture, and live entertainment.

The narrative shows how the simplest things in life bring us the most joy. In a world that is more connected than ever with the internet and social media, people have never felt more alone than now. In our busy lives, it is often overlooked at how important making time for relationships is. Even if it is as simple as sitting down with a few friends for a cup of coffee or milkshake and having a chat. The simple message behind the narrative is the happiness that is brought by getting out and about, meeting up with friends, eating delicious food and doing fun activities. These days people can get so caught up with living through their phones and their online presence they can forget the importance of real-world connections.

The narrative follows Amy’s night through Eat Street and her engagement with the people and the place around her. The simple things like meeting up with her friends, eating delicious food and watching live entertainment are so much fun and brings her so much happiness.

Low Light and Bokeh

The photo collection is to have a fun, dreamy vibe to represent the message of the narrative. It will be shot from blue hour into the night at Eat Street which is full of beautiful lighting. The aesthetic of the images will have a Brandon Woelfel inspired feel as he is a portrait photographer known for his lowlight and bokeh work. The following images are of some of this stunning work.

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Brandon Woelfel is a New York based portrait photographer known for his stunning low light portraits with lots of bokeh and neon vibe. All his work has a consistent style and iconic look while his images remain diverse.

Food, Friendship and Lifestyle Shots

As this narrative tells the story of Amy’s journey through Eat Street the images taken need to show her living her best life. Being outside, amounts the atmosphere, having fun with her friends, enjoying food and they events that take part in the night. The following images are the type of action shots that will need to be taken to tell the story. They are all shots of people eating and doing activities.

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The above images where taken by photographer Matt Dot Garcia who is best known for his creative portraits. His work if fun, colourful and different and reflects a modern take on a vintage style. The milkshake and candy shots really resemble vintage diner shots. Especially with the grainy texture in the images.

New Take on an Old Narrative – Vintage Diners

This narrative of food and friendships/relationships are inspired by old school vintage diners. Diners were a known place to meet up with friends and loved ones and sharing food and drinks and having a good time. Something so simple was so much fun! With the lights and food, the location of Eat Street reflects a modern-day dinner. It has a modern-day look but still reflects a vintage style.

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Location

Eat street is an of one of a kind dining, shopping and entertainments location. There are 180 shipping containers located on the Brisbane River with stunning views of the city.

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Plan

The shoot is to happened over a 2 weekends to allow plenty of time to practice, experiment and get the perfect shots. There is limited time to shoot as we need the “blue hour” lighting. I found when I did my test shots of the location “blue hour” goes very quickly and the location becomes to dark.

The shoots will be done on Friday and Sunday as these are the less busy than Saturdays. The shoot will start at 4:00pm as there are less people there at that time. All the night neon shots will be taken after 7:30pm as there is the crowd is starting to leave by then. There will be a break for dinner from 6:30pm – 7:30pm as this is the peak of the busy times.

The narrative is to have 5 – 7 shots of shots of the following:

• Establishing shot
• Portrait Shots
• Action Shots
• Detail Shots
• Closing shot

New f/1.4 Lens

To achieve the the astatic of this narrative I need a leans with a really low aperture. So I have done reacher to the best 50mm lens and best 30mm lens that will suit my budget and have the best quality. I went to many local Brisbane camera shops and tested their lenses and got their advice on what will work best for me. I ended up perching the following two:

• Sigma Art 30mm f/1.4
• Canon 50mm f/1.4

As these where new lens I needed to experiment with them to find the best settings.

Equipment list

The following list is of all the equipment needed for the Eat Street shoot:

• Camara – Canon 700D
• 50mm Lens
• 30mm Lens
• Prism Crystal
• Camara Bag

Test Shots

I decided to test the location and as it gives me time to learn and experiment. I can see what works and what does not work.

Establishing/Portrait Shot

Here are two shots that could be used to “establish” the location and “introduce” the protagonist Amy. Her head is looking over her shoulder to almost tell the audience to come and follow her on her journey through Eat Street.

Character Development

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Amy is to meet her friend at Eat Street. I found introducing another character another character while making the shot look ascetic quite challenging. So I am glad we did this test to try a few different things.

Food Shots

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Shooting with food was also much more challenging that I thought. The fairy floss melted in 2 minutes because of the humidity so we had to shoot it really fast! So we tried the donuts and they where much easier to work with. I found when the girls where sharing the food it the photos looked much more candid and told the story of friendship.

