Visual Narratives

Week 1

Exposure Triangle

There are three main settings you can adjust on a camera, Aperture, ISO and Shutter speed. All 3 can either decrease or increase the amount of light in the photo, each with its own unique side effect. The Aperture will affect the depth of field, the ISO will affect the amount of grain, and the shutter speed will affect the sharpness of the image.

Week 2

Shutter speed is the length of time the cameras shutter is open for. On the left is a photo with a fast shutter speed, which has low amount of motion blur. On the right is a photo with a slow shutter speed, this means the shutter is open for longer, resulting in more motion blur.

Shutter Speed: 1/1000

Shutter Speed: 2/5

 

Aperture defines how wide the cameras shutter opens. The photo on the left has a wide aperture whilst the one on the right has a narrow aperture. A wide aperture results in a shallow Depth of Field, meaning only a small area of your photo will appear in focus. Whereas a narrow aperture will result in a deep DoF, meaning a large area of your photo will appear in focus.

Aperture: f / 4.0 

Aperture: f / 22

ISO determines how sensitive a camera sensor is to light. The photo on the left has a high ISO, whilst the photo on the right has a low ISO. It is measured by a number usually ranging from 100 to 6400 or higher. A higher ISO will result in a brighter but noisier image, whereas a low ISO will result in a darker but cleaner image.

ISO: 6400

ISO: 500

Camera Shake

Week 3 – Camera Shots

Extreme Long Shot

Long Shot

Medium Shot

Medium Close Up Shot

Close Up

Extreme Close Up

Cowboy Shot

Types of video shots

Windows as a framing device

Assignment 1 

For my assignment I want to tell the simple story of somebody who is late to an important event, they rush out of the house but to their despair they miss the train. In this story I want to show a sense of panic and the feeling of rushing through changing the shutter speed of the camera. The character will appear smeared and blurry due to their fast movements, with the character finally coming into clear focus again as they watch their train pull away.

Street View Photography’s Top 10 : Slow Shutter Speed https://www.eduardoasenjomatus.com/

For this assignment I wanted to use motion blur and low shutter speed to create a sense of movement, I found some images by various photographers showing the effect I wanted.

LATE

Contact Sheet

Reflection

Overall I am pretty happy with the story I told with my images. I managed to include a long shot, a close up and various shutter speeds. Whilst I only had 8 photos in the final selection, I felt it was enough to show the story I wanted. One thing I would do differently is better keeping to my theme of motion blur and movement. I would use a lower shutter speed for the final shot of the train, in order to show the movement of the train away from the character. I would also better direct my actor to get some more exaggerated expressions out of them. I would also take a larger variety of photos, whilst I did take over 100 photos in total, most of those were multiple tries of the same storyboard frame.

Week 9 – Studio Lighting

Split lighting

Split Lighting is a technique that divides the subjects face in two, half being in light and half in shadow. This is created by placing the light source 90° to the subject.

loop lighting

Loop Lighting is similar to split lighting but with the light source being at only 45° from the subject. This will define the facial features while still lighting the entire face.

Rembrandt lighting

Rembrandt Lighting is also similar to loop lighting, this time with the light source at about 30° from the subject. This should create a tringle of light on the subject’s cheek, created by the shadow of their nose.

butterfly lighting

Butterfly lighting is soft and even and is named after the butterfly-like shadow it creates under the subject’s nose. It is created by placing a strobe above and behind the camera.

Broad Lighting

Broad Lighting is when the brightest side of the face is facing the camera. The subject should be facing away from the light source, and the camera should face the bright side of their face.

Short Lighting

Short Lighting is the inverse of broad lighting, the darker side of the face facing the camera. The subject should be facing away from the light source with the camera facing the dark side of their face.

Back Lighting

Back Lighting is when the subject is directly lit from behind, creating a bright outline around the subject. This is created by placing the light source behind the subject, and ideally not visible to the camera.

Week 10 – Studio Lighting Continued

This week we continued looking at studio lighting, we spent a lot of time replicating the lighting style of The Batman (harsh red lighting.

Photographer Research

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is known for her over-the-top and colourful self-portraits that explore themes of identity and gender in society.

“The effect is to force us to consider how women are moulded to perform and enact varying, one-dimensional stereotypes in media spheres. As the canvas for these variant selves, Sherman fluidly moves between the cliches, establishing a playfulness in the images, and wearing these restrictive gender roles as masks.” – Dazed Digital

David LaChapelle

Dave LaChapelle is known for his stylised and surreal portraits of celebrities and musicians. LaChapelles images often have a focus on sex and sexuality.

“LaChapelle’s signature style employs explosions of colour, a level of detail that paradoxically feels too precise to be real, whimsical playfulness and most of all a strong sense of intimacy.” – Veronica Esposito

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz is well known for her low-key and intimate photos of celebrities, from John Lennon to the Queen. Her portraits are often subtlety lit with soft natural lighting, giving them an almost painterly feel.

Nadav Kander

Nadav Kander is known for his evocative portraits of celebrities and politicians. He often uses techniques such as double exposure and image projection to create interesting images.

Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller is known for his close-up portraits of celebrities and politicians. All of Schoeller’s portraits are from an almost identical position, head-on and close-up to the subject in order to focus on their expression and the details in their face.

Assignment 2: Planning

For my 2nd assignment I took Dave LaChappelle as inspiration for his photos of musicians. For my assignment I am planning to take images of my housemate, who is a musician currently studying here at UWL.

While it may seem simple, the choice to use broad lighting for most of these shots is deliberate, as LaChappelle tends to brightly and evenly light his subjects with very little shadows in play.

My theme connecting the selection of photos is spring, and cherry blossoms, hence the heavy use of blue and pink.

Assignment 2: Shoot

For my shoot we took a total of about 200 photos, and overall I was very happy with the result. On reflection I do think my theme struggled to come through, if I were to do the shoot again I would focus more on getting the theme of spring to come through rather than just going for nice looking shots.

Assignment 2: Selection

Stop Motion: Planning

For my stop motion I decided to tell the story of a Saturn V rocket going to the moon.

Below is the script I wrote for the animation. I researched rocket launches in movies like First Man (2018) and Apollo 13 (1995) to see how they described the Saturn V launch in their scripts.

My Setup for shooting the animation.

I used a piece of green table covering to act as a green screen, so I could easily cut out the rocket later in after effects.

Stop Motion: Submission