Assignment One - Workflow - workflow

Shooting

My shooting for Assignment happened entirely by accident.  I had planned to make a series of seascapes on Portland Bill (point A on the map):

My plan for the final assignment for DPP is to produce a series of negative space/minimal seascapes, influenced by Mark Bauer and Trevor Cotton.

My initial workflow consisted of the usual:

1. Check battery, memory card, focus mode, matrix metering
2. Decide ISO (100 - bright lighting)
3. Check exposure compensation set to 0 for trial shot
4. Switch to aperture priority with a wide aperture
5. Shoot, check blinkies, adjust exposure to -0.5 ev

The weather on the assigned day was fantastic - sunny with a dark cloudy sky, but when I got to the rocks at Portland Bill, I had the photographer's equivalent of "writer's block" and for some reason couldn't put what I knew into practice.  I was also battling with a new tripod in quite windy conditions and not making any progress.  I ended up with blurred pictures and a splashed lens.  This was about the best picture I got:

I retreated to the Jailhouse Cafe for some lunch and a rethink.  Whilst walking around the cafe it struck me that although this was an open space, and an uplifting place to be, with the staff free being risk assessed prisoners on day release running the Cafe, and at the same time learning skills that would help them rebuild their lives after full release, there was a marked contrast with the area surrounding the cafe looking dark, foreboding, with restricted access everywhere I looked.  It occurred to me that in a sense I was the prisoner as I couldn't access parts of the prison freely which the prisoners on day release could.  There was also a sense of dilapidation, neglect and loneliness, which once inside the cafe is lost.  For some reason, and I was really drawn to the starkness and oppressive feeling the outside of the prison conveyed.

So wandering around the grounds I started shooting. At this point the light wasn't as good as it had been so I switched between average exposure and half a stop under exposed.  I also took photos on two separate visits during the same afternoon, so there is a difference in lighting in my images.  I didn't do any editing on the day itself, saving it all for later on my laptop.  While I was wandering around I had a sense of what they would look like in monochrome or at least very desaturated colours, with almost a sense of cold war bleakness in my mind.  Everywhere I looked there were boundaries, perimeters, and no entry points cutting me off from a world that most likely I would never experience.

Editing

I had 73 images in total, which I wanted to narrow down to 12 to make a panel showing the sensations I described above.  I copied them all into a separate folder.

Step One

I scrolled through the images and deleted any obviously faulty ones, i.e. those that were blurred or which didn't show anything interesting or the sense of foreboding I described above.  This left me with 69 pictures.  But in those 69, I had a number of duplicates, so I went through this selection removing those which were very similar.  This got my selection down to 45.

Step Two

The next stage was to tag all the images that I found creatively satisfying; i.e. those in which I liked the composition or which I felt really captured the atmosphere I had experienced.  At this point I had decided that I wanted to keep all the images exactly the same size and shape as if I was creating an exhibition panel, and so I wouldn't crop any.  Therefore they could be straightened but not cropped, which was a consideration in my selection.  This left me with 22 images:

Step Three

I next worked within the 22 images to refine my choice further.  There were still a few within this selection that were quite similar so I concentrated choosing between those.  The pictures I wanted to keep I gave two stars.  This left me with 17 images, from which to eliminate five:

Step Four

This next step was the hardest: eliminating five images.  I tried to be really objective about these choices changing contrast/exposure/picture control to try to see which would look best as finished items.  In the end, this turned out to be quite simple, there were five that I simply felt did not really convey the sense of no return and solitude that the others did.  These were tagged with three stars in my folder:

Although I really like the lighting and the chain as a symbol of oppression, this image would have been better had the light been more on the chains.

The dynamic range in this image isn't great; although I really like the oppressive sky, the doorway is too dark.  This could however be altered with processing.

The depth of field was not sufficient in this image to keep the wire fence in focus; this would have been better with a blurred background and sharp fence.

Light at the end of the tunnel, therefore contradicts my concept.

Although the focal point is dead centre (the gate), the composition is not great.  This would have been better if there had been more grass to the left-hand side.  Also I used the gate in another image.






Step Five

The remaining twelve images were processed using ViewNX2 including exposure adjustment, sharpening, contrast, shadow protection, conversion to mono and straightening.  Image One also required some blemishes cleaning up as these showed in the clear sky patches.

Please see my final panel for the finished piece of work.