Bokeh Shots

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These are some test shot of me play with my new 50mm f/1.4 lens and my 35mm lens f/1.8.

Neon Vibes

These shots

Dog friendly Location

Eat street is a dog friendly location. So I took some following test shot of dogs to practice my skills and see if they would fit into the narrative.

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I found shooting the dogs quite challenging as they moved a lot and my camera is very old and slow at focusing. These were three of my favourite test shots.

Light

Lighting is the most important part of successful photography. It is needed to develop the image as it controls brightness and darkness, but also creates the tone, mood and the atmosphere. The word “photography” came from the Greek root word phōs (light) and graphé (drawing) and together it means drawing with light.

There are 4 characteristics of light:

• Quality of light
• Direction of light
• Colour (warm and cool)
• Brightness and intercity

These all greatly affect the mood and emotion

Lighting in photography is broken up into two categories:

• Natural light
• Artificial Light

Natural Light

Natural light is the light that comes directly or indirectly from the sun.

Advantages

• Powerful
• Free
• Varies according to weather
• Suitable for many different subjects

Disadvantages

• Hard to control
• Changes according to weather
• Changes according to time of day

Artificial Light

Artificial light is any source of light that does not come from the sun and it falls into two categories, flash/strobe and continuous.

Advantages

• More Powerful
• Good power-to-size ratio
• Daylight Balanced

Disadvantages

• More complicated to use
• Has a cost

Strobe/Flash vs Continuous

Artificial light can be broken up into two categories, strobe/flash and continuous lights. Strobe/flash lighting is a burst of light that ranges from small portable battery powered lighting packs to large to mains-powered monolight units that are used in studios.

Continuous lightning is “what you see is what you get” lighting. You turn on the lights in a studio/work space and they stay on. They can normally be easily adjusted and know for being much easier to work with than flash/strobe lighting. There are three main types of continuous lights:

• Fluorescent
• Tungsten
• LED

Working with Light

There are many different factors that influence natural light. The best time to take photos with natural light is early in morning and late afternoon/evening. This is know as “golden hour” or “blue hour.” These are the best times as the light is the softest and not creating hard, unflattering shadows. Here are some of the factors that influence natural light:

• Time of day
• Colour Temperature
• Weather
• Angle/direction

The direction and angle of the light source in relation to the subject has a major influence on the look and feel of the photograph. These are the following angels:

• Front/direct light
• Side light
• Back light

Direct light is when the light source is lighting the subject up from the front. It tends to be quite harsh and unflattering as there are minimal shadows and creates lack of depth. Side lighting is when the light source is to the left or right of a subject and tends to bring out textures and adds form and depth. It is quite good for portraits and landscapes. Back lighting is when the source of light is behind a subject. This can create silhouettes and gives the image a dramatic feel.

Weekly Activity

This week in class we took images with different angles of lighting to see how it would affect our images.

Side Lighting

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Back Lighting

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Assessment Experiment

This week I played with editing the photos we took in class with Lightroom and Photoshop. I made the tones more of cool pink and blue in preparation for my assessment. I learned a lot about colour correction in post-production.

Colour Temperature

Lighting has all different colors from warm red and yellow tones to cool blue tones. Even natural light from the sun will change in colour depending on the time of day and weather conditions.

White Balance

The human eye is so developed we do not normally notice the change in warm and cool lighting. However, the camera sensors are not this advanced. So to capture perfect white balance you need to use the cameras inbuilt white balance settings.

Measuring Colour Temperature

Colour temperatures are measured in degrees Kelvin. Warm colours like reds and oranges are actually cooler in temperatures ranging from 2000K. Where cooler colours like blues and whites are much higher in temperatures, ranging over 7000K. Regular daylight is around 5500K and tungsten is around the 3200K mark.

White Balance Settings

There are three white balance settings available to use:

• Custom/Manual
• Auto White Balance
• White balance presets

Weekly Activitie

This week’s activities we shot with studio lighting and outdoor lighting and played with the different white balance settings to see how it would affect our images.

I found it was much easier to shoot with the studio lighting as it was much easier to control. When we went outdoors to shoot the weather would change quite quickly so the lighting would change just as fast. You had to be quite with your camera settings to keep up with the ever-changing lighting.

Studio Lighting

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Cloudy Lighting

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This week we played with white balance.

