OCA Digital Photographic Practice: March 2014

24 March 2014

Instagram Photographer - nunoassis

I came across this photographer whilst browsing images on Instagram, you can definitely see his architectural eye coming out in his photography, I love the clean lines of the shots and how clinical some of them seem to be. Its definitely a case of less is more.

There is a minimalist feel to his work, he manages to tell a whole story in a picture without anything detracting from it.

http://instagram.com/nunoassis#

http://nunoassis.vsco.co/

15 March 2014

Part 1 Workflow: Your own Workflow 2

Project : A sequence of actions

Exercise: Your own Workflow2

With this exercise I decided to combine it with a trip to a nearby National Trust house.
As with all shoots I readied all my equipment, checked batteries, memory cards and zeroed all the camera settings.

I had been to Beningbrough hall many times so knew the layout of the grounds and where it would most suitable to get some pictures of my daughter Tilly. I have found over the years through that Tilly is normally an uncooperative model and its best to shoot her when she is doing other things, such as at play or distracted by something other than a hulking big camera pointed straight at her.

The one thing that was and always is difficult to predict on the day when shooting outside is the quality of the light.
Because of where I had chosen to take some of the photos the shoot proved to be slightly more challenging than first anticipated. The Bright Sunshine was causing the trees to cast long shadows over the subjects face and to compensate for this I had to use the on camera flash. As I had planned to take the pictures in RAW format I knew with a bit of tweaking I would be able to pull most shots back into range.

Below are the contact sheets from the original Shoot. I originally took 60+ images on the day which I thought was more than enough to whittle it down for a final selection.
As can clearly be seen from the original shoot contact sheets all the photos are pre-edit and pre- selection.
From this series of images that were loaded into Lightroom I set about going through the task of selecting possible images for editing.

Original Shoot Contact sheet 1

Original Shoot Contact sheet 2


Original Shoot Contact sheet 3


Original Shoot Contact sheet 4

Final Image Selection

After my selection of images from the initial shoot I set about performing Edits on the photos I had selected. This involved cropping, changing contrast, exposure settings, etc

Once I was happy with the final edits of the shoot I then produced another contact sheet before exporting the final images as Full size jpg's. As well as producing a set of full sized jpg's I also export a second set of images out at reduced size and quality.
These Web display images are reduced in size and quality in order to conserve space in online storage and aid in display speed when being viewed.

Final Selection full edit Contact sheet 1

Final Selection full edit Contact sheet 2

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

Image 6

Image 7

Image 8

Image 9

Image 10

Image 11

Image 12

Image 13

Image 14

Image 15

Workflow Conclusions

As with the previous exercise having developed and adapted my own workflow and tailored it to my specific requirements to suit the way I work the process itself seems quite sound. Somethings are inevitably going to throw a spanner in the works at some point, this is when having planned your shoot out to start with will come into its own. You will be able to adapt and modify the requirements as necessary.

I think the way my thought process works and the way I approach tasks suits me. I am sure that if this was the first OCA course that I was undertaking rather than the third then my workflow process would be at a more fledgling state than it currently is.

1 March 2014

Part 1 Workflow: Your own Workflow 1

Project : A sequence of actions

Exercise: Your own Workflow 1

So here we go part 3 of my OCA Journey. I think getting started is sometimes quite difficult, well it seems to be for me. I think you can easily fall into the trap of over thinking what needs to be done instead of letting the process flow naturally which is kind of what happens after you have completed a few of the exercises.

So workflow, its strange to see this as the first exercise on part 3 of my course (could have quite easily been part 1 or 2) I think to some extent most people have either consciously or subconsciously developed and adapted their own workflow to meet their own needs to produce various sets of images.

I certainly already had my own workflow that has so far served me pretty well and to be honest is not far off what the book describes.

I will briefly describe my workflow from preparation through to finished image.

Plan - this would involve planning what and where I am going to shoot, may involve a recce to find a suitable location or involve obtaining permission to shoot at a particular place. might also involve determining lighting conditions and possible suitable shooting locations in a particular area. All of this work would be carried out prior to any of the next steps.

Equipment Check - this includes check all settings are zeroed on camera, memory cards have been formatted batteries are fully charged, lens's cleaned, spare batteries and memory cards packed or available close to hand.
Photo shoot - as per your plan in the first step. Ensure you have obtained all pictures required before finishing the shoot.
Upload pictures to Storage device and/or Computer.
Import photos into Lightroom as 'copy as DNG' files into a different working directory to the original files (applicable to raw files)
First sift of images remove any unusable or unrecoverable images
Second Sift, Select images that mach your criteria in your initial plan.
Process and retouch if required selected images and export out of Lightroom to a safe location.
Use images for required purpose, whether its for web display or providing them to a third party etc.
Ensure images are always backed up.

So now I have talked about my specific workflow how did I use this to tackle the first exercise?

As I alluded to earlier it is sometime difficult to get started pick a subject matter or find inspiration etc.
With this exercise my inspiration actually came from my daughter.

She came home and started telling me about an Easter egg competition they were doing at school and how they needed to decorate eggs in any design they wanted. I vaguely remember seeing some designs at the school the previous year and had an idea of what she was after. After talking through various ideas with Tilly (my daughter)she decided that she wanted to recreate a classroom with the children being the eggs.
I thought that this would make a fun and ideal first subject to practice the first exercise.

After a few days of building the school with my daughter it was ready to be photographed.

I had planned what I had wanted to shoot the location was easy,

I prepared my equipment, selected lenses, readied flash units and tripod.

Photographed Eggdrake & Yolkganby Free-range school for around 20 Minutes selecting various heights and distances and even using different lenses to get the pictures I was after.

Once completed I followed my workflow through uploading images to producing the final set.

Was this workflow suitable for the shoot

I think it was, I had decided what and where I was going to shoot from the initial brief. The process itself I think worked very well, the only problem I ran into was because of the lens I had selected initially (70mm 2.8 Macro on a 4/3rd sensor) got me a little bit closer than I had anticipated.
But having a different lens on hand as per my planning I was able to adapt and produce a series of images that were suitable for the assignment.

Initial shoot photos, post production