Self Evaluation

This assignment has been very useful in a number of ways; I have furthered my knowledge of DSLR cameras and studio techniques and I am much happier with working in a studio and using lighting. I have produced several images demonstrating my understanding of depth of field and aperture. I can now confidently choose an aperture that’s suitable for the type of image I want. If I want everything on focus I would shoot around f16/22 and if I wanted shallow depth of field I would shoot between f1.8/f4. I can manually exposure images correctly and compensate for a change in aperture by altering my ISO and shutter speed. For my shutter speed assignment I did a lot of light painting as I have never really done this before. I found it very interesting and can see with practice how some great results could be achieved. I could now combine a studio portrait and light painting to create something experimental.

Overall I think my final studio image reflects what I outlined in my proposal. I think I took a good range of images throughout the shoot and managed to achieve my goal of producing a photo suitable for use in an advertisement for Nike. I decided to shoot in RAW format whilst in the studio so I had the best chance of correcting errors in post production, the trade off was that I had to use two 4gb SD cards because a RAW file is much larger than a JPEG. Once I had selected my final image I edited it in Photoshop and because I shot RAW I had a lot of control over the image and I am very happy with the results.

I did run into some problems in my studio time mainly caused by inexperience with studio work. The black backdrop was quite reflective so in my first few shots it appears grey but I worked around this by putting more distance between my subject, the background and the lights. This meant the light never reached the background leaving with me with a seamless black background and my model exposed. I’m very happy with how this project turned out but I would like to be a bit more experimental in the studio next time. I could use lighting gels and modifiers to create more interesting light setups or play around with different props and lenses to achieve a different style of photograph.