Kiola Assignment

When trying to think of my theme for the Kiola trip, I at first seemed to struggle to come up with any ideas.  I then thought that I could try panning with flash. I had attempted panning with flash in one of my location classes and was really happy with the results, for the first time I had ever done it. I imagined that there would be lots of people around Kiola that I would be able to pan and achieve some really cool shots. When we got there I wanted to test it out so I got Andrea to move past my camera, so that I could pan her. Unfortunately I was finding it quite difficult to keep the subject (Andrea) in focus and sharp.  After many attempts there was only one image that ended up ok. This is when I began to think, I should change my idea. Changing my idea was probably for the best anyway as there weren’t as many people around as I thought there would be.

Here are some examples of my attempt at panning:

Had trouble keeping the subject sharp, although I think this image ended up looking pretty effective.

Still having trouble getting it sharp



Finally got Andrea's face sharp. This was the best result I was able to get. Unfortunately she is a little over exposed.

Hopefully we will be learning more about panning with flash in class, as i would like to be able to get this right. :)

To come up with my final idea I thought about the actual place we were at – Kiola is at the beach. I then thought about what the beach is to me? How do I see the beach?

When I think about the beach, I see sand, waves, sea shells, rocks and seaweed. Big open views of the water and long stretching beaches.

Because this assignment was about trying something different, I wanted to do the opposite to my original thinking. Instead of taking big open landscape photos of the beach, I wanted to get in close and photograph what makes up a beach. This is when I decided to do ‘Textures on the beach’.

My idea of ‘textures on the beach’ is to involve the beach and its surroundings; pathways to the beach, rocks around the beach, sand, patterns and objects.

Here is my final selection for ‘Textures on the beach’:

This is an image of a blue object washed up on the beach, the line running through the corner is where the last wave washed.



Moss on a rock at the beach.

A mushroom I found along the path to the beach.





Rocks on the beach, with different patterns and colours from where the water has washed them.

Location Workshop task - Using the Monobloc

Task - Make three portraits using the sun and the monobloc light as your two light sources. The monobloc light is to be balanced with daylight. The sun will backlight your sitter.

• The first portrait will have a flash to daylight ratio that is too even, thus your flash will overpower the existing light.
• The second portrait will not have enough flash to balance with daylight, so the image will be too dark, and thus unbalanced.
• The third portrait will be 'just right'.

When attempting this task, the day wasn't as sunny as we would have liked it to be, which made it harder to complete as i couldnt easily get the bright light behind my subject.

Here are the results:

Portrait 1:

Monobloc overpowering existing light.

Portrait 2:

Monobloc with not enough light (this was hard to acheive as there wasn't a strong backlight).

Portrait 3:

Light balanced just right.

After we had finished the task, Prue, Cristy and I stayed back for a bit longer to play around with the monobloc. We wanted to play with corporate portraits and backgrounds. We were also talking to Belinda about how at some shoots we may need to work with some difficult backrounds. In the next couple of images you can see how to acheive a nice portrait by just using the corner of a brick wall.

Here are some of the images that I got:

Week 3 Research Questions

This week’s research for location is more about the use of flash, in this case a monobloc unit, as a main source with daylight being used as a fill source.  In other words, correct exposure will be based on the flash and daylight will be underexposed by two stops.

§   Daylight exposure is affected/controlled by your choice of shutter speed and aperture.                True / False?

§   Flash synchronisation is affected by your choice of shutter speed.             True / False?

§   Flash exposure is affected/controlled by your choice of shutter speed.         True / False?

§   You are photographing a subject in daylight where you wish the flash to be the main source and the daylight to be the fill at two stops less exposure than the flash exposure.
Procedure;

1.        Using a light meter (as opposed to “oh I don’t know, any old exposure will do because I’m lazy or confused from a night out”) you calculate the ‘correct’ daylight exposure to be 60^th @ f32.

2.        Set up your monobloc as a main source and adjust the output and/or distance (and using your light meter) until correct flash exposure is f32.

3.        Describe the resultant lighting if you exposed for daylight together with the flash on these settings.

        You would get a double exposure.

4.        Describe how you could now reduce the daylight exposure by two stops without affecting the flash exposure.  Hint: don’t even think about touching the monobloc unit for this, the answer is much simpler.
You could increase the shutter speed by two stops to 1/250 sec which is still in the flash sync range. The flash exposure will then remain the same because of  its fast flash pluse speed and the background will be reduced by 2 stops. 

5.        Having done this, now describe the resultant image in terms of what the subject looks like and what the background, which is lit by the daylight, looks like.

                                Correct Exposure