Shade Lighting

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Sun Light

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Assessment Experiment

This week I played with colour in post-production to practice for my final assignment. I really like the neon vibe and want to create something like this for my final assessment. So I shot this image of one of the students on campus and put my phone up to my lens to create the refection.

I then played with the colour in Lightroom to practice turning the colours from warm red tones to cool pink tones. I really enjoyed this experiment!

For this assessment, we need to choose one word to be our theme. I have picked luminance as I love beautifully lit photography. I love looking at all the highlights and shadows in a photo. So I want to create a collection of portrait shots that all have unique lighting.

I am inspired by portrait photographer Bandon Woelfel. I found him on instagram last year and feel in love with his work. He is one of the main reasons I got into photography and got a 50mm lens. The following images are some examples of this amazing work.

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I am following the hashtag #Blackandwhitephotography, #Blackandwhiteportrait and #portraitphotography on instagram and found these two examples of work that I love. I want to do something similar to this in my shoot.

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I have been looking at heaps of tutorials on how to create interesting portrait shots. I love how simple objects can create such amazing shots.

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Overall, I am very excited to experiment with this them. It will be a lot of fun and I can not wait to see my final shots!

Week 5- ISO

ISO is the last part of the exposure triangle that we learned about. ISO refers to the light sensitivity of the camera. The higher the ISO is the brighter the image is.

ISO is measured in numbers starting from 100. The following is some examples of ISO measurements.

• 100
• 200
• 400
• 800
• 1600
• 3200
• 6400

When there is sufficient lighting it is always best to shoot on the lowest ISO possible (ISO 100) because when the ISO increased it created noise/grain in the image.

Grain/Noise

You can see in this image how increasing the ISO increases the noise in an image. It is technique to shoot in a high ISO if you want an old grainy look but these days it is best to edit that style in post production. It is also possible to edit a lot of the noise out in post production too.

The Correct ISO Setting

But there will be times when the location is too dark so the ISO will need to be turned up to lighten the image.

High ISO:

• Low number
• Cleaner image (little to no grain/ noise)
• Maximum image quality

Low ISO:

• High number
• Lots of grain and noise
• Lowers image quality

Weeks Activity

This week it was class activity was to shoot using the ISO settings. It was dark and rainy so it was the perfect lighting to play with the settings.

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You can see out of all the images I shot of Hannah this was the best settings. It was the clearest the the colours looked nice.

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You can see how turning the ISO up makes the image really bright an full of noise.

In this image I put the ISO on the highest setting and the shutter speed really fast. That way the image was a nice colour and you can see how a high ISO creates lots of noise.

This is a close up of Hannah eye in the previous shot. You can really see how noisey the image is.

I learnt a lot in this weeks challenge. This technique will really help me when it comes to taking more night photographs. I really understand the exposure triangle now and feel completely confident to shoot on manual mode for the first time!

Aperture

Aperture is the next element we learned in the exposure triangle and it was my favorite part. With my new 50mm f/1.4 lens I learned how to create beautifully a stunning depth of felid.

F-Stop

Focal length also known as ‘f-stops’ is how aperture is measured

Depth of Field

Focal length is also known as ‘f-stops’ is how aperture is measured. It refers to the size of the hole. An aperture with a bigger hole lets in more light and has more depth of field vs a small hole which lets in less light and has less depth of field. The bigger the hole size the smaller the number.

Aperture is measured in:

• f/1.4
• f/2
• f/2.8
• f/5.6
• f/16
• f/22

This is an example of a shallow depth of field vs a large depth of field.

Distance Between Camara, Subject & Background

The distance between the camera, subject and background will determine how much depth of field is in the image. This is shown in the above image.

Weekly Activity

I loved this weeks activity as we shot on the aperture priority setting. This is now the setting I use the most. I have so much control of the depth of field and it is fast as I don’t need to keep adjusting my ISO or shutter speed.

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In this set of 6 images, you can see how adjusting the aperture changes the depth of field. My favorite shots are the first too with a large depth of field.

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I loves this set of images as you can really see how the background changes and comes info focus as you change the settings of the F-Stop.

Theme Exsperimenting

This week in class I started playing around with the theme of luminance. I saw this light pattern and ask my classmate to pose in it. I loved how it looked on her face because it made a really unique portrait shot.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this weeks challenge the most! I love playing with depth of field and how beautiful it makes the photos look.