Wednesday 23rd January - Photography

When we had been doing the workshops and experiencing all the different pathways, during the 3D one with Kim, I had made a wire drawing from a sketch I had done at Blackburn Museum  because I had wanted all my work to have some kind of connection, and not to consist of completely random themes and pieces of work. For my portfolio, I wanted to mount the drawing onto something e.g. paper, card I wasn't really too sure how to do it. Jo suggested that I don't mount it, and put it in my sketchbook, and instead, photograph it in the studio using light and creating shadows with different colours. It had been a while since I had done any real photography.
When I first got to the studio, most of the space was being used, so I had to try and set up in a small corner which was quite difficult. On top of that, when I went and got a camera, the battery was nearly flat. Then, I couldn't quite get the lights and flash to work. I had to play around with the settings on the camera to find out which ones worked the best for what I wanted to do, but the thing is, I didn't want to play around. I just wanted to get on with it and have some decent pictures at the end.
When I did manage to get the flash to work, and took a picture using it, it was so bright that my drawing wasn't even visible! 

When I figured out how to tone the flash down, I couldn't get a shadow, despite the fact that there were lights and shadows should have been created. What I had to do was turn off the big lights and use the light on my phone. Due to the fact that there were no other lights, and perhaps because this was not as bright as the big one, a shadow was created! 

I was really pleased with the results of using my phone as a light to create shadows, but I was annoyed at the fact that it hadn't worked with the big light.

I used gels to create the effect of coloured lighting. This gave the false impression that the drawing was the colour that the light was. 

What I had wanted to happen hadn't, but what had happened was some light drawing. I hadn't realized that the shutter speed had somehow slowed down, and I had been waving my phone around in front of it. The result was a strange set of photos.

It was a creative mistake. If I had tried to do this on purpose, it wouldn't have looked like this. It was a happy accident which I am pleased with.

I felt like it had been kind of pointless going to the photography studio to take the pictures, but then again, I was happy with the results. The pictures didn't turn out exactly how I wanted them to, but they appealed to me in a different way.