Tanisha campbell A level photography component 2-Unexpected perspectives: February 2018

Work record 1-London Stratford

Plans for shoot

For this shoot i plan to base the photos upon Alexander Rodchenko's work on city streets, so i think that if i go to London Stratford i will be able to take photos that link in with his work. I think that if i base my photos upon high rise and tall buildings i will be able to capture the buildings at different angles and perspectives.

Contact sheet

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

As this shoot was my first shoot, I didn't really have a proper idea in mind for what I was trying to achieve with my photos or how to take them, even though I knew I had to base my photos on unexpected perspectives but at first I wasn't too sure what counted as an unexpected perspective, but eventually I just based an unexpected perspective of buildings as an photo that is not taking from a normal eye-level image. From my straight images I think that the majority of these are unexpected because they are taken from slanted/dutch angles or they were taken quite close to the building at a low angle. I think that I will continue to take photos like these for the rest of my shoots but hopefully capture a larger amount of photos that are relevant to unexpected perspectives.

Straight images

Images to improve

For me the problem with this image is the exposure and the framing. With this photo I was trying to achieve an unusual perspective but zoomed so that I would have a wide angle looking up. However I think that if I had positioned my self and the camera at a lower angle then I may have been able to achieve a wide angle. To improve this photo it would have been beneficial if I had used a tripod, as I would have achieved lower angles which means that I could've focused on the zoom and aperture of the camera for the framing and exposure.

AO2 Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

For this shoot i used my Nikon D3100 camera that i used in all my previous shoots. As this day was very overcast, the lighting was very grey, dull and just generally dark. So because of this i had to shoot with an ISO of 200 which is still fairly low considering how dark it was for the time of day. I used shutter speed of around 1/125 or 1/250 because of the time of day and i couldn't have a shutter speed and lower as the trembling of my hands from me holding the camera would have effected the photos with blur. I did not think that it would have been very practical of me if i had used a tripod because of how busy London city can be, especially on a weekend. However me not using an tripod has effected my work as a downside, as a tripod would have allowed me to keep the camera steady and used slower shutter speeds if i needed to. I used a small aperture of f/16 which allowed me to take photos that had a wider depth of field so that everything was in focus as some of the photos that i took did contain a lot. and I wuld have been able to able lower angles

Edits

With this edit I altered the horizontal and vertical perspective so that all together the photo would have a changed perspective. From doing this edit I made the top and bottom sections of the photo appear slightly larger than the mid-section. I created this edit so that I could add more to the unexpected perspective aspect but I didn't want to go too over the top, so I created a subtle edit

A01- Photographers influence:Alexander Rodchenko

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

I think that with this shoot my photographers influence could be improved upon, because even though I did set out to try and produce work in a similar style to Alexander Rodchenko, I don't think I achieved it. This is because even though I have taken images with common themes and angles to Alexander's work, I don't think it really resembles his work. So this is an aspect that I would like to improve upon for my next shoot.

AO4

I think that as a first this went well, because I was able to capture some good images of unexpected perspectives on buildings, which is my topic so the photos I took are relevant and I think I have taken a few good images especially with the angles and the framing of the photos. However I do think I need to improve upon the aperture that I used for this images, as the types of photos I am taking, I need to use preferably as higher aperture around f/22. However the exposure and overall composition of the photos in this shoot are good. I also think that I need to take more images in my next shoot so that I can experiment with different perspectives and try and my the body of work more cohesive and similar so that aesthetically the photos flow better.

I created a mind map of ideas of that related to unexpected perspectives. So i based my ideas on what i would photograph from an unexpected perspective, the ideas are mainly based on urban areas and household objects as i think that it would be interesting and creative to photograph normal objects that are seen everyday within the house but from an unexpected perspective. I also thought of ideas for objects found within urban areas that people would normally view from an eye-level, so a roads from a birds eye-view. In my mans map i have also noted different types of angles and perspectives that are unusual to normal everyday life or normal photography angles like eye view, so i mostly thought of angles that are either look up or down on the subject of the photo that i would take, or from a slanted view ect. I think this mind map will be highly influential on my work and my shoots because whilst i was creating this mind map i was thinking of the areas that i would find the objects that i have noted in this mind map, so that i would be able to chose where to locate my shoots easily, and what i would actually be photographing within these shoots.

This mind map is of ideas for the topic materials, i have chosen this topic as my back-up topic for unexpected perspectives. From reading the exam question paper i came up with numerous ideas of different types of common materials, so wood, metal and clothing materials. If i was to carry on further with this topic i would base my shoots upon materials that go together well so that the shoots would individually be cohesive so for example one shoot could be on hard materials like wood and metal and then my next shoot on soft materials like fabric. So i think with this topic it would be nice to experiment with the different textures of the materials too and to do that i would need to use different angles to actually capture the texture of the material.