Photo Challenge Week 5 Technical: 10 Shots
This week I decided would be perfect for a collaboration, I get to have something interesting to shoot (in 10 different ways, as per the challenge theme) and my gorgeous friends over at SteampunkPirates got some images to show off their handcrafted creations. Win win.
Photo Challenge Week 4 Story: Mirror
Rory spends more time in princess dresses than she does out of them, and where I used to wonder where exactly she got this from (because it was certainly not from me), I've realised as she has grown that perhaps her interest isn't born from a wish to be dainty or regal, but rather to be able to transform her ordinary life into something fantastical, a trait she most certainly got from me.
So it's always nice when I can use my own methods of escapism to enhance hers.
That's Nice Interiors
Earlier this month I was invited over to That’s Nice, a stylish interiors store based in High Town, Bridgnorth to shoot some new stock images for their online store, in preparation for the launch of their new website. The shop sells gorgeous, hand selected items chosen for their individuality and quality and if you haven’t had the opportunity to visit in person (or even if you have) go and check out the site, and pretty up your home or someone else's with something new and beautiful.
Photo Challenge Week 3 Artistic: Land
When the snow turned out to be less plentiful than promised, and the rain prevented me from exploring any new, interesting local landscapes I was forced to look closer to home for this week's 'land' inspired theme. After trying to think up something creative for a solid week, I ralised that my refusal to start with the obvious was creating such a hugely unnecesary obstacle, and that just because something is obvious, doesn't mean it isn't worthy. So I traded in my imagined sweeping vista of a beautiful local landscape, for a macro of some baby shoots in my garden and reminded myself that finding the interest within the ordinary is a skill that should always be exercised.
Photo Challenge 2017 Week 2 Technical: SOOC
Do you know what 'SOOC' means? I didn't. And after a quick Googling found that it was an abbreviation for 'Straight Out Of Camera'. No cropping. No edits. No alterations. As intimidating and exciting as a brief could be.
Being forced to work without post production was both a curse and a blessing. We live in a world where every camera, phone, app offers some sort of post-processing, which makes it increasingly difficult to differentiate between good photography and good editing and we are completely acclimatised to 'perfected' images, that often when we see images without it, we mistake them for bad images. So it was quite a task to make something that would hold it's own without brightening a little here, or cropping a little there. This week meant I had to work so much harder in pre-production, had to work like I did when I worked in film, I had to plan the shot, the light, the angle and crop to make something worthy of my portfolio, the exposure had to be perfect, the model had to be willing (or married to me and lacking in choice about the whole thing).
But the experience taught me so much about my approach to photography, about how my reliance on post-production actually can be a hindrance, making me work for so much longer to achieve something that could have been done in-camera, for example, I hadn't noticed the sand on his coat until I got the shot into my computer, something that's easily removed in post but if had to be done to multiple images would be far more time consuming than it would have been to just go over and brush it off before I started shooting. It made me realise that sometimes it pays to pay more attention to detail before rather than after, and it also made me appreciate that I don't NEED software as much as I thought I did, that sometimes I use it just because I can, when the same effect can be produced without it, with just a little more thought and providing much more consistency.
Photo Challenge 2017 Week 1 Story: Rule of Thirds
At first I was a little reluctant to start the Dogwood Advanced challenge for 2017, after towards the end of last year work picked up, and I had less time to shoot personal stuff. However, firstly I'm not the type of person to start something and then not finish it and second, even though whenever I'm taking pictures I'm doing something I love, I think that if it wasn't for this challenge, that it would be very easy to only ever shoot for work, never for myself and that would be a tragedy. Having something to drive me, something to force me out of the door and shoot to a brief, but only for my own sake has made me take some of the greatest leaps with my photography, made me discover things and learn new techniques and I don't think I'm ready to stop that learning yet. So here we are, back at week one!
The portrait/landscape/artistic rotation has been replaced with story/technical/artistic and the first week's 'story' theme was to shoot something telling a story using the rule of thirds, a deceptively difficult technique but one that threw me right back to my studenthood. In the final days of December the town was covered with fog and frost, and there was no way I was passing up the chance to get out and shoot something in it, so we got on our wellies and went to a spot I'd been meaning to scout for shoots since we moved here. It didn't disappoint (I'll be sharing the remaining non-challenge shots another time).
A Foggy Morning in Bridgnorth
Some mornings I look outside and see the kind of weather than means I have to get out shooting, so we headed over to a little wooded spot behind my house that I'd been meaning to scout since we moved here. It's only a little spot, a grassy enbankment leading to a little wooded walk, but thick with fog and coated in frost it was nothing short of a winter wonderland. The rising rivers in the summer had caused some little landslides alongside the little stream running through wood, tearing trees up by their roots causing their trunks to snap and fall to form sturdy bridges over the water and new places for growth in the upturned roots and huge tangles of damp wooden debris that are impossible to pass, as if some giant, angry creature had stormed through the place, creating chaos there.
It's always a treat to find new places like this, to be able to walk a minute away from a bustling town filled with people and all of the comforts of modernity and for a brief time find yourself in a wild place.
2016 Photo Challenge Wrap Up
At the beginning of 2016 I decided it might be a good idea to look for a photography forum to join or a challenge to be a part of, in order to pick up new ideas, and to encourage myself to take a more experimental approach with my own personal style. Luckily I stumbled upon the Dogwood52 challenge which had only just started up at the time and thoroughly enjoyed being a part of its community, while having a weekly goal to work towards kept me accountable to something besides myself.
I somehow managed to stick to these weekly postings, despite the fact that life sometimes got too busy to be always concentrating on photography, but even when what I created wasn’t the most interesting, it was always useful.
I gained a lot from my participation in this challenge, and have watched my approach to photography and technical skill completely change by forcing myself to work with others, to explore new locations and to stop treating creativity as if it’s something that can be exhausted.
The new challenge will pick up again next year and I plan to keep it going. So if any of you photographers are looking for something to help mix things up a bit and decide to join in with the challenge, let me know! I’d love to see you there.
Community Flow
I was invited over earlier this month to photograph some headshot portraits for Community Flow, a charity based in Erdington that combines providing support to adults with learning difficulties and interacting with the wider local community by hosting activities and events at their homebase at Liberty House.
