Journey to QMU task

We had to take 3 photos of our journey to and from QMU.

The first photo I took was of the hillside and sky, I liked it because the hillside was black and in shadows:

The second photo I took was of the bus chair. I tried to get the chair in focus and the rest not in the photo:

The third photo I took was of my shoulder and the window. I liked it because my hair was in focus:

Patrick Rafferty - Photographer

Patrick Rafferty is a photographer based in Hawick. He believes that photography begins at the first camera a person has and that it is all about the mindset that you have. He spent a lot of time just practising taking photos and spent a decade perfecting black and white prints in dark rooms. 

To make money he takes photographs of babies, weddings and people. He runs a classic 'high street photographer' business so that he can make money to take trips to places like Barcelona where he can take photographs because he loves to take photographs. These are his uncomissioned work. He tries not to photoshop his work and takes photos of what he finds interesting. He loves to go to big cities like Barcelona where he can take lots of street photography. 

The first picture that I chose was from Patrick Rafferty's website from his landscape prints. I like that there is lots that can be seen in the image and that the colours go from light to dark with green all the way through the picture. However I think that the picture could have looked just as good with just the bridge in the shot. 

 The next picture that I chose was from Patrick Rafferty's Facebook page. It was from one of his trips to Barcelona. I like it because the girl is looking directly into the camera. I like how the expression on her face I slightly unhappy and I also like that it is in black and white. I think that it adds to the photo and makes it look better.

The next photo I chose was also from Rafferty's Facebook. I chose this photo because I like the way that he has captured the image at the perfect time. With the cat having a displeased face and the woman looking loving towards it. However I think that it would better if it wasn't in black and white but was in colour.

I chose this picture from his Facebook. I like it because the rain is so heavy and makes it look like some sort of painting. I like that the street seems quite dark and that the woman is wearing bright pink which makes her stand out more and the attention drawn to her. Rafferty has managed to capture the image at the perfect moment.

Source: http://www.raffertyandrafferty.com/
https://www.facebook.com/patrick.rafferty1?ref=ts&fref=ts

Photos of myself

I tried to play around with where the light was coming from and the angles I was taking the picture from. I decided to try this out on myself because I had no one else I could photograph.

3 Portrait's Task

We had to take 3 portrait photos of people for our homework task. We were supposed to think about lighting and angles and try to get the photos to represent what they are like if we could.

I took a photo of my friend Hannah. I took a picture over her shoulder as she looked into a mirror to try and get a cool angle. I also made her look in the mirror because she always takes ages to get ready:

I took a picture of my little sister Miriam. I took it when she was sitting watching TV because she does that a lot. I also thought that the side angle made the picture better:

I took a picture of my big sister Rachel. I liked that the light was shining behind her and that the photo was from the side. I also liked that it was much brighter in the background but her person was much darker. I took it when she was sitting looking at her iPad which she is on a lot:

Portraits

 We had to take 3 photos of another person in a studio like situation. I took pictures of Katie. The only picture that I don't really like is the first one, this is because I don't like the angle that I made her look at. I like the other pictures better.

Rankin - photographer

Rankin is a portraiture photographer who also does some fashion photography. Over the years of his career he has published over 30 books ad has his own London Gallery. He recently decided to move into TV presenting to show his studies of photography. He also developed Rankin Film Productions where he has developed adverts, short films and directing TV music videos. He posts the pictures he takes on his websites and they show his portrait and fashion photographs.

One of the photos I chose is from the portrait section of Rankin's website. This portrait is of Stephen Graham. I like it because it has been used using a slow shutter speed. This means that the person can move and create a ghostlike effect. With it being black and white it makes the movement and ghostlike effect more dramatic and I like that about the photo. I also like the different faces that are shown across the picture and how they are each slight different. I don't like, however, the lapels of the jacket being repeated along with the faces. I think it would look better if the bottom half of the photo was just pure black.

Another photo from the portrait section of Rankin's website I chose is of Justin Timberlake. In this photo Justin Timberlake is dressed like a cowboy and has multiple lights shining in front of him which illuminates his shadows on a white background. I like the contrast of the shadows on the background and how on each shadow there is a different picture making it look like multiple people rather than just one person. I don't like, however, the look of the boxes that he is standing on.

