Exercise 5.1 - A narrative picture essay

For this task I had to choose an event and create an essay with pictures only. In other words, take right pictures in right place and put them in right sequence. I decided even no to bother specifying the exposure values for this task, as the main point of the exercise was to tell the story of he event. So, here it is...

I have chosen a local bikers festival for this task. The whole event has started from the the main square of the city Narva, which is in north-eastern part of Estonia. Over 1500 bikers come there once a year from al over the Europe.

They made a tour around the town all together, showing their bikes to all the public interested in the event. 

 

     

When taking these pictures, I tried to use panning technique as much as possible, to have the object frozen and background blurred, showing the movement of the objects.

After the town tour all bikers parked on another square, where all public could go around and explore different kinds of bikes and scooters, take pictures of cool bikers, have a chat with them, as k questions, if they were interested in knowing something about bikers experience.

 

 

  

As was a bit limited by the format of blogspot.com, I could not put the shots in the right angles. And as part of bike festival, there was also exhibition of retro bikes and bikers accessories. However, I removed these pictures, as they did not fit nicely into the whole sequence and did not add too much to the story.

That's basically it... how it was this summer at Narva bike festival...

Assignment 4 - Applying lighting techniques

The purpose of the assignment was to apply different lighting to the same object in order to show different properties of the subject.

There were 5 different properties to show:
1. Shape - stressing the edges and with minimum focus on the details of the object
2. Form - show as much of volume of the object as possible, playing with shadows
3. Texture - showing more of the details of the object
4. Colour - playing with exposure settings, show as much colour of the object as possible

Though there were different options of using artificial light during this part of the course, I decided to use more of natural lighting and play more with background and shadows together with the sun light.

For this assignment I have chosen the white flower Calla as a subject and went to the seashore to use natural shadows and sand and water as a background for the pictures. I have also made a couple of shots inside and with artificial light to practice a bit more of different lighting.  

For all shots I have used my macro lens Tamron 90mm f/2.8. For a couple of shots I also used flash Nikon SB-700 with diffusing filter on it. For all pictures the white balance was set at daylight and ISO 200 applied.

1. Shape

f/4.0; 1/4000 sec;

f/4.0; 1/4000 sec

f/3.5; 1/3200sec

On all three pictures the background contrasts with the object in a way to stress the shape of the object. However, I would say that the first two shots work better for showing the shape, because there is more of the background seen on the shot and the f/4.0 allows to have edges sharper and stress the shape of the flower the best.
I would choose the second shot as the best one, because there is minimum of the details and the angle of shooting shows the shape of the object the best.

2. Form

f/3.2; 1/100 sec

f/3.2; 1/125 sec

These shots were taken inside and the flash with diffusing filter was used here. I put the flower against the sunlight, added some blue and green colours to the background to stress the contrast and highlight the volume of the flower. Because the sun itself created too harsh shadows, I used the flash with a filter to diffuse some of the unnecessary light. I have also experimented with shutter speed here. These two shots seem to give the best results. And the second one with shutter speed of 1/125 sec seems to work the best, because it gives slightly more shadows, giving more volume to the object.  

3. Texture

f/4.0; 1/4000 sec

f/8.0; 1/2500

f/3.2/ 1/500 sec

Here I experimented with both lighting and background to show texture in different ways. On the first picture the texture is mostly represented by the background. Water and sand together give nice impression of the texture surrounding the object. The slight shadow on the white part of the bloom also gives some sense of texture. On the second picture I came possibly close to the object, decreased aperture to f/8.0 in order to show the texture of the bigger area of the surface, and here i focused 100% on the texture of the bloom, ignoring the background.  And on the third picture I made the aperture possibly large (f/3.2) in order to give a depth of field that would be enough to feel the texture of the central yellow part of the flower. I also used the flash with diffuser to avoid unnecessary shadows that would distract attention from the main focus area. I still doubt about using the flash with diffuser in this case.

To me all three might be counted as pictures representing "texture" in different ways. However, the second one seems to work the best, because the texture is shown not by some small part of the image, but by the image as a whole.

