Assignment 2A « :: Digital Photography & Imaging

Improvements to my previous assignments (part 1) November 17, 2008

Posted by jhchen in Assignment 1, Assignment 2A, Assignment 5.
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After going through this module, though it was quite tough at times with the tight project deadlines and presentation every week, I feel that I have learn a lot from this module and i am able to take better shots now with better composition, angles and especially exposure. Thinking back, it was really not easy initially when i started out. I still vividly remember the monotonous shots that I have taken.

Throughout the course of module, I have been always reviewing on my previous assignments and was hoping i can improve on them but didn’t have the time to upload to the blog. Sorry for that. =)

Here are some of the shots that I have improved. Feel free to comment on any of them.

Assignment 1

Subject Element: Colour (Title: The Bright Side of School)

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Location: Walkpath from the central library to COM1 (near LT15)

For this shot, as the title suggestion, I wanted to portray the bright side of the school. Being a student, studying is our top priority. Most of the time, students are rushing from places to places to attend lesson and thus not noticing the bright side of our school. I also hope that this shot can help to bring the awareness to observe the surrounding and enjoy the process instead of just study, study and study.

Assignment 2

Subject Element: High Key (Title: Innocence)

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For your information, the baby girl in the photo is my niece. For this shot, I wanted to use the low key effect to enhance the innocence of kids. My experience from this shot teach me that it is not an easy task to take a clear nice shot of small kids because they keep moving around! To achieve this, it took me multiple shots in order to get the angle and feeling i wanted to portray. Nonetheless, it is a nice experience taking photos for my niece. Isn’t she adorable? =)

Subject Element: Low Key (Title: The Fake)

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For this shot, I wanted to enhance the mysterious effect of the mask. The low key is to portray the more evil side of human using a mask. I used a black cloth when taking this shot. It was taken in a well-litted room and was taken without a flashlight. Personally, this is one of my favourites as it brings out the eerie and mysterious feeling when I view this photo. Comments and feedbacks from my friends are positive too.

Subject Element: Perspective (Title: Taking Off) or Adjective for assignment 5 (Title: Progressive)

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I slightly tilted my camera to take this shot. Perviously, it was taken at a less interesting angle. I went back to the same block of building to take this shot. By the way for those that can’t make out the place, it was taken at a newly erected 4o storey HDB flat next to commonwealth mrt and the view was marvellous. From this shot, I have learnt that sometimes breaking the rules and tilt the camera, the effect might be magnificient. Thanks Evan for your feedback. =)

Assignment 2A – Exposure Triangle September 10, 2008

Posted by jhchen in Assignment 2A.
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Learning Experience & Difficulties Encountered

From the experience gained from previous assignment, I started off with some planning like what kind of objects and what kind of scene to look out for. These are the list of stuff that I have come out with:

Activity	Aperture	Shutter speed	Things to look out for
Shallow depth of field	Large	-	Objects that are naturally large so as to give a strong illustration of shallow / deep depth of fieldE.g. billard table with billard balls as reference, tennis court, badminton court, long stretch of road with cars as reference.
Deep depth of field	Small	-
Freeze action	-	Fast	Objects that are naturally moving in a certain direction so as to illustrate freeze action / motion blur.E.g. moving cars, raindrops, water from fountain or tap
Motion blur	-	Slow

After much preparation and planning, I was ready to take some shots. But it wasn’t as smooth as it seems.

On the first day of shooting, the weather is rather cloudy and I was unable to take any freeze action photo because the weather must be good so as to compensate the fast shutter speed. If the amount of light entering the camera is insufficient, the photos will definitely be underexposed. Well, when I was faced with such difficulties, I tried to adjust the ISO setting so that it will be more sensitive, but.. the result was not satisfying due to the amount of noise added to the photos. I also tried to use white paper to reflect more light to the object, hoping the amount of light is enough, but the photo is way too underexposed. I have no other choice but to put the freeze action photos on hold and move on to the other activities.

I continued with my photo shoot at the AYE expressway near the science faculty. It was very smooth and I managed to take a few motion blur shots of cars from the overhead bridge. I felt that those photos were very successfully because there is a strong contrast of moving objects (cars) to static objects (the bushes and the bus stop) in the photos which clear illustrates motion blur.

Next, I went straight home to take some photos of my billard table, hoping to capture some interesting shots to illustrate shallow and deep depth of field. At first, I tried taking some without a tripod, but I realised everything was blurred due to the slow shutter speed and large aperture setting. Things went very smoothly after I mounted up the camera onto the tripod. I took many shots from different angles, with and without the cue, and many other combinations. From this scene, I managed to take a few interesting shots. I filtered away many shots that are either too messed with too many elements or lack of interesting focus in the photo. I also managed to take some photos using the panning technique to from my window.

As for the freeze action photos, I tried taking some shots of the tap. The photos were quite interesting, but I feel that there are lots of room for improvement. So I went out again looking for water. I came across a statue at the botanic gardens which is about a father pouring some water to his son. I managed to capture the freeze action of the water as it was a sunny day.

Here are some photographs that I have taken for my assignment 2A:

Subject Element: Shallow Depth of Field

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