Second Shoot

For my second shoot I wanted to focus on playing with light in a different way that Hard and Soft lighting , but mostly focusing on how light casts shadows off of objects and how the shadows trail of in different directions and angles. I also wanted to focus on using Mid Key lighting where i wanted to create a warm and soft mood but I wanted desperately wanted to bring a bit of mysterious feelings which can be brought from the darkness that will portray from my image. For the location of my image for my second photo shoot, I wanted to be located within a park, so that it would be able to me a lot of green and grey colours. Green and grey together for me creates a very gloomy and mysterious feel, but by having the sun reflecting onto objects or an object will create a very happy and calm feeling. For the settings for this shoot, I needed to make sure that the image wasn't over-exposed or under-exposed,  so the way that I wouldn't get this is by experimenting around with the settings. For my first shot I used the settings of 1/ 125 Shutter Speed, F 18 Aperture and ISO 100, so from this I knew that I had to keep playing around with my settings to get the great Mid Key settings I possibly could get.

My inspiration to do a photographing the idea of shadows was Brassai, because his images were all very inspiring,one example of his work that got me to do the idea of shadows and this picture is from a whole variety in one of his pictures called 'Paris By Night'. I like this image because the image has the same Mid Key lighting as I was wishing to create within my test images and I like the way that the contrast between the black and the white really does create the feeling of happiness but you can also feel the mysterious and gloomy feeling. This image also makes your eye attracted to it because the way that the shadows of the objects are reflecting in the same way as the other objects it creates an illusion of shapes and angles.







When I went out to start shooting my second photo shoot, I had to be very careful due to all the children running around, this can be shown in a couple of my test images. This was because I had to respect parental views and try and find somewhere else to photograph that had great lighting and shadows structure. When I found the location where there was great shadows curling around some trees and proceeding onto the pathway. I knew that this was the spot whereabouts my shoot will begin. At first when capturing my images, they were coming out out too over-exposed and this shows the image is too dark and makes it Low Key. From viewing these first images, I then dramatically changed my aperture up two F stops, but now the images were coming out too under-exposed. The way that I can tell that my images are either under or over exposed, is by the distance between the High Key lighting and the Low Key lighting which can be seen going  from the trees on the left to the right to the path.

Here are a couple of examples of my over-exposed and under-exposed images:

Over-exposed Image

Under-exposed Image

Here is my contact sheet to show my experimenting and investigating through this shoot :

Shooting this photo shoot, I kept on changing my position so that I would have a huge variety of images to show my progression through my shoot and also showing how I investigated with different heights and different angles to succeed and get my final image. I wanted to make sure that through my images you could see quite clearly the shadows protruding onto the path and disappearing into the darkness. This is where it will show my determination to make the image Mid Key and get the best image that I possibly could get. During this shoot, there were many advantages and disadvantages when shooting a photo shoot in a park. One advantage was that there was a good composition of trees on the left hand side where the sun was hitting the trees and this was making the shadows and creating a more interesting image. One disadvantage is that with all the shadows from the trees from the left, there was also other shadows reflecting over some of the shadows that were protruding onto the pathway. Due to this it was slightly annoying because there was no way that I could possibly change this or get rid of them out of my frame. However from this obstacle, I could change this for future planning by noticing the problem at the beginning of the shoot and this wouldn't affect me in the long run.

Here is an example of the other shadows reflecting into the shadows of the trees:

Shot 14

Throughout my whole of my images, I have chosen this image because I find that the composition of this image is very precise and all the shadows that have been protruded from the trees can bee seen heading into the path of darkness. I also chose to have this image as my final image because I have been able to capture the right lighting which was Mid Key lighting and I am very proud to say that I have succeeded photographing with shadows and the way that I have been able to capture the right settings to produce the right Mid Key lighting and still have the colours really complimenting each really well. The settings For my final image were shutter speed 1/ 125, aperture F 14 and ISO 100.

Final Image

If I could do this photo shoot again, I would choose to do it in a place that was less busy and where it had less objects that could catch shadows that would ruin my shot for my overall final image. I would also choose to wait until the sun was further down in the sky, so that the picture would look slightly warmer to the eye and not so harsh. But overall I think that this photo shoot has been successful and that I am happy to put this image in as one of my final images for 'Illuminance'. I feel like this because i like that way that I have taken inspiration and similar style of Brassai's ' Paris By Night' image. I think about this in the sense that the series of shadows are the same and in a repetition with each others' trees shadows.