4. Colour

f/5.0; 1/4000 sec

f/5.0; 1/4000 sec

f/3.5; 1/500 sec

For the last part of the assignment I tried two different ways to bring out the white colour of the flower. On the first two shots I tried to use the purple dark background that would help to highlight the white colour of the flower itself. I used the aperture of f/5.0 in order to make the edges sharp enough to be in contrast with purple and green colours. I could not decide, whether I like the horizontal or the vertical option of the shot more and published both for the assignment. On the third shot I did it the other way around. I made aperture bigger (f/3.5), used flash with a diffuser and used longer shutter speed of 1/500 sec. In this way, there are no details (because of depth of field caused by big aperture), no shadows because of flash and diffuser, and the whole picture is light and soft, which in general creates the sense of white colour and purity. I think that the third picture works the best for this assignment. 

Though I did not use too many special means for this assignment (special diffuser, foils, incandescent or fluorescent light), I tried to show as much as possible by sing natural light and flash unit. I also tried to show the needed properties by experimenting with background.

The part 4 in general was very useful for trying different lighting techniques and experimenting with different tools to reach some special results.    

Exercise 4.14 - Shiny surfaces

For this exercise I had to experiment with a shiny subject. I have chosen a silver color mirror as a subject, black box for the background, tripod, macro lens Tamron 90mm and a tracing paper fixed in the form of cone on the lens. I also used LED torch for lighting.

The first shot I took with a light next to the camera, without any additional tools.

90mm; f/3.2; 1/5 sec; ISO 200

The result was amazingly bad. Image was definitely overexposed and the black background does not seem to be black at all.

Then I fixed a tracing paper on the lens, so that the wide part was sitting around the object and was not seen in viewfinder and took some pictures with light at different angles, adjusting the exposure. 

The first two have been taken with the same exposure as the first one. The light was placed on the right side. The black is still not black, and there is nothing interesting in this shot at all.

90mm; f/3.2; 1/5 sec; ISO 200

90mm; f/3.2; 1/5 sec; ISO 200

The next four shots have been taken with slight variations of lighting angle and experimenting with exposure.

f/5.6; 1/15 sec

f/3.5; 1/5 sec

f/3.5; 1/5 sec

f/3.5; 1/5 sec

As it is seen, slightly changing angles of light, it is possible to influence the reflection of the subject and the background. On some of shots it is darker than on other shots. 

Also, what I found quite complicated in this exercise was focusing on the subject.

Using the tracing paper on the lens is a good techniques, when it is needed to highlight some reflection or suppress some of the tones, reflections or avoid unnecessary shadows. The angle of the light is also important, as on any other picture. 

Out of all shots I liked the one taken at f/5.6 the most. I think, it gives the best depth of field and the best combination of reflection and background. 

Exercise 4.13 - Concentrating light

The task implied experimenting with different spot lighting tools to show different ways of lighting small subject or some part of the subject.
Though for this exercise the wider angle lens would probably work better, I decided instead to use 90mm Tamron lens and experiment with different flash options.

For the first picture I used LED torch for spot lighting from the back and white balance set to sunny day. As there was no flash attached and longer shutter speed applied, I also had to use tripod.  

90mm; f/2.8; 2 sec, 

The second shot has been taken with built-in flash and camera set on automatic Macro setting. The use of the flash saved some shutter speed, but the shot itself looks flat.  

90mm; f/5.6; 1/125 sec; 

Then I put the flash Nikon SB-700 on the camera. The results are significantly different from the built-in flash. The tones of colours differ, the shot itself is not flat, and the white balance seems to be different. Also, the aperture has automatically adjusted from f/5.6 to f/8.0.

  

90mm; f/8.0; 1/125

As I was not happy with white balance I saw on the previous picture, I have put the incandescent light filter on the flash and changed white balance setting as well. This has not changed the exposure values, but the colours of the subject and background look different.

90mm; f/8.0; 1/125 sec

For the final part of the experiment I have fixed a tube around the flash (with filter on) in order to concentrate the light of the flash more on the subject itself and put background in shadow. And it is seen that the bottom part of the shot fell into the shadow.

90mm; f/8.0; 1/125 sec

The task is showing that there are different ways of concentrating the light, and using flash is one of the options.

