min·i·mal·ism Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. Steve Jobs: “Minimalism is simple, boring and easy”
Foreword By Dimitri Baltzopoulos
Welcome one and all to my portfolio. I am a photographer from a very small town called Winterley consisting of about 100 people, it features on the BBC weather broadcast every Christmas due to the fame in the name. My love for being involved in the creative arts started in the first year of A-level where I started at Sir John Deane’s college in Northwich. I was doing A-levels in Maths, Physics, Product Design and Photography. By far my favourite subject was photography which is why a bought myself a Canon 500D, I was none the wiser that this DSLR also did video so I was also started making edits of my friends bmxing. I did all my editing on Mac which is why I was also very interested in Graphic deign to do with logos, branding, the image of companies and how I could expand upon them to use in my work and certain techniques like minimalism to best express my work. I hope that this portfolio will be visually very successful, it was designed using InDesign. The aim of this book is to present my work in to way that most illustrates what I have done for this unit and will demonstrate this in the best way. Throughout this unit I have been doing the brief of weather however a have organised and tailored my work to fit into that categories of the seasons; spring, summer, autumn and winter. There will be some shoot that aren’t directly related to weather however they will relate to the season like fireworks aren’t particularly weather related however they are typically associated with autumn and wrapping up warm. Most of my shoots have taken place in and around my town because for weather and macro photography you don’t really need to stray far to find a dramatic scene. Sating this however there are a number of my shoots that have come from France and America so there will be a mixture of cultures to find lurking in these shots.
Autumn Fireworks
Inspiration Richard Kempton This photo conveys a sense of the autumn feel because we associate fireworks and bonfire night with the cold and wrapping up warm. There is no rule of thirds or any other compositional techniques incorporated in this photo. The firework takes up most of the frame in this shot. It is probably 2 or 3 fireworks that are actually in this shot but the will have exploded in the same spot so that Richard would be able to put them all in the same final image which would give the impression or illusion that it was one very large firework. I think that he used a long exposure time of a round 20-30 seconds and an ISO of about 3200 so that the entire motion of the fireworks would be captured and they would be well lit with the sky being pith black instead of stitching together 3 different photos in Photoshop. In my opinion this was a very successful shot because of its raw simplicity and the very rich colour contrasting with the deep blacks of the sky.
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Outcome
Self Review Subject matter: I feel that I achieved very well the feeling of autumn in this final shot because I decided to use a wide-angle lens so that I could capture the people in the foreground watching the fireworks with hats and scarves on which conveys a sense of cold to the shot. It also shows the amount of people that are watching the fireworks display. Formal elements: In this shot I tried to use the compositional technique of the rule of thirds even though the photographer in my inspiration section didn’t, I just felt that it made the shot more appealing because it shows that I have thought about how the composition will work with the final edited image. I think that my compositional efforts paid off. There is a slight orange tone in the corner of the image, which was from the bonfire that was happening at the same time as the fireworks. Admittedly it does look a bit out of place and does contrast with the cold feeling that was intended for the image. If I where to go out and do this shot again I would definitely not make this mistake again and I would do this by using a slightly narrower lens to just get the fireworks in or just go somewhere that wasn’t having a bonfire. The colours in this image came out very well even before editing which I was very pleased about because I was expecting to have to have the sky slightly lit in order to get the full colour of the fireworks. The sparkles where another surprise, I didn’t think that they would show up at all which they didn’t very much before editing but they came out well after editing, I was a bout cautious not to over do it on the editing to make the sparkles show but I think it was very subtle. Process: In the end I didn’t stitch any photos together in Photoshop, the fireworks where perfectly the light intensity so that I could have an exposure time of 30 seconds but still be able to keep an ISO of 3200 so that the fireworks came out very well. there is no depth of field in this shot because I was shooting at F/11 just to balance the exposure and ISO but unfortunately his meant that I wasn’t able to achieve any depth of field. I didn’t find this to be a big problem because at an exposure of 30 seconds the people in the foreground where always moving so you wouldn’t notice any depth of field.
Autumn Sprakers
Inspiration Jo Neville There is a particular part of this photo that interests me; it’s the actual sparks coming from the sparkler. I think that these look very interesting and can show up very well in photos. This photo from Jo Neville is very well exposed and very well focused which will probably be the hardest part of achieving a very high-quality sparkler photo. The only thing that I probably will not incorporate in my photo.
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Outcome
Self Review Subject matter: I feel that I achieved very well the feeling of autumn in this final shot because I decided to use a wide-angle lens so that I could capture the people in the foreground watching the fireworks with hats and scarves on which conveys a sense of cold to the shot. It also shows the amount of people that are watching the fireworks display. Formal elements: In this shot I tried to use the compositional technique of the rule of thirds even though the photographer in my inspiration section didn’t, I just felt that it made the shot more appealing because it shows that I have thought about how the composition will work with the final edited image. I think that my compositional efforts paid off. There is a slight orange tone in the corner of the image, which was from the bonfire that was happening at the same time as the fireworks. Admittedly it does look a bit out of place and does contrast with the cold feeling that was intended for the image. If I where to go out and do this shot again I would definitely not make this mistake again and I would do this by using a slightly narrower lens to just get the fireworks in or just go somewhere that wasn’t having a bonfire. The colours in this image came out very well even before editing which I was very pleased about because I was expecting to have to have the sky slightly lit in order to get the full colour of the fireworks. The sparkles where another surprise, I didn’t think that they would show up at all which they didn’t very much before editing but they came out well after editing, I was a bout cautious not to over do it on the editing to make the sparkles show but I think it was very subtle. Process: In the end I didn’t stitch any photos together in Photoshop, the fireworks where perfectly the light intensity so that I could have an exposure time of 30 seconds but still be able to keep an ISO of 3200 so that the fireworks came out very well. there is no depth of field in this shot because I was shooting at F/11 just to balance the exposure and ISO but unfortunately his meant that I wasn’t able to achieve any depth of field. I didn’t find this to be a big problem because at an exposure of 30 seconds the people in the foreground where always moving so you wouldn’t notice any depth of field.