ROUND.

We were asked to produce an image to represent the word Round for The Guardian competition.
To be honest I really struggled with the whole concept to this competition. I didn't wanna do it, but I thought I'd give it a go, and I think that because it was something that didn't strike me as something I enjoy I knew I would struggle with the brief.

The trouble I had is I didn't want to take something to cliche or obvious, so trying to think outside the box for "round" i found hard.

Me and Holly went out together for this one, just to get it out the way so we could concentrate on practising with the location lighting kit because it was something we'd both enjoy more.

I wasn't overly impressed with our images.

I did enter the competition, but using an image I'd used for the typography brief we had, which was acorns in a circle because it was hot weather but it was autumn, and I thought it showed that just because the weather doesn't show it's autumn, there are things that give it away.

Location Lighting

We were given a worskshop on how to set up the studio lighting which I found really helpful. I was comfortable with using the location lighting but not on how to set it all up and break it down afterwards. I now feel a lot more comfortable with booking out the lighting for my own shoots.

We were then sent out with the lighting kit to photograph portraits around Burton whilst the statutes were on. We were given everything we needed including modifiers of our choice, reflectors etc.

My group went out and set up where there were people walking past but where the wasn't too much noise or distractions. We found that a lot of people didn't want their photo taken, but there was still hope as some did. Unfortunately one of the members of my team offered "free portraits" instead of asking if they would sit for us. So it fell down to me to email some images free of charge to some of the participants.

We used intsinct to decide where the light should be because the sun was very strong that day, and me and Holly took it upon ourselves to figure out which stop we wanted it on including tenths of a stop, and I think we worked it out bang on.

The images we produced were well lit and strong images, and I was very impressed with the outcome. I will be using the location lighting a lot more often now I feel so much more confident with setting it up and I know I can produce amazing results using the kit.

Favourite images I took that day.

Typography.

"Create a set of experiments using different mediums (collected objects) to visualize a font and words, photograph them to document, this can be any word you like in any font style, just remember certain fonts will not match the style or give the right impression of the words you have chosen, for example - using a light thin pink font to show a word like strong or danger."

We had to take one of the 5D's out and work in a group of three to photograph different objects around Burton to make letters, e.g sticks to make a letter L and so on.

"Research - Look into photography and the different forms it takes. Select half a dozen words and find out their meanings. Find old boxes sweets etc think about how buildings form shapes and how light falls on objects."

I went out and found old objects lying around Burton to create letters and words. Finding such things as sticks, crisps, leaves, berries, acorns, I also used buildings, scaffolding and signs to try to create letters.

My preconceptions of the brief before setting out is that it would be easy, but I actually found it to be more challenging. I wanted to think of some more "out there" ideas and attempted to use things like scaffolding to create letters but it didn't show through the images.




I think that some of our images came out well such as these ones below.

We were then asked to choose an image we already had and create a magazine spread with the image on one side and a word on the other side.

I chose the words "Love Yourself" because the image I chose was for a project I did about beauty and how beauty is perceived differently from person to person. I named the project natural beauty, and that's why I chose the words love yourself.

What To Photograph?

The first brief given to me was on the first day of the course. The title "What to photograph?" was set. The brief was for the class to think of 17 different words and then to go out in Burton in pairs and photograph each of the words.

I decided to approach the task word by word, to think of ideas for each word in my head beforehand, as well as looking around for inspiration around Burton. I believed this was significant to the fact some of my images showed my thought into the words, where as I felt some images were weak in comparison because I hadn't had many ideas before taking the photos, it was a spur of the moment image.

Knowing a lot about Burton from doing the National Diploma previously, I already had some preconceptions on where to go for certain words and what I could look for in Burton I.e - Stripes - Frankie & Benny's has stripes on it's canopy and I had formed an idea of how the image would look in camera before even leaving the college, and something worn as i knew of an area of town with many worn down shops and buildings.

Some of the words or phrases I found more difficult because they didn't provoke much thought or I hadn't seen something I knew I could use beforehand. These were words/phrases such as "A moment in time". I also struggled with ideas for a few words such as travel at first because although a lot of ideas came to me, I wanted to think more outside of the box than something obvious or cliche such as a train, a train ticket or a bus or taxi, but in the end me and my partner did come up with some obscure ideas for such words. For example for travel we came up with the idea for the Royal Mail, or some form of Courier service as they travel all over the country, and ended up with an image of a postbox, although I would have liked a photo of a courier van or post van.

To improve on the images I produced I would sit down and rethink some of the obvious images such as a speedometer for "speed" because other people in the group had the same idea or someone cutting hair for "hair" but within the time frame given for the Brief I think some of the images I produced were well thought and produced well in camera so not much post production work was needed, mine and my partners images for "something blue" "something old" and "travel" I am proud of and convey the words well without taking the obvious route. Time management is something I need to consider on future briefs as I spent too much time on each image to try and make it perfect at first so that as time started to run out I didn't think through my latter images enough and had to use what I had without it being something I was particularly impressed with.