Exercise 4.12 - Contrast and shadow fill

The task was to take some pictures with different means for reflecting the light. For the task I used the following tools:

• diffuser (the same that was used for previous exercises);
• white card (made from the the piece of cardboard and two layers of white printing paper);
• reflector (shiny and dull sides of the aluminum foil);
• LED torch 

The first shot has been taken without diffuser, with a white card on a distance of 1m from the subject:

Light without diffuser; white card - 1m distance

The light is obviously too strong here, the subject is a bit overexposed, and shadows too harsh. 

The second shot has been taken with diffuser, white card on the same distance:

Light with diffuser, white card - 1m distance

In this case the shadows and lighting are more natural. Though more of the watches rim could be seen, the contrast with background is not obvious here. 

For the third shot the white card has been moved 0,5m closer to the subject.

Light with diffuser - white card - 0,5m distance

Compared to the previous shot more details of the rim are seen. Closer position of the white card enables to reflect more light back to the subject.

For the fourth part I covered the white card with a shiny side of the foil:

Foil (shiny side) - 0,5m distance

The difference compared to the white card is not that obvious. However, the contrast between shadows and background is better, when using foil.

For the next shot I turned the foil to the dull side facing the subject.

Foil (dull side) - 0,5m distance

Compared to the shiny side, the dull side of the foil makes the background of the subject a bit darker.

The next two shots were made using teared off piece of foil:

Foil (teared off, shiny side) - 0,5m distance

Foil (teared off; dull side) - 0,5m distance

Teared off foil is definitely reflecting less light and creates different contrast of shadows. And in the same manner, the dull side gives less contrast than shiny side of the foil.

With different tools different options for shadow fill and contrasting are possible. The closer is white card to the subject, the more light it returns, and the more contrast can be reached.  Different variations of foil will give different effects on the shadow and contrast. 

Probably, using macro lens and quite a small subject was not the best choice here. The effect should be seen better on bigger subjects, such as human faces, bigger still-life compositions.  

Exercise 4.10 - Lighting angle

The task was to take 11 pictures of the same subject, lit through the diffuser from different angles.
This exercise I did using the same diffuser as for the previous one. All pictures were taken with the same settings of the camera: 90mm, f/3.2, 1/3sec, ISO 200. The interesting thing is that I used LED lamp and the best white balance setting for this kind of lighting was Direct Sunlight.

For the first part I took some pictures of the subject lit from the different sides (lamp on the same level with the subject).

Light in the front 

Light from the side

Light from the back side

Light from the back

For the second part I put the lamp in a position of 45 degrees in relation to the subject and took the same number of pictures from different sides.

Light in the front (45 degrees angle)

Light from the side (45 degrees)

Light from the back side (45 degrees)

Light from the back (45 degrees)

For the third part I had to take three pictures taken with lighting on the top of the subject.

Light overhead

Light slightly in front

Light slightly behind

There is a number of observations that I have made by doing this exercise:

1. Lighting from the back of the camera gives the smallest number of shadows. In some occasions the subject might be too flat.

2. Lighting from the side might give interesting shadows, depending on the object. It is always worth trying different angles of lighting. Out of all these pictures the one I like the most is the one taken from the back side under 45 degrees angle. It puts the subject in the shadow, just leaving eyes and some contour seen on the shot, and it also create a nice shadow and ray of light in the background. 

3. All three parts show, that shooting straight from the back is a bad idea, the edges are not highlighted, the subject is not seen, and the background is overexposed. It is the same like shooting against the bright sun.   

The overall conclusion is that depending on the subject and the impression you want to create by the particular shot, the lighting angle will be different.

Exercise 4.9 - Softening the light

For this exercise I had to take two pictures of a still life arrangement - one with naked tungsten lamp and the other with diffuser.
As I don't have a professional diffuser, I tried to make one myself. For this I used a big picture frame and white backing paper. Two layers of the paper created a needed level of transparency.

Because I could only make a small diffuser,  my composition should also be from very small objects. I used a small sea shell and a couple of small stones from the sea. The sea salt I used as a background for the objects. I took these shots with my macro lens Tamron 90mm.

90mm; f/4; 1/10 sec

90mm; f/4; 1/25

As I can notice, the colours without diffuser were a bit more yellow. Diffuser has taken this unnatural yellow tone away and shadows became more obvious. Also, the shutter speed was also changed from 1/10 sec to 1/25 to keep the same brightness on the shots.