Lighting (Part 3)

Diary Entry:
For this last project in the 3 part lighting projects, the focus was on hair. I realized that it can be hard to show off hair without making it too 'out-there' and extremely head-turning. But what I learned is key is the position of the camera in relation to the model and how you portray the person in the picture. Also the posture and style of the model help make inferences to what it is that is being focused on.
My negatives all turned out fine, except for a few, which I took in poor lighting. So I re-shot and was glad I did because I got some very nice shots of my two friends posing together.
I was sick during one of the classes, but I was able to use my free block to work on developing the negatives and finishing my prints.
These 3 prints felt much easier compared to the 9 from the last project.

Theory Notes:
Flash photography - It consists of using the flash button on your camera, and when taking a picture, will emit a flash of light. There are several uses for the flash. The first, direct flash, is used when it lighting for the picture is low due to lighting or if it is dark outside. This gives the picture more light and shows contrast with the subject and the background. It also gives thick shadows.


















The next use is for fill flash. You can use your flash on a sunny day when there are areas in the picture that is not directly in the sunlight. This fills in the light missing in that area and illuminates it so you can clearly see everything in your picture.















Bounce flash means that you can use flash to avoid getting the direct flash. You may want this so you do not get the contrast and dark shadows that the direct flash gets. To do this, you angle the flash at an angle and not directly on your subject, so they get a softer light fall on them. Since there is a loss of light because it is not directed, that means that the aperture should be opened up more, allowing for more light; going up 2 stops should do it.

Light Metering - This is used to show how much light is given off when taking a picture. It has 2 different methods on how to use it. The first is reflective metering, where you measure the light that is coming off of the subject when a light is pointed towards them. The second is incident metering where you measure how much light the light is giving off. Position the meter where the subject would be in relation to the light and measure from there the amount of light.

Printing Compositions:

For my first contact sheet, I got a time of 36 seconds at 2.8 aperture. I used a different enlarger than the one I normally use.On the contact sheet, the pictures looked a little grey, but for the final print I used from here, it turned out fine.

This is my second contact sheet. Here I was able to get my angled print and my print with two people in it. The final time and aperture for this sheet is 6 seconds and 8 ap, respectively.

For my first print of a full-frontal shot, I used Jenny from my first contact sheet. I took this picture in the natural light outside. This gave the picture a nice backgroud, but you are still able to see that the focus is on her black, straight hair. For my test strip, I tried 4 to 12 seconds at 8 aperture, and for the final print, I ended up with 8 aperture and 10 seconds.

My next print is the angled hair shot, where I moved the camera around the model to get a different view of the hair. In this picture I too the picture from under her, focusing in on her extremely blonde hair. I got this picture from the second contact sheet, and the pictures came out too grey when I had the aperture at 8, so instead of adding a filter and more time, I dropped the aperture to 5.6 and decreases the time. The test strip was 5.6 aperture and ranged from 2-12 seconds. I tested 4 seconds, and was still a bit too light because of her hair, so the final time is at 6 seconds, 5.6 aperture.

My last shot was of 2 people and I thought that the contrast between dark and light and straght and wavy hair would be very distinctful and would stand out. In my contact sheet there are other pictures of the same girls where I focused in on one girl more than the other, but this one has both of them slightly in focus. Again, the aperture went down from the contact sheet, so the test strip and final time and aperture is at 2 seconds, 5.6 aperture.

Image Bank:

This image is a very clear picture of hair, because that is the only thing that you see on this person. The picture is called Nahui Olin and was taken in 1924 by Edward Weston of Illinois. During his photographing career, he ranged from pictorialism, nude pictures, landscapes, and still life. He even received a Guggenheim Fellowship award for experimental work. He was quite diverse in his photographic ability.

This is a picture of Doris Day, a famous movie star during the 50's and 60's. This shot is a great angled shot, as you are able to see the top of her head, which not everyone can always see on other people. The photographer, Leo Fuchs was known during his time to take many pictures of Hollywood's Elite, on and off the set of movies. Also with photography, he was also a motion picture producer.

This is a picture of 2 models right next to each other, both with different hair color. The contrast looks nice and brings direct focus to it. This is very similar to what I did for my shot with two people in it. Georg Wendt is the photographer of this commercial shot for haircolor. He started out in reportage photography and later emerged into fashion photography. He also went to school at The Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig.