Manchester

On tuesday 18th february, we went on a trip to manchester, my favourite part of this trip was defiantly the Don Mcullin exhibition. I liked this because Mcullin style of photography is very similar to what i would like to achieve in my own work. i really enjoyed the trip and i thought it was a good day out with my classmates. I wasn't over impressed with the Urbis exebition, we went to the lowery aswell, the advertising section was good but i found the presentation was abit shabby. Overall all the galleries/museams we went to where good and i enjoyed looking at the work, my favourite parts was definatly the Circus exebition and the Don Mcullin Exebition.

we even found a good noodle bar!

Matt :) x

Places -

For the places brief, i have finally decided on my idea, although it has changed drastically from my original one which was to continue on the old working mans clubs, i have decided that i am going to photograph 'Barbers shops' to me a barber shop is a unique place, different from normal hairdressers they seem to have un-official traditions, such as the red and white pole in the window and the que outside the door on a saturday morning, all male sometimes even father and son all there for the same thing. No fuss! No straighteners! No Perms! a truly manly place!

Although there is literally hundreds of these places jotted around town, walking down my local high street i can quite easily walk in to at least 4 barbers, but are they a real barbers shop? a real barbers shop in my eye is a one man show, the shop he runs (or even she runs) full of history, on the walls, the ceiling and the red and white pole in the window, showing the quirky (or dull) personality of the person that runs it. how the scissors are lined up, whats on the walls, what the shop front looks like, what the seating is like, all these points make a barbers shop a barbers shop, and not a hairdressers!

I would like to approach this unit in a similar way i have approached my others, by photographing the individual barber shops, and barbers in there place of work, i'm going to shoot on my 5D mark 1, but i am also considering taking a few images on a medium format camera, i used these on the ND course and loved the results i achieved. I like to photograph subjects head on but i am going to play around with different viewpoints, although my style of photography is mainly directly onto the subject.

When doing my research, starting off i typed into google, all the images you seem to find are very commercial looking, this is what i don't want, i almost want my images to look like they arn't taken for a commercial purpose, to make money and advertise. I want an image to view, that dosen't nessecerialy have a financial purpose but more an image someone can enjoy looking at the history of your local barber shop.

Some examples of the type of work i would like to achieve follow :)....

John Crosley - Barber Shop

An Old Barber Shop

Johnny's Original Barber Shop

People - so far?

Here are some images i have found for my peoples project, i am going to put these in a scrapbook but i thought i would put them on here for the time being. i would like to try and achieve this same type of work for my peoples project, some equipment i think to do this i would need a camera and reflector, maybe even my flash gun depending on the weather/location conditions.

Here are some more images along the same lines as what i have been looking at above, these where taken by Bill Sulivan an american photographer with 2 studios both based in new york.

here is a link to his website so you can view the images more clearly...

http://www.3situations.com/BillSullivanWorks/BillSullivan.html

below, are some images off flickr, these images are again along the lines of how i could maybe present the images, but i prefer the method above, strips of images in sets of 5. or even small individual prints that could work alone or ass a set of work!

Matt :)

Magic Hour

Magic hour is the hour of sunrise/or sunset. Over the weekend i went to southport beach, here i took what i believe to be a magic hour image, the sun was setting, and the light was reflecting on the tiny puddles of water left on the beach when the tide went back out. I took this image as the sun was just beginning to set, therefore i feel it could have been more successful if i had waited fro say another 30-40minuites so the sky had changed colour and the lighting was a bit better.

Camera/Lens Techniques

The lenses and focal lengths that you can have for DSLR camera may vary according to the size of the sensor on the camera, for example a large format camera would make use of different focal lengths/lenses in a different way to say a 35mm camera. Generally, for a 35mm camera (your standard size film/digital) you would expect to anything under 35mm to be wide angle, 50mm a standard good all round lens, that could be used as your main lens on the camera, and 85mm onwards would be used as a zoom/telephoto. handy if you want to take a photograph of a bird but don't want to get too close so that you will disturb it.

Shallow Depth of Field...

Drop Focus...

Focal Lengths...

Shutter Speeds...

Halogen Lighting

For halogen lighting, i choose to use my outside security light, i choose this because its a halogen bulb but i photographed it in a different way to all the other lighting types i had photographed, i choose to use the light fitting its self as the object to photograph, and let the glow of the halogen bulb light up my object.

Fluresent Lighting

For fluresent lighting, i went down to a subway under the m6, i choose to do this because subways are dark dingy places and need to be well lit all the time but at the same time need to be lit with reliable and affordable lighting. I choose to photograph a vent on the opposite side of the lights, I picked this because the grills in the vent looked interesting to me and i like how the light fell on the object.