Photography Workshop Experimentations.

Through today's introduction to SLR Photograpghy, I feel that I have learnt so much, and feel really enthusiastic about the progress I am sure I will make throughout this module brief, experimenting constantly with methods and techniques.

After learning the initial necessities of how to use the SLR camera's, we were demonstrated in various ways in which we could manipulate our images using light, coloured film tint, etc.

To start, I took several quick "snap shots" of my friend, Baljeet, with the yellow film taped over the light, pointing directly to her- creating a warm, golden glow over the entirety of the image.

Starting to use some of my red objects from previous visual language lessons, I started to experiment with both shadows and colour- with the coloured film over the lights creating a coloured shadow- in this case, blue and red (deminding me of old 3D film glasses!), and experimented with the angle of the shadow by manouvering the lights around the item, my favourite being the image in the middle- the angle creating a petal-like fanned-out shape.

Here, taking a step back, and looking at my red "party popper" item on white paper, looking at both natural shadow tones and shades, along with the shadow colour created by the red and blue film, once more, placing the lights in several different positions and varying in distance to either extend or condense the shadow.

I really love the warmth of colours the red and orange create it this picture- this time I captured the party popper from various angles to see what shadows were created from certain points, along with how it was effected by the direction of the light upon it.

Here I mixed both orange and red colourings by moving the red colour film sheet in at several different directions and gradient points to see what effect this would have on the image- i really like the vignette effect created on some of the images- I normally don't really like gradients used in photography, as i often find they can look too "fake", but the direction of the light on some of the images really helps to blend the colours together, creating a "sunset-like" colour palette.

Another use of gradients- this time with more contrasting colours- green and orange, again, I like the effect, but personally I would prefer the colours to be a slightly more subtle mix.

Here with two lights- one with the red and blue film casting a shadow, and one with a yellow light, creating a background tonal colour to the white paper- perhaps a few too many colours going on her for my liking, but it was really interesting to see how the primary colours would work with one another, along with the light and shadows.

Here, looking at a variety of ladybird buttons- all shot in manual mode with colour tints.

It's amazing to see just how much of a difference colour can make- whether it be the addition of a coloured sheet of paper, the shadow created by a blue and red light tint sheet, or photographing through an orange light tint, I really like the variation I could achieve, and will definately go on to explore these possibilities throughout the following months and for my module project submission.

My last experimentation of the day- manipulating the legibility of my images with decreasing the shutter speed- taking a longer time to register and capture the images, the picture captures movement (in this case it was me violently shaking a table to make the ladybird buttons rock!)- a process I am already quite fond of, this is a technique I would certainly like to experiment further with in aid of both the project outcomes, but also personal photographic skills development.