These are my practice photos for my set! In these photos, I tried experimenting with light to get the effects that I wanted – specifically, I tried to get some hard edges on the lighting, so that instead of creating an entire tint on the image, the light would be in a more concentrated beam shape instead. However, as the images show, I haven’t managed to quite get the right effect yet. The same goes for the pale colorless light, as although I turned the light as dim as it can get, the image still appears very bright. I have concluded that this is because the ISO/exposure of the camera was too high, so if I turn the ISO down I would be able to get my dark gloomy effect. However, something interesting that happened due to this high exposure mixed with low light was that a lot of my images were blurred (especially the ones in the red light) as the camera was trying to splice together two images taken in quick succession – during which the model changed positions in the interval. The colors still remained extremely bright and almost burning, and I think that this blurred effect combined with the harsh light would be good for conveying frustration and cloudiness of the mind.

Another thing that I wanted to do but couldn’t do as well in this set was to experiment with the composition – as the camera was stuck onto a pole, I couldn’t move it around as freely as I wished. Thus, there were no close-ups and the direction of the camera was also severely limited. I tried compensating for this through the body language and pose of the model, although I’m not sure how well the emotions can come through with all these limitations – especially since quite a few of my pre-planned compositions involve extreme close-ups and/or far shots. The far shots are also another issue, as the photo studio is definitely not large enough for what my sketches entail. I can think of several solutions to this: one solution is that I scrap the wide-shot composition and replace it with something else that feels similar (for example, I could have the model still be in the same pose, but maybe the camera is above them looking down), or I could find another location to take the image in (like the theatre. The theatre would absolutely be great. However, the problem with that is a) I’m not sure how to book the theatre because I’m pretty sure I can’t just waltz in for like 30 minutes after school randomly and b) I’m not sure how to get all the lighting stuff in the theatre, because operating the theatre lights is definitely way beyond my skill level. Therefore, the first solution seems to be more likely).

To summarize, some of the things I want to watch out for in future photoshoots would be:

  1. To get the dim lighting, lower the exposure of the camera
  2. Use a camera that isn’t physically attached to a pole
  3. Experiment more with the motion blur effect, as those high-intensity blurred images have the potential to convey a lot of emotion that normal still images wouldn’t
  4. Try to find some other compositions that replaces the wide shots