Another photo I chose was from the beauty section of Rankin's website. This photo is of a girl with a bow tie who has mascara on her eyelids and the girl looks slightly boyish. I like that the colours are light and that the boy tie matches both the jumper and the hair of the girl. There is a balance of colours which I think makes the photo look better. I also like the way the girl looks a little messy in her appearance with her hair messy and her make-up messed up.

 

 

The last photo that I chose is from the menswear section of Rankin's website. It is of a guy with a bowler hat and an umbrella. I like that photograph is in black and white. I like the contrast of the white background and that half of the mans body is in the light. It contrasts with the umbrella, hat, face and neck with them being almost completely black. I like the amount of contrast within this photograph between the black and white colours. The pattern on the shirt also adds to the photo and makes me like it more.

 

 



A day in the life

Every Monday morning I wake up to multiple alarms blasting out American Idiot by Green Day. This goes on from 6:45am to 7:30am. I'm always still tired even though I've slept for what feels like forever. Once I'm up, I think about the weird dream I've just had. Yesterday's was about how I got lost in a big city with a river running through the middle of it when my friends were annoyed at me. Most of the dreams I wake up to are amusing as I wonder how my mind has come up with these things. I remember once having a dream about how Robin Hood saved me from falling into a river of lava. So that's why I always try and remember my dreams, everyone else finds them just as amusing as me.

Once I'm downstairs I eat my breakfast as fast as I can so I can leave the company of people again. I get very grumpy in the morning. I am not a morning person. I try to make myself presentable before I rush out the door to catch my bus which always seems to leave and arrive at the stop too quickly. I hate that because I know if I don't leave the house at exactly 8:15am I will miss it, and will then have to have an angry conversation with my mum about how she needs to give me a lift to school.

Then I'm in school and I feel like sleeping. I make boring small talk with most of my friends about how their weekends were even though I don't really care that they just sat around and watched Netflix all day. I don't care because I already know this from the boring snapchat conversations we've had over the course of the weekend. I'll work hard in my classes and even though I sit and chat with my mates, I still manage to get through my work quickly.

Then, at last, it's lunch. It's the time of the day where you get elbowed and punched and shoved around in the queue as people don't seem to understand what a queue actually means. It's the time of day where you can spend almost half your lunchtime waiting to get food because so many people just push in front of you and there's nothing you can do to stop it. I hate going in the queue's at lunch time because there's no guarantee that even when you do get to the front, that you will get the delicious Monday special of macaroni cheese. No, after waiting almost half a hour to get your lunch you have to get a boring hot dog because there's nothing else left to eat because everyone who's budged in front of you have managed to get the food that you, yourself were in the queue waiting for, for so long. And even then after the disappointment of not getting the food you were hoping for there's a high chance there won't be any good tray bakes or bottles of water left because the schools shipment of food hasn't fully arrived yet. This all adds up so you can't get the meal deal and so you then have to pay more for the food that you never wanted in the first place. That's why I hate lunchtimes. After that I get to sit with my friends listening in on their conversation because our group is huge and sits at one big table and so its hard to actually talk to anyone you like. Monday lunchtimes are just disappointing.

Then as it gets to the end of the day, I get happier, because I know what's coming. I have my stuff ready to leave as soon as then bell goes. And then, when it does I walk straight to the bus stop. But the bus I get on Monday is not the bus that takes me home. The bus I get on Monday takes me to Melrose, where I get to see my friends and help run the junior session of Borders Youth Theatre. As soon as I walk in (after I've quickly changed out of my school clothes in the bathroom) Hannah comes up and hugs me and I know my day is going to get better now. Hannah and me lead part of the drama session together. I like doing that. When the kids are working on a task Hannah, Amanda and me all sit and chat about things. These conversations always make me laugh. After juniors is finished, Hannah and me go out to the shops and get milk for Amanda's tea and a drink or something for me. It depends on what I'm feeling like. We come back and it's time for seniors. We don't lead this session though, we take part in it. I love going in a group with Amy and Hannah, we always seem to come up with hilarious ideas that make us all cry with laughter. Once we included a choreographed dance into our drama sketch, another time we did a puppet show using props we'd brought in, and another time we did a sketch about a robber getting chased by the police but then run over, it was silent for the second half, but just ended with Amy saying in a funny voice "dead". We find all of these hilarious and no matter how my day has gone so far, these always make me feel better. When at last it's time for BYT to end, I hug everyone goodbye and let my dad take me home to my mums. I don't like this part of the day because I know my good mood is gonna be taken away from me once I get back home.

