lørdag 17. september 2011

A summary of the two first weeks

Alright. I must be the worst blogger ever! It's been almost two weeks since I wrote something. I have had an incredible rush, but a lot of fun. There is something very special about having to adapt oneself to start studying again after a year on leave. And this is a school that requires something of me, which means I have to work extra hard. However, it is fantastic. That is the way it should be. I simply love it!  

The first week we got several tasks, one of which was to copy or be inspired by an image that already exists. It is of course not possible to copy a picture exactly. (I definitely coudn't do it with the pictures I wanted to use). I chose to try to copy, but with my own twist. One of the pictures I chose was taken by Alex Prager. I'm a big fan of hers. Check out her site! http://www.alexprager.com/ I love what she does with her ​​pictures, and the fact that she uses these strong colors, and that it looks very analog and 'filmish'. Some of her work is partly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, which is really cool I think. 

I chose a picture that she uses in her image collection called Polyester 2007. Here is her picture.


Here is my picture. 


I used my lovely cousin as a model. I cropped the picture a bit different. I'm a sucker for the Golden Section. Her dress is actually white, but I liked this light green on her. At school I got good feedback from the teacher, who said that he almost liked my picture better than the one I was trying to copy. It was very nice to hear! I was pretty happy with the result myself. It was the first time I had taken pictures in a studio, and I did not know how to set the lights, where I would place the lamps or anything! But after some trials and errors, it all finally worked as I wanted. The day after the shoot, we had our first day of a class called 'Lighting' (Lyssetting in Norwegian). The teacher gave us the tour of the studios, and taught us different things about all the equipment we use in conjunction with the light when have our photoshoots there. I realized pretty quickly that I had made ​​some mistakes, and got answers to some of the things I couldn't figure out the night before. It's cool that I made it happen anyways and that I got some good pictures without really knowing too much in advance. Awesome! Here are some more of the pictures I took that night. 




We had some minor assignments as well, like taking pictures with different lenses - and look at how different it is, even if the subject is the same. I'm not gonna post those pictures. I wanna use the most exciting ones. We have also taken pictures outside, where we have used the environment as reflectors and seen the differences between flat and hard light. It's all about the light, and I'm going to talk a lot about light! For that is what photography is. Light. We also made a camera obscura, which was one of the inventions that led to photography. You can read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures of it, since it was the room we sat that was converted into the Camera Obscura. Therefore, it was very dark.

Another project we did was first to write down our very own plan of a photoshoot. The pictures for this shoot had to be staged. It could be an advertisement, fashion photos, etc. We had to create a picture with a clear idea, and document the work flow by showing a plan. I chose to make a pretend commercial for the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud in Norway (Likestillings- og diskrimineringsombudet). Here is the wesite if you are interested http://www.ldo.no/en/ 

My original idea was something totally different, but unfortunately I was not able to go through with it. Therefore, I decided to go for Plan B. Here is the result with or without text. If you translate the text to English, it says the following: Today's man - must be able to handle all kinds of tools. 



This was not taken in a studio, but in a regular building with multiple offices. The day before this picture was taken, I had just bought my first flash ever (and new camera by the way). I did not know how to use it, but I had read the first pages of the instructions - so therefore I had learned to turn it on and off. But it worked really well! I have always been an anti-flash-photographer, and I've mostly used natural light, but this was just great! I was so happy when I saw the result as well. Earlier the same day as I took the photo, I learned some new tricks in Photoshop at school that I used in this picture. When my fellow students and my teacher first saw this picture, they all began to laugh. It was very funny that they liked it! I was very happy with it too. At the bottom of the picture I put the logo of the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud. Maybe they want to use my photo? I mean the logo is already attached. I think I'll wait a while before I call myself a commercial photographer, but it was a really fun assignment

Later this week I had a project where I had to shoot self-portraits and portraits of others. This was the second time I was in the studio, and I felt much more confident this time.

The next post will contain pictures from this portaitshoot. Stay tuned!


 

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