Tom's lesson - review so far

Over the past few weeks we have covered lots of different styles of photography.  I have enjoyed all of them and I will definitely be using all of them in my future work. 

Street photography:

For this task we went out in Leeds and photographed people on the streets going about their everyday lives.  I found this quite difficult because lots of people did not want to have their photo taken and I felt like I was invading their privacy because if I was in their situation I would not want my photo taken without me knowing and giving consent.  To avoid this I started asking people but most people did not want their photo taken or said that they would let me take it, but were not very happy about it.  I do like my outcomes and would like to create more images like this but I would prefer to photograph a model/my friends as they will be more willing to help me.

Painting with lights:

I enjoyed doing this and I like how creative these images are compared to normal photography.  When we did it in class we did not have tripods and for painting with lights photography you need a long shutter speed and therefore you need a tripod – this disadvantaged us whilst at college.  When I did it on my own at home I used my tripod so that I could improve my images.  I have experimented with this style of photography a lot in my own time because I really like the colours and creativity captured within the images and I will continue to shoot in this style in my future work.

Shutter speed:

I enjoyed doing this in class – capturing people jumping – however, I felt we were a bit restricted because we were all in one room and couldn’t be very creative.  I used this again in my own time capturing people running and jumping and also going down to the skate park in Hyde Park, Leeds.  I think the photos I took in my own time are more successful than the ones we did in class because I had more time to do them and more space to move about in.

Depth of field:

I always liked looking at images which had a shallow depth of field where the foreground was in focus and the background was blurry, but I never knew how to capture things like that so I learned a lot when we did this in class.  I don’t think that my images are amazing because they are just photos of a camera and you can see other people in the background taking pictures of their objects that they brought in.  However, I will definitely use the skills that I learned in this exercise in my future work. 

Macro:

I really enjoyed macro photography and seeing things in different perspectives to how you would normally see them.  When I was shooting in macro I saw things that I wouldn’t normally see and paid attention to detail.  I was at a slight disadvantage when I was shooting in macro because I didn’t have an actual macro lense so I couldn’t get as close to things as I wanted to.  I think macro photography has been my favourite style out of the ones we have covered and I will definitely be revisiting this style again.