Shoot One
Shoot Plan
For my first shoot, I plan to start of with an overall idea of the environment by going to a nature reserve and taking images of different aspects, which reflect the modern day environment. I am going to take images of landscapes as well as still life images when it comes to plants etc. I am also going to work on my camera skills and work with the lighting when taking the photos. This shoot will be a starting point in my project to give viewers a literal meaning of taking images of the environment.
This is my first shoot of the project; I took these photographs at Summerhill, which is a nature reserve in Hartlepool. I waited until the sun started setting/ late in the day before I took the images in this shoot because I wanted to experiment with the natural lighting as seen in the contact sheets. When taking the photos, I used a Nikon D3100 and I have maintain my strength of taking a decent quantity of images, also, I think that the images are quite strong and I will be able to expand on this as the project progresses. Throughout the shoot, I tried a number of techniques to vary my images; this included taking landscape images as well as natural still life - getting as much detail as possible in my images. If I was going to do this shoot again, I would focus more on the still life images of the plants and get more focused images, I would also concentrate on taking images of the sunset and the focus of the sky when the sun is setting rather that shooting images of fields.
think that this image is successful as the natural lighting really compliments the main object in the image. When taking the photo, I was experimenting with the lighting and decided to capture the light when it was behind the object, and I think that this has allowed me to capture the details of the flower. Furthermore, because of the angle at which I have taken the image and where about the lighting is, there are no shadows surrounding the objects in the image, however I believe that the main object that the viewer can see, is in fact shadowed by the sun as no colours on the flower can be seen very well, however, again, I think this compliments the image. The concept behind this image is that nature is becoming shadowed in our environment today and the drooping parts of the plant show that mankind is slowly killing all parts of nature within the environment. To develop this image further, I think that I could have possibly took the photo at a different angle so that the whole plant was shadowed, also I think that if the background was all sky, the it would maybe allow more lighting into the image.
I also think that this image is successful because the composition of the images allows the viewer to see the contrast between how the environment is being taken over by mankind. This is because I have taken the image of the trees and sunset with is natural and nothing to do with man, however I have taken the photo at the angle which allows the viewer to see a pylon which has been placed there by man, this shows the contrast between man and nature and illustrates how the natural environment is becoming endangered. Within the image, the point of focus is definitely the pylon as this is the object within the image that is different and not supposed to be there.
In this image, I think that I have been really successful with the composition because in the background, the viewer can see the man-made pylon with the wires going across the image, and in the foreground the viewer can see clearly focused leaves (main point of focus) which are shadowed by the light illustrating that people do not pay enough attention to nature, but because the leaves are in the foreground, this shows that we, as humans, should be focusing our attention on nature rather than creating more things to destroy it. This image was taken outside allowing natural lighting to be used and so no flash or artificial lighting was needed for this image, or any image within the shoot. If I was to improve this image, I would maybe experiment a bit more with the angle at which would capture the best image.
The style of this image is very symbolic of how mankind is imposing on the natural environment and taking over the natural landscape. This can be seen by the pylon being the point of focus in the image and all of the flowers and bushes being part of the background and unfocused. With this image, i have tried to create a disturbing mood to trey and make the viewer realise when mankind is doing to the environment, I have tried to do this by dimming the lighting and I have added some noise to the image to create this sense of mood. Also, the natural lighting in the image has allowed all of the objects colours to be visible within the image; I think that the lighting is part of the success for the image. With this image, I have experimented with the depth of field, which has involved changing the aperture setting quite a lot and I have also experimented with the lighting and angle of view. Making the image successful has included successful composition, representing the ideas of the shoot and the acceptable lighting.
From this shoot, I have developed my ideas so that I am going to illustrate a different aspect of the modern day environment. From this shoot, I have maintained my strength of the quantity of images I have taken and I think that the quality of these images are quite strong, especially for a starting point in the project.