When my dad drops me off I get in and the house smells from whatever my mum has cooked for tea. It normally smells bad because she's cooked some weird foreign dish with meats she knows I won't eat. I hate dinnertime. It's always filled with my mum and mark (her boyfriend) making small talk about their days. When it's over I go up to my room and I finish any homework I have to do for the next day whilst watching something on Netflix and snapchatting Hannah. I find that by having something on in the background I can do my work better. Lately I've been watching heroes, I'm on the second season now. When it gets to 10 I shower and everyone else in the house goes to bed. But I'm wide awake, and I know I won't be able to sleep for a while. So I stay up and I watch some more Netflix and chat with people and maybe even make a phone call depending on how much minutes I have on my phone. This month I used most of my 500 minutes within the first few days. I have 14 left to last me 5 days. When I finally get tired, I plug in my phone and my iPod and lie down to sleep. I remember to put on my alarms for the next morning. Then when I wake up, the day starts again.

Sam Cornwell - photographer

Sam Cornwell is a photographer who recently has moved from America to Hawick in Scotland. He specialises in wet plate printing, disposables, non-lens based film, astrophotography and abstract video pieces. He doesn't use photoshop and doesn't put filters onto his photos. He prefers to use the photos as he took them in their original form. He also studied the history of chemical based capture of light and likes to think about the story of the picture and how it can be expressed.

He has used disposable cameras for a year so that he could get back to the traditional rules of photography and back to the basics and not have all of the new technological advancements that are in cameras today. Although he does keep up with the new technological advancements in digital cameras.

Some of my favourites of his photos are the ones he took of the sky, like his condensed landscape triptych, transit of Venus and solar eclipse photo sets. My favourite are his condensed landscape triptych photos. These photos took him 3 years to produce as he took a picture of the same sunset in 3 different places.
The first of this photo set shows a completely black canyon with the moon showing in the corner. I like it as it shows the lightness in the sky and moon compared to the blackness of the canyon.

 

 

The second of the photo set is my favourite, as it shows an orange sky and the city of Chicago. It makes the city seem as if it is almost floating in the sky and the dark blue on the ground contrasts well with the sky. It is my favourite as it makes the landscape and city look amazing and the contrast makes this more effective.

The third photo of the set is of the cloudy sky and shows the sky go from orangey pink to grey with the sun a pink colour. It shows the sun setting into a grey haze in the sky. I like this picture as it makes the sky look foggy and misty and hazed over, also because of the colours the sky and sun make and how they mix together well.

These photos were taken using extreme telephoto lenses which is an unconventional use for these types of photos due to the way the lenses condense colours before the processing takes place. This means that the 'photographer pop' is not required. I, however, like the way these lenses have been used to create the pictues of the sky. I think the unconventional way that Sam Cornwell has used to take the photos has been successful and has created very good photos.

Another of my favourites of his photos is from his pictorial set. It is the picture of the dog. I like it as the dog is the centre of focus and the rest of the picture is out of focus. It effectively shows the depth of field in the photograph. I also like it because the dog looks so quizzical and confused as to why he is being photographed. Sam Cornwell, however, makes it clear that this is not in fact the story of this photo. He states that the story is that this dog is scared and shivering from its fear. he states that the dog is holding coins for its owner. The photograph was taken on a Canon EOS 40D which is a type of digital SLR camera. This effectively shows how cameras people regularly use that aren't that fancy can take good photographs that show the depth of field and a different viewpoint of a photo.

 

 

 

 Source: samcornwell.photography