Thursday 11 October 2012

Artificial Light

What is Aftiicial Light?


Aftificial light is any light that is not sunlight and is man-made.

It has different uses; practical use for lighting rooms or on a lamp or to give an aethentic effect. A good example of this would be the use of ultraviolet light in a night club.
In photography, light has different colour temperatures. Our eyes are constantly adapting to out surrounding 24/7 and occasionally are not able to see the different temperatures and colours or tint of different lights.

A good and noticable example of the different light sources giving temperature is incandescent and fluoresent light.

Incandescent Light - an electrical light which produces light when a filament wire is heated to a high temperature by and electrical current through it until it glows.

Fluorescent Light - a gas-discharge lamp that uses electricity to excite mercury vapor. The excited mercury atoms produce short-wave ultraviolet light that then causes a phosphor to fluoresce, producing visible light.


A fluorescent lamp converts electrical power into useful light more efficiently than an incandescent lamp.

Analysing Media Texts


Overall Analysis of Images


Shanghai Bombed ‘1937’ by H.S.Wong
This image is one of a baby sat crying by train tracks with rubble surrounding and what appears to be buildings still standing in the distance. This suggests that the area the photographer captured was target by a planted bomb or was in the line of fire of an airstrike. The fact that the photographer used a child instead of a grown man shows people (or the bombers even) that people of all innocence and ages are being hurt and killed.
 
The image was taken at close range with a fixed lens on his Leica camera (as I believe cameras back then did not have zoom) using the diagonals of the train tracks & pavement and presence of the dust, rubble, baby and post to show depth. I’m not sure if the photographer had taken this photographer to give this desired effect but it helps emphasize the devastation showing that the area hit was not small.
The contrast in the image is fairly high which shows that the aperture used was quite wide.
 
This image may mean nothing to children and very little to teenagers with no care to what’s going on in the world around them. The image is more or less targeted to older people as you haven’t really ‘lived life’ at the age of 16 and still in education and because they’ll pay much more attention and will show a lot more sympathy and interest towards it.

This photograph was taken by H.S.Wong who was most noticeable for it. It was taken during the Battle of Shanghai in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The image was captured a few minutes after a Japanese air attack on civilians killing and wounding many at Shanghai’s South Station whilst they waited for an overdue train.

Allegations of falsehood were made by Japanese nationalists and the Japanese Government put a bounty of $50,000 on Wong’s head (an amount equivalent to $810,000 in 2012).

Aperture and Depth of Field (DOF)

What is Aperture?

Well, aperture is the opening and closing of a device in your camera's lens called a 'diaphram' (it works very simillar to an iris of the human eye). This action determines how much light is being let into the camera' image sensor and also your image's 'depth of field'.

Aperture is measured and represented using 'f numbers'. f numbers, aperture and how they work may be quite daunting at first but when understood will help you improve your 'photographers eye' when picturing how you want you picture to look.

When taking a photograph; the higher your f number, the smaller the opening in your lens and the more of your image is in focus.
The smaller your f number, the wider the opening in your lens and the shallower your depth of field

Also in addition to DOF; the wider your openning, the more light your letting hit your camera's image sensor and the smaller your openning the less.

Here some examples showing Depth of Field and the amount of light being let into your image sensor:


f/5.3


f/5.6
 

Low f numbers with a wide aperture openning is often used in portrait photography, nature photography and others when you want to make a certain something or someone the main focus of your picture.
High f number with a small aperture openning is often used in landscape photography and when you'd like for most or everything in your picuture in focus.



Monday 1 October 2012

Cropping

For today's session, I and the class were spoke to about Photoshop and its "Cropping" tool.
For those who are unaware, the cropping tool is used to make pictures smaller removing unwanted or irreliant details in an image or to add different pictures together creating a montage.
After we was shown what the tool was and how to use it we was then asked to creating an image uses 3 (or more) different ones.

After a good 10 minutes of messing about with the tool, here's what I have created.

Unaware
This image isn't the best image in the world but to be honest, its a start. =]
I have created it using these following three images:




Monday 24 September 2012

Light Painting

For todays session the class and I were introduced to Light Painting.
'Light Painting is when a light source is used to "paint" a picture. It requires a long shutter speed (to capture light) and a tripod to imobilize the camera as movement of it will be captured in your image.'
I was not positioned in the best of places (this over exposed my images showing the draw'ees) but here are examples of some of the images I had taken.

Aperture - f/3.5
Shutter Speed - 8 sec.
Focal Length - 18mm
ISO - 100

Aperture - f/3.5
Shutter Speed - 13 sec.
Focal Length - 18mm
ISO - 100
 
Aperture - f/3.5
Shutter Speed - 10 sec.
Focal Length - 18mm
ISO - 100

Aperture - f/4.2
Shutter Speed - 13 sec.
Focal Length - 26mm
ISO - 100

Soon after these pictures were taken, we was asked to go out and get pictures of light painting.
FACT - Light Painting isn't as effect in light then it is in the dark
Despite this fact we was sent out in the daylight to get some pictures. =]
 
Me and a few other student, made our way towards town looking looking for a dark, sutiable place to create our pictures. Our main idea for a dark place was "car park" which lead us to Selfridges Car Park.
On the bottom floor of this car park we found a dark spot under where cars proceed up to the next floor and took the following pictures:
 
 









 
 
 
 

Monday 17 September 2012

Context, Objective and Subjective


Introduction
I have been asked to find an image that means something to me and also to talk about its context, objective and subjective.

Context
The context of the image I have chosen for this assign is very simple. From first glance to anyone outside of my family, this image consists of an elderly woman with glasses on smiling for the camera and appears to be seated on a sette or a sofa with a mirror on the wall in the background.
Objective
This is as a matter of fact is a picture of an elderly woman to you but to me, its my Grandma.
Subjective  
This image was not originally a still one. It was in fact taken from a video I had recorded on an iPhone. I, my grandma and family was in a pub at a party in Smethwick.