Painting with Light

After completing the lab for this assignment, I was really excited to go out and try it on my own with my group (Preston Guerra, Christina Manolis, and Lillian Kelly.) We went out to a farm in Millersburg around fifteen minutes away from Columbia and were able to shoot a big tractor as well as massive bails of hay. We got there a little before 8pm, and it was surprisingly warm compared to the weather we have been having. The sky was pretty clear too, which was nice for our photos. We started working with the tractor at first and did a lot of different stuff with gels and strobes. Below is our select for this assignment.

After being run over and chopped up by a tractor one stormy night in 1832, the young girl's ghost returns every dark and stormy night to seek her revenge on anyone who crosses her path. Many people have ventured out to this farm to see if the story is really true. Nobody has ever heard from any of them again.

We shot this with an ISO of 200, at an aperture of f/8.0 on the bulb setting with a 50mm lens. We really liked this photo because of the ghost that is sitting on the tractor. I was lucky enough to be the ghost in all of our takes and it was really fun! I used a small flash to light myself up on the tractor after all of the other lights were painted onto the tractor. I really like how we lowered the tripod down so that the camera is almost looking up at the tractor. This makes it look like the tractor is coming towards the camera. It looks really scary when the camera is on this level. I also like the colors that we used, especially the red for the tractor. Looking back on it the one thing I would have liked to have done would be to add another flash to the seat of the tractor when I wasn't sitting there so it would add more of a transparent look to the ghost. All in all, I had a really fun time with this assignment. Our group also worked extremely well together and we were able to come up with a lot of neat frames. It was hard to choose just one for this assignment! This has been my favorite assignment in Advanced Techniques so far and I'm really proud of the work we produced.

Here are some more frames that we produced.

 

Single Flash Second Take

When I set out for my second attempt at the single flash, I was feeling a lot better because the first time I shot I was able to get a feel of what worked and didn't work. This time I focused more on a bounced flash instead of a direct flash.

Below is the photo I selected for my second take with single flash.

Alpha Phi members Megan Geisz, freshman, and Samantha Gillstrom, sophomore, observe their work at Which Wich during decorate the district on October 21. Different Mizzou organizations participate in decorate the district every year as a part of celebrating the Mizzou Homecoming tradition.


I shot this photo with an ISO of 200, shutter speed of 1/60 and aperture of 6.7 on the daylight setting. I really liked this photo because I feel that the content is a lot better in this photo than my first take and the flash is less noticeable. I also bounced the flash off of a white card, so it made the photo look more even and not as bright. I wish that the flash didn't show up so much in the reflection of the balloons, but I don't think that it is too distracting. The sky also looks really hot because it was really gray that day. Other than that, I was pretty happy with the photo.

Although this assignment was challenging, it really helped me get a feel of how to work with a single flash outside of a comfortable environment. I was really worried about getting good content as well as have a good flash photo, but it ended up working out better than I thought that it would. All in all, I was very happy with the assignment because it forced me to go outside my comfort zone and it helped me learn a lot about single flash.

Single Flash First Take

Taking on the Honest Emotion/ Interaction with a single flash assignment was definitely scary. I was worried because many said it would be a big challenge.

Below is the photo I selected for my first take with single flash.

Westminster athletes Katie Morfeld, middle hitter, and Alex Berry, outside hitter, block the ball in their match against Blackburn College on Saturday, October 17. Westminster defeated Blackburn after winning an intense third game in their match.

I shot this with an ISO of 200, shutter speed at 1/125 and aperture of f/4.8 on the daylight setting. Since my guide number is 110 and I was about 20 feet away, I set it at 5.6 at first. However, the photo looked better when I set it at 4.8. The gym was challenging to shoot in because it was so dark. I was also at an awkward angle because the gym was small so I had to work around that. For this shot I used a direct flash. I liked this photo because not only was the light even on both players, it also showed how they interact with each other during a match as well as how they interact with the other team.

If I were in this situation again, I would try to get a photo with better content. Since I was so focused on how the light looked in the photo, it was hard to also try to get a photo with strong content. I am hoping in my second take I will be able to have a better quality photo with light as well as better content in the photo.

Metal and Glass

In this assignment, I was responsible for working with glass while my partner, Andrew Williams, worked on metal. When I first started this assignment, I wanted to do something with a wide range of colors. I bought many different colors of nail polish and lined them up in a row against the black velvet material on a table. I had a light source behind the velvet and used a white reflector to place more light on the front of the nail polish bottles. I also placed nail polish bottles along with perfume bottles and other glass products on the fiberglass light table. I scattered them around and took pictures of them lying on the table with a light underneath it. I liked how these both turned out, however I felt like I needed something more creative. I looked around at different stores and found neat looking candleholders. I thought it would be really cool to use rubber cement and light them on fire. I also thought making the clear candle holders look red would look neat as well. I used the fiberglass white table and put a light underneath it with a red gel on it. I placed the black velvet behind the two candleholders and used a reflector to light the base of both candle holders.

Here is my favorite frame from the glass assignment.

Two glass candleholders catch on fire in the photojournalism studio on Monday October 12, 2009.


I shot this with an ISO of 200, a shutter speed of 1/250 and aperture of f/6.7 on the daylight setting. I really liked how this turned out becase it shows the shape of the glass. The red gel that I used in this shoot made the glass look really good and enhanced the photo. If I went back and redid the shoot I would try to light the bottom of the candleholders better. Even though they are visible, they are still a a little dark. All in all, I really liked this assignment. I was able to work with different shapes of glass and see what techniques worked in lighting them. I also learned a lot more about how to light metal after working with Andrew on his metal photo. We both worked together and were able to get through the problems we faced when it came to doing this assignment. After completing this assignment I have a better grip on what works and doesn't work when it comes to lighting metal and glass.