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Experimental Photography

Emily Monsey

Out of focusThis style of photography shows an out of focus image giving it a blurry look which can work really well depending on the subject of the image. I decided to take my photographs of books from the library as I felt that this would give a really nice final look and work really well with the style of an out of focus image. I also thought that the words and images on the pages of the books would work really well with the out of focus look. The colours of the books really stand out which is another thing I loved about using the books as the subject of my photographs, it gives a blurry outline of the objects in the image in a way that it becomes clear what it actually is but doesn’t actually give too much detail which his something I really liked about using this style of imagery. For this style of photography we had to adjust the settings of the camera to ensure that it gave a really blurry look to the subject of the photographs. This was done by changing the switch to manual focus rather that auto focus as this enabled us to set the focusing of the lens ourselves instead of letting the camera do it for us. If we had set this to auto focus this wouldn’t have given the out of focus look we were aiming for with these images as it would have perfectly set the focus for the lens meaning it would make the images really clear and sharp in detail. Setting this to manual focus helped us to set the focus ourselves meaning we could make it as blurry as we wanted which gave it a really nice effect overall.

Use this slide to annotate your best image

This image I feel is my best from this style of photography as it worked really well with the blurring of the text and images on the pages of the books which is what I was trying to achieve with this object.

The colours aren’t very clear in the image which I actually liked as it added to the out of focus look we were going for with this style. However with the other images I had taken of the books the colours were fairly bright which I liked as it shows contrast between the images I had taken.

I tried to make the angles a little different to add contrast between the images I took. For this one I really like that it shows it is a book by the clear lines of the different pages and I also like that it seems that the image is even more blurry as it is furthest away from the lens.

I didn’t want the out of focus style of these images to effect it too much so that it would become impossible to know what the object in the image is so I really like that this image still made it really clear.

MovementFor this style of photography I found it much harder to choose a subject as it was hard to find large groups of people walking or to get close enough to any moving vehicles around college This meant that this was fairly time consuming as it meant waiting around for groups of people to pass, however when they did I managed to capture the movement in a really slowed down way allowing you to see the blurs in the image that are created from the movement of people walking. In the second image I was also able to capture people moving and also someone almost standing completely still which gives a main focus on the image. To create this look for the images and in order to capture movement I had to change the shutter speed. This was changed to a longer shutter speed and I had set mine to f/16 as I found this worked well for the movement I wanted to capture and gave nice blurred effect. I had first set the shutter speed to even longer meaning it would have took longer for the lens to capture the image, however I found this to be a little overly blurred as it wasn’t clear at all what the subject of the image was and resulted in one massive blur instead of showing more defined dots to resemble the bodies of the people walking as well. Next I took an image of one person instead of a group and it enabled me to do a close up shot with the same movement effect on it. I had done this by using the same shutter speed as I had previously used and then physically moving the camera myself and moving the zoom on the lens at the same time which resulted in a really blurry shot showing movement in the image.

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I feel this is my best image as it allowed me to do a closer shot of movement instead of taking one at a distance which didn’t allow me to get as much detail as I would have wanted.

I like that everything in this image is really blurred and it looks as though there is a double of everything as it has doubled the subject and the lights in the background making them look quite stretched.

I also like that you can still see some detail in the original underlining image of the actual person and then the effect has just stretched the original subjects of the image making it look a little different and much more interesting visually.

To create this effect I had lengthened the shutter speed in order to show the movement in the image. I then moved the camera myself and also adjusted the zoom settings of the lens as I was capturing the image.

I had first just tried using the adjusting of the zoom settings and the change in shutter speed, however I had found that not enough movement was being shown. Therefore I then decided to make it look a little more interesting and I actually moved the camera at the same time as taking it to show lots more movement in the image.

ReflectionsI really enjoyed finding different ways to show reflection as I found that the final look and the final quality of the image was very dependant on what you were taking the image of as some things worked really well, however some didn't’ work well at all. I first took a picture of this mirrored object that had found which reflected what was in front of it really well which allowed me to photography it from an angle and show the balcony that has been captured in the image. However this proved to be quite hard to get a really effective final image which made it one of my least favourite subjects to use. I then found that the glass windows also worked really well when shooting from an angle instead of head on as this meant you could get much more of the refection on camera due to the lighting and also what the glass was reflecting. Lastly on this page I had wanted to use sunglasses as a way to reflect light as it appeared to pick up the lights from the ceiling really well. I had originally wanted to shoot this image outside as I felt that this would work much better due to the sun shining on it and actually being able to capture the landscape in the lens of the glasses instead of the lighting. However this wasn’t an option for me as the weather happened to be really dull meaning the sun wasn’t reflecting on the glasses as well as I wanted.

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My favourite image is this one as it the glass was really clear and enabled me to get a really clear crisp reflection from it showing the college and a reflection of a person.

The lighting is really bright in this image which I also really liked as it really helped to capture a clear reflection instead of it being too hard to see which we had found to be the case with some of the glass surfaces around college.

Not much preparation was needed for this image which is also something I really liked as you didn’t need to change lots of the settings to get a good effect for the final image as it was a case of using the lighting and different reflective surfaces to find what works best for you.

I prefer this one from the others I had taken purely down to the clearness of the reflection as none of the others had worked as well as this one and the angle of it meant I could capture more of the reflection also.

Photo montageThis one was probably my most favourite overall to capture as I find the final look of this montages the most interesting to look at. I had wanted to achieve a fairly rough outline of the image as I didn’t want it to perfectly matchup so it looked to clean cut was this is something I personally preferred. To achieve this look for the image we had to take several individual images of a particular scene or subject and then use Photoshop to do the rest and organise them in the final image. I really like that the images don’t match up as it just makes them look much more original and unique. I had firstly taken the pictures of the painting I had seen around college as I felt that this would give a really effective final look and work really well, however although I was happy with the final look I still wanted to achieve a much more rough outline for the image to give it a scattered style instead of being slightly more structured and inline. I found this one to be really simple in the method you use to complete it, however it still gave a really interesting final image. I would definitely experiment more with this style as I feel that I preferred using larger scale scenes such as the top image rather than using a smaller subject as I just prefer the final look that it had given in comparison.

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For this image I ensured that the individual photographs I was taking were much more scattered which was actually much easier to do when using somewhere outside and things like the sky and parts of the car park as it all looks really similar through the lens.

I really prefer eh much more scattered look for these images as I think it helps it to look much more interesting than if it is really exact and structured as this style allows you to create a really rough final look that still has a really effective final look.

This is definitely my favourite image I had taken for this style of photography and possibly even my favourite style to take photographs overall as I find it much more interesting that the others.

I like the effect it had on the colours and the positioning of certain objects in the image. For example the cars in the image got mixed up as the images were combined.