commercial and professional photography journal

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Commercial and Professional Photography Journal Claudia Fernandez-Villasante

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Page 1: Commercial and Professional Photography Journal

Commercial and Professional Photography JournalClaudia Fernandez-Villasante

Page 2: Commercial and Professional Photography Journal

Introduction

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Why I chose photography... As many other creative people, I have always been a visual person, therefore, it is quiet natural for me to appreciate pho-tography immensely, however, I had never had the chance to learn about photography until now. I have been doing it for a couple of years in a “let’s see if this work” kinda way. I jumped at the opportunity of taking this course because I want to be able to take my own shots in an informed manner, under-standing what each click and turn does to my work.

I have been collecting old film cameras for a while; once, while buying a Pentax at a consignment store, the shop assistant, a photography junkie, gave me a 45 minutes lesson on the most basic concepts of photography, he talked a lot and had a funny accent, all I could remember was that the needle on the side of the viewfinder had to always hit 0. On my very first class of this course, this was mentioned, between all the exposure, aperture and shutter speed talk, there was finally something that I had learnt before, then and there I felt so thankful for that 45 minute photography lesson at a stinky consignment store four years ago.

After that class, we had another two weeks of learning, trying, doing, producing and achieving. This journal summarizes my two weeks of intensive commercial and professional photog-raphy taught by CJ Taylor. One last thing, I now know that the needle doesn’t ALWAYS need to hit 0...

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My Favourites, Andrew Zuckerman

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Andrew Zuckerman

Andrew Zuckerman’s work is simple, clean and very detailed. Most of his work are studio shots in which there is only one element being shot against a solid background.

Through his photos, Zuckerman directly exposes every detail of his models; wrinkles on faces, fur on animals and more, the simplicity of his compositions is what tells the story of this photographer’s subjects.

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Aaron Huey

Aaron Huey is a National Geographic photographer that travels around the world telling various stories through his amazing work.

My favourite shots of Huey are the ones that have used light to add emotion to the story that is being told. He manages to blend in the background and captures his subjects in their realest states.

Huey has a great understanding of space, light and distance.

My Favourites, Aaron Huey

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Juergen Teller

Fashion photographer Juergen Teller is one of my all time favourites. His very unique style entitles overexposed images with soft lighting, pastel colours and straightforward angles, I appreciate the simplicity in which Teller’s photos are taken, as they do not include various other elements.

When taking portraits, he manages to show his subjects in very personal ways, as if he was a close friend or family of the subject, furthermore, many of these photos can give the impression that they just came out of an old family album.

My Favourites, Juergen Teller

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Shutter Speed The shutter speed is one of two controls that a camera has over the amount of light used for photographies.

It sets the shutter so that it opens for a selected fraction of a time after the release button has been pressed. Apart from controlling the amount of light that enters a camera, the shutter speed also affects the way that moving objects are captured.

The aperture also controls the light that passes through the lens of a camera. It basically refers to the size of the opening of the lens when something is being shot. It is measured in F stops which determine how much light is able to expose film.

The aperture of a camera also affects the depth of field in a photograph.

Aperture

Photography Basics

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ISO ISO refers to the sensitivity of a sensor to light. The higher the ISO number, the less light it needs for a correct exposure, usually, lower number will generally result in higher quality photos.

Exposure is the way in which light has affected the production of a photo. When a photo is underexposed, the settings of the shutter speed and the aperture have not allowed enough light in, therefore, the outcome would be a dark photo, on the other hand, if a photography is too light, it has been over-exposed, meaning that too much light has reached a camera lens. The correct exposure can be achieved with the correct aperture and shutter speed settings for the selected ISO.

Depth of field is directly affected by the aperture, it is the sharp focus on an object and the distanced blurred of select-ed or all the other elements in a photo.

Exposure

Depth of field

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Documentary, Annie Leibovitz

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Annie Leibovitz

During our second class we watched a documentary about Annie Lebovitz, I thought I didn’t know who she was until many of her photos were flashing on the screen... Of course I had seen a lot of her work before; the iconic photo of John and Yoko cuddling on the floor, Keith Haring’s body paint picture and so many photos from various fashion magazine editorials.

Throughout the documentary, viewers are able to see the professional development that Annie Leibovitz has expe-rienced as a photographer; from her older photos, which were very simple and extremely personal to her latest work, the overproduced and very expensive shots, what is always extremely clear throughout this documentary is that Annie Lebovitz has an innate talent to imagine and capture great things with her camera.

