9) Practice shoot : Best Images

These were taken to test out the setting on my camera but I feel they work well because the subject is in bed it could relate to them dreaming or what it can look like if you're half asleep or even drunk.

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BEST IMAGE

This is my favorite image from the practice shoot mainly due to the pose the model is taking. The photo has a great balance of having not too much blur and distortion that you can't make out anything in the image but not clear enough to make out the identity of the model or setting. This is the amount of vagueness I am trying to achieve with my work, probably best described as semi-abstract.

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I really like the circular movement in this image voiding around the model. This effect makes me think of a what it would look like mid process if you could time travel. This photo reminds me a lot of press shoots for artists (music), and I think it could work well on a commercial level.

Examples:

I've seen this effect used a lot in photography, I think it can work well when done right. Some of the ones that I've seen are the different photos of someone cut out and then had the opacity lowered and it doesn't look right because the outlines are too bold. Whereas this one I believe has used layer masks and gradients which blend them together with more control and it works a lot better.

These last two images are images of one of my favourite artists named 'submerse'. I love these images as I feel they reflect the artists music well. Submerse, like many other producers in dance/electronically created music work on their own and often use an alias name such as 'submerse', I think this distances the listener from the human relation that they got from other types of music that is based around the lead vocalist for example. I feel these two shots really express that as the artist's face and isn't really the focus of the image. Submerse's music combines a lot of natural sounds and samples with modern structuring and other producing techniques, I believe this is expressed well in these shots as they're set in a combination of natural and urban environments. His clothes also represent his sound of a modern twists on 90's hip-hop beats because they're modern clothes based off styles from that time period.

I'd like to create similar quality images in my work. From this image I can assume that they're using a film lens due to the noise in the dark areas of the plants. It also looks like they're using an external flash from the bottom left hand corner which gives the shadow and sharpness of features on his face. External flashes is something I've not experimented with before, I often don't like unnatural shots that have been set up for hours; I prefer shots that theoretically anyone could take and are more of a representation of a moment in time rather than a 1/1000 shot that has been carefully prepared. After analyzing this image I feel I should defiantly try external flash/lighting as it can work really well and not always have a commercial perfect look to it.

This one was done by zooming in the lens during the time the shutter was closing. This gives a nice warpy effect almost like being sucked into a black hole or another dimension.

This one was also taken with the lens being zoomed in as the shot was taken. I like this one as it looks like the face is being dragged away from the subject.

I think this one works well because there's a duplicate of the face but it's not too far away from the original so it blends nicely.

I really like this one as you can clearly see the expression of the models face but there still is a nice amount of blurriness to the image.

Even though this photo is quite clear, I like the effect of the subtle camera shake. I feel this gives the photo more of a human error effect like when shooting with film cameras. I find photos that are perfect can get quite boring and little changes like this can make an image stand out. This relates to what I'm researching with different methods of photography and abstract photography. 

These shots weren't intended for an abstract shot, I was just experimenting with the flash to see what kind of effect I could create in a really dark setting with a burst of light. I think it works really well with this setting as it gives the photo a lot more depth due to the light reaching each branch of leaves. I think this is something I could look into furhter as it fits in the a cold isolated mood that I've been collecting examples of in my research.

This was me using my hand to try and get the camera to focus on something as it was so dark but it turned out quite nice in my opinion. I may return to something like this later in my project using different hand postures to companion certain landscapes shots, I could also possibly incorporate sign language into the images to almost give a coded message to the viewer.

I really like the composition of this image but I don't like the model's facial expression, her cheek is stretched out making it look like she's smiling which doesn't really fit the theme of the rest of the image. I like the use of it being underexposed and creating almost a silhouetted look of the environment just just enough light on them to gain an idea of the setting.