Saturday 2 November 2013

7: Key and Fill Lighting

Studio set up 1

For my first studio set up I chose to use four studio lights; two lights at the back to be the fill lights and two key lights on either side in front of the subject. The back studio lights had reflector umbrellas and the front studio lights had soft umbrellas on.  
Using 100 ISO and 1/125 shutter speed, I used a light meter and measured that I would need F/20 aperture.   



The fill light is very easily shown in these photographs as the background is pure white with no hint of shadow or grey. 
Another reason why there is no shadow from the sitter is  because they are stood about 2-3 meters from the white backdrop.  
I like how the background is pure white, it gives the images more clarity and  more emphasis on the subject rather  than the background.

Studio set up 2

This time I only used two studio lights and chose to use soft boxes rather than umbrellas. I wanted to see what difference this type of lighting technique would make to the images I took on the other shoot.  
I still used 100 ISO and 1/125 shutter speed. I measure the aperture using a light meter. I chose to set the flash to 6 on the key light and that gave me an aperture of F/16 on the mid-tones of the sitters face.
With my fill light I chose to set the light level to 5. I used the light meter again and got a reading of F/11. There is a half a stop difference between the two apertures and because of this I rounded the aperture up to F/20.



(Sorry Charlotte)
These are two of the images I produced using this lighting technique. 
As the name implies (soft box) it produces a very soft lighting effect on the subject. The face isn't overwhelmed with light and you can clearly see the contours of the subjects face. 
But what I don't like is the dirty grey background. There may not be any shadow which I am happy about, but I would have preferred the white backdrop to appear white on the photographs. To get that effect I guess that I would have to use the other two studio lights with the reflecting umbrella like in my first studio set up. 

Friday 1 November 2013

6: Gallery Visit

The White Cloth Gallery and The Leeds Gallery 

These are two art and photography galleries that are situated in Leeds. 
Along with the rest of photography course, on Thursday the 31st of October I visited these two galleries.

We firstly visited the Leeds Gallery where they were hosting an exhibition called YPONE. This exhibition displays photographs from a range of different Yorkshire photographers. All the work is produced in Yorkshire and are of Yorkshire.
It exhibited a large selection of different photographers from a range of photographers.
In total there are 15 photographers.
Andrew Goodall
Brian Larkman
Chris Hopkins
Chris North
Chris Oaten
Daniel Pape
David Speight
Graham Cook
Ian Beesley
Jerry Hardman-Jones
Joe Stenson
Karl Wilson
Robert Norbury
Sharon Harvey
Steven Cox


These are just a few of the photographs from the exhibition that I really admired.

 Daniel Pape - Ready to Go
Sharon Harvey - Pine 
Joe Stetson - Mansion Stairs




And this last piece by Brian Larkman entitled Repeater Station Paint Floor. We also got the pleasure in meeting Brian as he had come to rehang his work.  All of Brians work that is displayed in the gallery are images taken in old disused buildings. Brian talked about how in the photographs he takes he looks for uniformity and structures, for example a window frame. The work he produces is also printed out on a huge scale with immense amount of detail. Brian spoke about how he able to produce images in this way and said that he used a mosaic technique. He took pictures of each section and then using a computer software his stitched all the images into one to produce a large detailed image.

   

After visiting The Leeds Gallery we then went to The White Cloth photography gallery. At the white cloth they had an exhibition of work by Tom Stoddart called Perspectives.
The work exhibited are just some of the many impacting photographs that this photojournalist has produced. 
Stoddard has been on the forefront of many of the worlds most historical moment, such as 911, the fall of the Berlin wall and the HIV pandemic in Africa. 
His work as well as being documentary also supplies a huge amount of emotion. As well as the images he produces tell a story they also make you the viewer feel empathetic towards his subject.

911


The fall of the Berlin wall