Evaluation

For this unit I have photographed Birmingham city at night and in the early morning to create night photographs. I have experimented with various colours and extremes of tonal contrast. this was all for the Emerging Talent award for the Melbourne festival.

My idea hasn't changed at all throughout this unit. I specifically stated to the judges of the Melbourne festival what I was going to photograph. This is because I was improving my own skills at night photography that I wanted to stick with this theme.

For this unit I have used my Nikon D610 with a 50mm f/1.4 and 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 lens'. Since as I was working in low lighting in some cases I had to use long shutter speeds causing me to use a tripod. In some cases I also used a shutter release cable to make sure the camera is as still as possible. I barely used any editing techniques; the only thing I did to the images may have been levels.

The main problem I encountered was the time I went out to shoot. Due to the time of year, sunrise was getting earlier and earlier so I found it difficult to get out the house and into Birmingham early enough so that the sky was completely black excluding any light pollution. To try and overcome this I used energy drinks and I went slept a lot more to put my body clock out of normal times.

Rut Blees Luxemburg is one of the artist researches I have done because she uses lots of light and includes light sources in some of her images which defines some of them and makes it the focus of the image. I have also looked at work from Mara Tyskens for her uses of different colours and use of light to make the colours more distinguishable. She also uses her light sources in her images to make aspects of it stand out.

I am pleased with my final piece however I wish that I had been able to go out and photograph more to give me more to work with. I could also have done rural photo shoots which might have acted differently than that of the light in a city.

Final image

I have chosen this image to be my final because it uses several different colours; both warm and cold. I have also used light sources that emphasize specific parts of the image and they are also in the image creating an alternative subject within the image. There is clear and precise detail in the image which shows the detail of the bricks, windows, lights and floor. The contrast from the light to the shadow is very intense creating a very eery and creepy feel to the image. I feel that this image is the best because it combines all the features that I have primarily researched.

Photoshoot 3

This time I set out earlier so that it wouldn't get light whilst I was there. I found this much more productive; I was able to take more photos and not have to rush around the city.

I feel that this image is quite strong because all the lines are leading towards the floor in front of the walkway. There are three distinctive colours that separate the image into three. The orange on the left, yellow on the right and the green that shines down the middle. Areas of this image are very well lit and create very contrasting shadows behind corners and underneath the rails. I feel that some people might not see this image as night time photography because of this. It is so well lit that some people might think that it is just a photograph with no one in the frame.

The only good point about this image is the the contrast and diversity of the tones. Long, deep shadows cast across the supporting beams and stairs which separates them within the image. However the yellow hue throughout this image is really overpowering and distracts the viewer. In my attempt to try and fix it I think I made it worse so I stopped and went back to the original.

When I took this image I thought it looked like it would be strong. This is because the density of the lights switch from side to side up the building. The light coming from the rooms is completely random and created a strange zigzag pattern down the building.

This image is very interesting because it uses two very different strong influences of colour. It looks like the colours of the buildings are facing each other off. Fighting for the dominance of the image. The darkness of the black areas making the light of the walls and the lamp post stand out however because of the distance it has from the foreground it looks very secluded and out of sight.

This image has lots of light sources ranging from the foreground, middle and the background. Creating lots of dynamic contrasts in the tones and lots of variating warm and cold colours in the background. The greys, silvers and whites in the foreground look very strict, clean and organised which is the opposite of the colours in the background.

Overall I dont think that this images are as strong as the images taken in the first photo shoot. I found that my techniques were more fluent and simply which made my images look more natural. Therefore I will stay with images from that one.

Photoshoot 2

During this photo shoot the sun came up a lot faster than I expected it to. Therefore a lot of these images are not even usable as night time photography. Only one of them looks remotely like it was taken at night. I am going to look at this in Photoshop and adjust the levels.

I like this image because of the use of focus however there are a lot of bad points as well. The whole background of this image has a blue hue caused by the sun reflecting off the atmosphere at the buildings. Its also very weak because this style has been used hundreds of times before by myself and other practitioners. The main areas of colour is isolated to the sign and the central building which creates two focuses in the image whilst there is only meant to be one. I feel that this image is not strong enough so I am not going to use it.

