ID Shoot
Yesterday we were put into groups and we were tasked with shooting a very quick cover for a magazine of our choice, the cover was for a interview article so we had to take some portrait images.
We decided to look through some magazines that we had for inspiration and we really liked i-D magazine that Molly Percy had in her bag. The first thing we really liked about the cover was how i-D always obscure one eye on the front cover. So we felt this was a perfect opportunity to use the split lighting that we were taught about earlier in the day.
Split lighting is where you essentially get half of the subject lit up and the other half is covered in a strong shadow on the other side of the face.
So for the shoot we had a simple one light set up, with the light on the right of our model Sonia. We always had the light at eye level with Sonia. We also placed the light a few paces forward of Sonia so most of the right side of her face got covered by the flash.
Along with the lights I also put myself at eye level for the majority of the shots. There were a few shots where I shot from a lower angle to give a dramatic pose. Below are a few of the selects that we made as a group.
In the end we chose this image for out i-D cover. We really liked the dramatic pose that was created by the low angle. We had only one complaint about this image. Technically there aren’t any eyes in this image. To which I noticed this but the posture was just perfect for what we’re saying in the article that would be in this magazine.
We asked Simona, who is your favourite artist or musician. She said Lady Gaga so we want to Gaga-espq posed and this one was perfect. Upon further inspection of the RAW files there were some good poses that would have been better, with the eye showing. However I still think this is a really good image.
The other piece of work that I really liked was in the Blavatnik Building. This was a piece of video art. Tehching Hsieh One Year Performance. I really liked it when I stepped into the room and the first thing I could see was every single image that was included the one and a half minute time lapse. I really liked it that at a quick glance every image looked exactly the same, however when you look at the enlarged versions in the time lapse you can notice subtle differences like the shirt colour. When I looked in the room, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the amount of dedication that would’ve been put into this project, taking a photo every hour for 365 days.
Finally for the photo book I came across this one called Magnum Contact Sheets. I would recommend this book because we are now in a world where the most important aspect of photography is in the edit, I think this book would be very helpful, it would give people an idea of what certain photographers look for to make decisions about how to get that final print.
After covering problems in Africa. O’Reilly was frequently deployed with Coalition forces in Helmand Province between 2008 and 2011. He would go on and appear in Under Fire: Journalists in Combat a 2011 “documentary film about the psychological costs of covering war“.
The first bit of research I will be do for this project will involve taking photos of people on the street wearing sunglasses. I thought of this when I read this line in the brief, “no two people wear the same glasses the same way“. I feel it would be a good idea to explore if the clothes that are worn have an affect on the sunglasses. Maybe if someone is wearing a suit do they wear there sunglasses formally like the person above. Maybe if someone is wearing less formal clothes, there glasses might be scruffy. They might not be. Essentially I want to see if theres any correlation between the subjects clothes and there glasses.
This was a shoot that was done for my favourite football team Charlton Athletic. They needed a photographer to take photos of the teams new home kit to which the shots were later used for advertising purposes with the clubs sponsor. The next step was to find out who took this image.
Ben Peters Digital Photography 