SashaLou

Blog Evaluation.

 

I found that when It came to blogging on the current projects that we were doing quite difficult to remember to blog it as well as actually do the work. But doing the actual blog itself was pretty simple WordPress was quick and simple to use, when setting up the blog it explains everything that you need to be able to do to successfully blog.

 

WordPress is a good way to get your ideas and work out there, and to build a good online presence if paired with other platforms such as Instagram, it would be possible to make a successful presence online and to get your name more known in the photography world. I find it also a good platform to display your work as an online portfolio.

 

I don’t think that right now I will continue to use my WordPress as it does take a longer period of time then other platforms to upload your work, I will personally prefer to use Instagram as you upload your photos straight away and then just add hashtags and from them tags people are able to find your work, weather it’s a location tag or a tag of a certain subject itself.

 

At first I found that my blog came in quite handy as an over view on the projects that I was working on, but as the projects went on I found it became more difficult to find the time to update it, even with a set amount of time to do blog work, the 3 hours on a Friday afternoon wasn’t enough to evaluate all of the work that I was currently doing in my sketch books and the research and going out and doing shoots as well, WordPress however would come in handy if I was running a business rather than studying a subject even though it is still handy to have an online presence now I find my presence is currently best served using Instagram.

I found that WordPress is a good platform to work with, however it isn’t like others that i have used such as Instagram. But they have there differences, where as WordPress is more of a blog website and Instagram is simply a photography platform. WordPress allows you to explain more about the work you are posting where as Instagram doesn’t allow this as much. WordPress could be a good platform to start a business on to explain more of what you are doing with your work where as Instagram is more for the promotion of your work.

I haven’t personally used any other platforms such as Wix, Weebly or Flickr, but i have looked into them and from what i can see my personal preference would be to use WordPress and Instagram as the others seem to be personal websites rather then blogs. And for me personally at this time i could find that quite difficult to keep it up to date.

This part of the project was fun, I tried out different lighting techniques such as Rembrandt with a silver brolly and Rembrandt with a soft box.. these are the two I enjoyed most, however some of the other techniques I tried I found more difficult, I also decided to use the photos I did because I found that I could add the most to them using techniques used by the artist that I have researched such as Maurizio Anzeri and Melissa Zexter.

This has been my favourite part of the project so far, and threading through the portraits I found quite relaxing and really enjoyed doing it once I had decided what patterns I was going to thread through them.

Threading Through photography, the research was different this time. I wasnt finding out as much information as possible about the artists themselves instead I was finding the images I found most interesting and analysing them myself, writing and evaluating what I saw and took personally from the photos, i found their work quite interesting and so far i have used a few of their ideas to influence my own work.

I found that the Christmas project we did was rather easy and very enjoyable. I learnt alot from it especially when it comes to planning a photo shoot and understanding that its important to have a back up plan because not all the ideas that I had worked and others worked better, it’s all about working with what you have and changing lighting and angles that you shoot from. I also learnt that focusing on your target audience is important if you want a good product that is going to sell, my product didn’t sell so in future I need more target audience research.

This is all the work that went into the Christmas shoot, except this doesn’t include all the time that I spent going from shop to shop trying to find all of the stuff that i needed to make this shoot possible. I found it very hard to find the magic snow, which is basically a white crystal that you add water to and it expands to make a snow like substance, i decided to use this over snow spray as i wanted the actual snow effect rather than the squirt kind of look. I also found it pretty difficult to find a christmas tree that was small but not tiny… i needed it to look big compared to the Lego man but be small enough to not look ridiculously big next to the Lego man basically he needed to be able to reach the tree at his tiny little height… I think this shoot went the best so far, i planned it pretty well, i knew what i needed to make it possible. I did however have a few problems with the snow and the glass because after a while of repositioning and touching the snow and the glass the glass became smeared with what ever substance it was made out of and it was pretty hard to clean off the glass as it just seemed to spread even more as i tried to clean it.. this made it difficult to get a clear photo through the window after a fair few shots were taken. I also need to use better lighting next time. but other than that, i feel that this shoot went pretty well but i can still improve further.

I feel that my first lego man shoot went terrible, I wasn’t able to capture what i wanted as my camera wouldn’t pick up the motion that i was trying to capture. I believe this could have been because my exposure triangle was incorrect, so in the future i need to trial the settings before a shoot and consider things such as motion being captured. i don’t feel i put in as much effort with getting everything correct for this shoot as i should have as there are more aspects to consider then what i considered. to improve future shoots i need to be more prepared before hand, figure out my camera settings, tripod angles. i also need to take into consideration the lighting of the shots, for this shoot i thought outside natural light would be best, however this isn’t the case. I now feel an over head or maybe a ring light would be best for this kind of shoot.

The spider diagrams shown above is how I came up with ideas for the first Lego man shoot, I first came up with different ideas and then picked and idea and expanded it in another spider diagram as to the sort of stuff that was required for the shoot its self, such as; A tripod and props to try and get the shoot to how i wanted it.

For our first forced perspective shoot I went out with a small group of people, in our local area to try capture some forced perspective photos. This how ever easy it sounds is not, it turns out it’s alot more work then it looks. I often found myself lying or crouching on the ground to get the correct angle to show the different perspectives. I found this pretty interesting and fun to come with different ideas for shots within the group. For this shoot I used a bridge camera and my mobile.