Photoshoot 1

This was my first photo shoot and I had decided to go to Birmingham because of the variating landscapes and styles of the buildings around the area. I started the shoot outside of the city centre where I knew that that there would be lots of back streets, variating heights in the terrain and lots of different lighting conditions. I then made my way towards the city centre.

I have decided to experiment with images 1920, 1921, 1923, 1943, 1949 and the merging of 1968-69. For the first five images stated I have barely edited them; the only adjustments made was that I adjusted the levels and cropped the image slightly.

Image 1920

I really like this image because it looks like the two light sources are clashing in the middle of the image for supremacy of it. There is grain on the image which matches the characteristics of night photography and there is still a large contrast in tone. There is an orange tint to the image which was created by the street lights because of the warm bulbs installed. I dont feel that there are any leading lines in this picture however there is a large structure created by vertical, diagonal and vertical lines.

Image 1921

Yellow is a very dominant colour here and it leads the viewer through the image. Starting on the right where the detail of the stairs is and you follow the railing toward the yellow on the wall and the detail inside the door frame on the left. All the shadows and different angles Make this image look like a crime scene. This idea is also enhanced by the stain that that is on the floor in the left door frame. It looks like someone has dragged something through there and done a really bad job of cleaning it up.

Image 1923

 To enhance this image I used the levels to increase the contrast and make certain parts of the image stand out more than others like the window frame, bricks and the edge of the shadows. Considering the amount of light that was on the location I was surprised that I was able to create such contrasting shadows in between the lights. I feel that most of the audiences attention is drawn towards the right of the image where there is a sequence of of light and dark areas.

Image 1943

This image is quite strange because I took it with the ground at an angle within the frame, when I cropped into and straightened it up it didn't look as effective. I feel that this image is quite surreal because of the variance in tones across the image and the types of colours used. All the colours in this image are cold colours; purples, blues and greens. The upper half of the image is very dark and the lower half is light.

Image 1949

I like this image because all the light seems to connect to each other. The light from the street lamp connects to the radiance from the underpass, the light area on the ramp leads down to it as well. The street lamps on the main road form a line that leads the viewer to the top corner of the underpass.

Image 1968-69

For this image I used 2 images and merged them together. This is because I needed different exposures for the street and under the scaffolding. I used the central scaffolding to hide the merging line. However I can tell that it is 2 images because the perspective is slightly off on the right side. It looks like it is angled inwards. Therefore I don't like this image and I can't use it.

Chrystel Lebas

She is a French photographer who lives and works in London. She has attended 4 educational systems, 3 in France and 1 in London. As part of her career she lectures at University of the Arts, Camberwell 
and Richmond the American International University in London. She also guest lectures all over the 
UK at universities and art colleges.

I think this image was taken in low light conditions and it required a long shutter speed to capture enough natural light for the leaves, trees and flowers to be viewable. Through the middle of the image there is a lighter purple. This is an area that was uncovered by trees and more light was able to get through. The green was also exposed to a lot of light which shows in the image because of the high saturation.

This image has a lot less colour than the other however it focuses more on the contrast. There is a high contrast in the tones of this image from black to a very pale blue and green. This image was also taken in low light and I think that most of the light is reflected by the moisture of the steam rising from the water. It looks very sinister as if the darkness of the forest is retracting from the waters edge when the daylight appeared with the sunrise. The riversides and the path of the trees lead the viewer from upstream in the background towards the foreground where there is detail of the rocks at the bottom of the river.

Michael Zhang

Zhang is the founder of petapixel.com, photoblog.com and bokeh.com. He is a photography enthusiast, entrepreneur and programmer; Zhang has achieved 2 degrees in computer science. He is now based in California.

This image focuses on capturing the lights from airplanes that come into land and take off. It consists of the strong and defined headlights that are white and the wing lights that are red and blue. Because they are at an airport then there are a lot of lights on the ground which also expose on the image. The lines look like they are sprouting from the ground like a plant spouting from soil. 

In this image a plane has taken off. In this image it makes it seems like the plane flies straight up and it doesn't show the incline that every plane needs to take to get to the required height. The lines are also in the middle of the image which makes them the centre of attention, the blue and red dots then add a border to the main lights.

I really like these images because they are very different and I've never seen planes being used to create light drawings however there aren't any airports near to where I live so I may have to reconsider it.