I’ve been in the photography workshop for the past couple of weeks now. I didn’t want to be in it, but then again, I didn’t know what other intensive I’d belong to. So, I took on the photography with as much passion as possible.
Elisa, Michelle, Matt, Anika, and I were given the necessities to work. The necessities consisted of: flash unit (three lights, the power pack, a grid, a soft box, and two umbrellas), two stands, remote flash triggers, a backdrop, and Luke’s Canon 20D. I’ve never actually done studio work, so this was new to me too. I did know the techniques we used. Below is a photo of Jei where half his face is lit and the other half is in shadow. To set up this shot, the camera is placed in front of Jei with the light directly to his left. This style is called split/hatchet lighting. It’s more commonly shot on males, but it happens to be my favorite for anyone.
The first few days with the set-up, we focused mainly on lighting, but as we were getting used to it, we lost it along the way. We started to become preoccupied with personality. There’s a huge difference between a good photo and a bad photo. A good photo has good lighting and personality as two major components, as a bad photo lacks those two qualities. Below (photo on top), you could see how the lighting was off and basically how the photographer kept clicking the button without any thought of positioning the lights or making the background and subject look good. To the right you can see how the background is perfectly black, the light was positioned specifically for this shot, and you are still able to get a personality for the subject. For the shot shown on the bottom below, we placed the grid over the light, which is used to diffuse the light so it’s not as harsh. The diffuser gives the photograph a softer feel and reduces the chance of “washing/blowing out” the subject. We use the term “washing/blowing out” for when the light is too harsh and eliminates the skin tone making the photo white washed.
After using the photo techniques we’ve learned with the lights for our photo intensive, a few of us decided to make our individual project based around natural light. I’ve battled with photography a lot recently, mostly because I feel my passion drifting away from me, but doing photography outside the studio reminded me why I love it so much. You’re given the ability to freely walk around with a camera, which opens possibilities rather than being stuck with an artificial light within four walls. We also used color, which changes the factors. I feel that when you use black and white, you have no choice but to capture the personality, as apposed to color where you capture fashion, location and a smaller percentage of personality.
I used my friend, Jaclyn, as the model for the “rebel out of school” theme. Don’t be fooled by the good photos we decided to display, because we did end up getting photos with harsh light such as the one on the top (shown below) and photos with not enough light on the face, like the one on the bottom (shown below).
Michelle did the photoshopping on the final four photos. I don’t have a copy of photoshop, so my skills were limited when it came to editing. Photoshop can take practically any photo and transform it into a masterpiece. The top (shown below) is the before and the bottom (shown below) is the after. Michelle photoshopped the strands of hair that were in the way, she dyed the roots of the hair back to red, she removed all blemishes to the skin, she reconstructed the corner of the eye to delete a red shape, added the effect to make her skin look like pearl, and saturated the photo to enhance the overall shot.
-ashleycoppolino
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