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Tungsten units Also known as redheads, they are lights that run continuous-ly, allowing the photographer to see how the light will affect their subject straight away, they generate heat quickly, there-fore, a lot of care is needed when handling them.

These are more popular and used at professional studios as they are easy to control and are very accurate, they produce a clean white light and are fast enough to freeze most motions.

They are small transmitters that connect a camera to flash heads, they send a signal to the flash receiver once the cam-era shoots.

Grid and barn doors for light units, scrims, diffusers, bounce, soft boxes, coloured gels, etc.

Flash heads

Radio triggers

Others

At the Studio

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Our first assignment, Found Object to Still Life, was the hardest assignment for me as it was the very first time I used a digital SLR and I was just starting to understand what depth of filed and exposure meant, it was also my very first time really exploring aperture and shutter speed.

The task was to find an object on the street and to shoot it In Situ, later, we had to do a photo shoot of our chosen object in the studio.

Finding the right object took me a long time, I walked around my neighbourhood, went to the beach, spent a whole Sunday walking around Port Adelaide and I was not pleased with any of my objects; mushrooms, a sea slug, a cigarette, popped balloons, flowers and so many other things... I finally found a flat tin of Eclipse mints (berry flavour) outside a high school, I shot it where I found it to obtain the in situ shot and decided to keep it for my studio shot.

The next couple of photos show my final work, explorations and the experimentation I did inside and outside the studio...

Found Object to Still Life Assignment

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Our second assignment was a group task of creating a Typol-ogy, CJ taught us that a typology needed to be a collection of photographs that presented both, consistency and varia-tion.

With this in mind, my group and I came up with a number of ideas for a studio photo shoot; we thought of using balloons, bubblegum even brushing our teeth in front of the camera; we also thought about taking photos of different objects such as; keys, letterboxes, shadows, windows and more.

At the end, we decided to do portraiture; we were going to be the subjects of our own work; after some research and our desire to experiment with lights and all the equipment that was available for us at the studio, we decided to use the technique of rear curtain sync, with the use of coloured gels, slow shutter speed, crazy movements, some post production on Photoshop and the brief of a mental health campaign we produced a fun and interesting typology.

I believe we achieved the thematic and stylistic consistency we all desired and we are all really happy with the outcome.

Typology Assignment

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The last assignment of the course consisted in creating a CFS Print Ad Campaign to raise awareness of bush fires in Australia. Ever since we got the assignments’ description a week or so before starting the course, I started thinking about what I would save from my house if it was on fire... I came to a conclusion; I was either going to escape with just my phone, some money, a USB stick and my car keys or go absolutely ridiculous saving fur coats, my favourite rug, every souvenir I have bought in my travels, every single present I have ever been given, lots of jewelery and at least six pairs of shoes.

Some time later and after really thinking about it I realized that I was going to save some things that were emotionally meaningful to me, jewelery that my parents have given me, a book of poems given to me by my boyfriend, passports, some money and just one pair of shoes. I am pretty happy with this decision and I am sure these are the exact things I would take in case of a fire, I did forget to include my phone but let’s just assume that I was calling the CFS while I was grabbing all of the other things.

For the ad campaign I decided to use a black and white photo because I did not want it to be about me but about the inner message of the campaign, it asks the question of what other would take to make the audience think about the ad and create an emotional connection to it.

CFS Ad Campaign Assignment

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Be bushfi re ready this seasonSo... What would you take?

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The last couple of weeks have gone by really fast and I have learnt that an intensive course of commercial and profession-al photography is intensive, indeed.

I have also learnt the basic concepts of photography, how to work a camera, how to use a studio and all the equipment in it, I have a better understanding of photography as a whole and I now know that the options to create with photography are infinite as long as you are willing to try and experiment.

CJ asked a couple of times if we were expecting the course to be this complex, not many people admitted to this but I can now confirm it, I was not expecting this course to be this complex, many times I felt lost and I still feel I need to learn and practice a lot more, from now on my improvement will only depend on my willingness to keep taking photos as everything improves with practice.

I am very happy with what I have learnt and hope to continue taking photos a lot more aware of what I am actually doing. I do not regret my silly questions, my clueless looks and the bad photos I took, it was fun. Cheers CJ!

TO FINALIZE...

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