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Experimental Photography

(Callum Knight)

Out Of Focus

The experiment that I had to do was to capture images that were in some ways out of focus. The best and easiest way to achieve this was to switch the camera into manual focus mode and use the focus wheel on the camera to change how much the camera was in and out of focus.

This style of photography gave some interesting opportunities to turn everyday things into other things in a way. For example one of the pictures on the right was of one of the lights in the hallways of college. I like this image as depending on how you look at it it either looks like one of the lights or that I covered up some of the lends whilst taking the picture and only left a small opening of light. In some ways it also looks like the moon in a dark sky, which reinforces my point that regular things can look like other things using this style.

I don’t think that my images overall were too great, I could only really find 3 or 4 of them that I actually liked enough to want to use, but the ones that I have chosen I really like. Im not overly fond of this style, as much as I appreciate that there are a lot of opportunities for interesting pictures I definitely prefer other styles of photography more, which Is why I probably will decide against this style when choosing my final three images.

Use this slide to annotate your best image

This image was taken of one of the college corridors using manual focus to blur out the image.

I like this image as the blur has caused the series of lights that are hanging along the corridor to seem as if they are one continuous beam of light.

On the right of the image you can also see the glow of light from the vending machine.

At the end of the picture the bathroom door was open but due to the blur of the image it looks darker and as if the door is open to the outside.

Movement

The experiment was to take a shot showcasing movement. There were a couple of different ways that I could have done this, the first way was to set the shutter speed to a longer time and set the camera on a table to ensure that there was no movement. I would then press the capture button and have the person I was photographing move around a little. To get the effect from the top image I set the shutter speed to 6 seconds and after 3 seconds I got the model to move to another position creating an eerie ghost like outline around one of the positions.

The second image was a combination of two techniques, movement and light writing. At the time of doing this I did not know that light writing was considered a separate technique and thought the the idea of moving a light around and using a longer shutter speed to capture that movement was a great idea. We toyed with a few different light writing images and eventually settled on this one which we were very happy with as it came out very clear despite being in a relatively well lit area already.

The final image is my favourite image of the ones I took, I took the image on around a 4 second shutter speed and let my model walk up the stairs I stood still and held the camera as steady as possible to ensure I capture her movement but at the last second I took a step up creating large amounts of camera shake which caused this image to come out with the model barely visible other than the colour of her top and all the lights that are dotted around the college seemed to shimmer and glitter around the image. I think the overall look was great and definitely came out much better than expected.

Use this slide to annotate your best image

This was my favourite image from the collection of movement shots that I took. I feel that it showcased movement the best out of them all and looked the nicest. The models body has become wavy and has a ghost like feel to it as there is no solid outline around it. The lights from all around the college look the same as the camera movement has made that so, even the light from the roof has added some extra effect to the shot. I feel that this one definitely came out looking the best and allowed me to show that I can execute the techniques to a good standard and complete quality images within a short period of time.

(Photo merging)

To do the photo merging I took images of around 12 different things. The first few experiment shots that I took were less than impressive and didn’t really give me the desired outcome.

The next shots that I took did give an outcome that I was looking for however they recreated the image too perfectly and other than the outside lines you couldn’t really tell that it was intended to be a photomontage at all.

Finally I got to grips with the technique and started playing around with different things to photograph some longer thinner things like the portrait picture in the middle and some on a much larger scale in an almost panoramic style like the image at the top of the page.

This is definitely one of my favourite photography techniques and I feel like I want to challenge myself to do bigger and bigger ones to really see how far I can push the technique.

There were a couple of different ways that I could put together the photo montages the first of which involves opening every image up in a separate Photoshop document and then drag them into one document and sit and piece them together like a digital jigsaw.

Photoshop also has a process in which It allows you to automatically create a photomontage from your images. This way is by far quicker however does not feel as authentic but when it saves you as much time as it does it is hard not to want to do it.

Use this slide to annotate your best image

This image was my favourite photomontage image for a number of different reasons. The first of which being that I like the scale of the image, it took me around 30 separate images to create this outcome and I added a little post production such as drop shadows and strokes.

Another reason that I like this image is that on some of the lower segments of the shot a person was there in one of the shots and then was not there in another shot meaning it looks like their heads are gone.

Finally I like that you almost get an all round panoramic shot of the college as opposed to it just being a single item such as the portrait picture I took, it shows the lengths and possibilities that this technique can be pushed to.

(Reflection)

For this style of photography the first things that caught my eyes were the chewing gum disposal units that were placed around college, these are highly reflective metal containers that were perfect for creating multiple reflections at once as you can see from the image that is at the top of this page.

After some consideration and exploration of the college I realised that in the correct light from the right angle that the picture frames dotted around the college also created some kinds of reflection. After finding a suitable frame I set about taking the shot that I wanted to create and got the outcome that you can see in the second image which shows a reflection of the windows in college from the picture.

The final image that I took for this section of the project was an idea I had towards the end of the time I had been allotted and that was to take a picture of someone taking a picture of me giving an infinite reflection. To do this I turned the iphone camera onto the front camera and took a picture of the front screen giving the shown effect.

I quite like this style of photography as it can make things that are seemingly ordinary look different or can reverse some things when aught in the reflection. The thought of being able to come up with some unique multiple reflections intrigues me but I don’t feel that I will use this style for my final selected images.

Use this slide to annotate your best image

This was my favourite image as in a way it creates an infinite reflection. If you could zoom enough you would be able to see the reflection of the camera in the phone again. Another way to do something similar to this which would have created a more authentic reflection as opposed to this artificially engineered reflection.

The shot is focused well and clearly showcases the idea that I was going for. I f I were to use any type of photography like this I would want to experiment with more styles of this kind of infinite reflection thing, for instance setting up a larger number of iphones pointing at each other to take a photo from a long distance away.