Practise Photoshoot - St Peters Church

Evaluation (Whole Assignment)

Everything is now completed for my assignment and I must say that I have learned quite alot about photography. Not only have I learned how to use a camera with manual settings but I have also learned how to manipulate images to make them look better or completely different. I have also learned what different types of lenses there are and what they do and I have also learned about what photographers are out there that inspire me and are similar to my work.

Overall I feel that I have done very well with all of the units. I have taken my time to make them as detailed as I can and feel that I have totally understood everything about it without being confused at all throughout the whole assignment. My photoshoot I feel went very well. I think the decision of splitting it up into two parts was the right decision as I managed to get the same area but with a completely different climate (Snow) which I was very lucky at getting. Because of the weather conditions changing very dramitcally I was able to take some brilliant photographs of the River when it is snowing which made the overall shot look completely different to what it would look like if it wasn't snowing. If I was to go at this task again I would probably explore down the River a bit more to get more of a variety of shots which could lead to more unique photographs espiecially if it was snowing again.

My photoshop task I feel also went very well. I was able to on board any information I was told about the piece of digital manipualtion software which I used and was able to use it with minimal questions asked. I also took time and went onto youtube to do my own research on using the software for more digital manipulation techniques which I then used for the task. If I was to go at this task again I would definetly do more research to create even more heavier manipulated images, because of what I have seen there is limitless possibilities available.

My research was one of the tasks that took me the longest. This isn't because I had to research ten Photographers it was because I wanted to choose photographers that really inspired me and because there are so many different types of photographers out there this lead me to taking more time picking the right photographer. But who I found whilst doing alot of research I was very pleased with as they now inspire me even more to continue with my photography work. I didn't struggle at all writing about them and I was able to choose pictures which inspire me. If I was to go at this task again I would probably take even more time looking even further for photographers that inspire me because there are alot more out there.

Overall I am very happy with this assignment on a whole. I feel that I have completely understood every part of it and I will be taking this knowledge even further to help me progress with my career.

Lenses Research

For this assignment we were also asked to explain different types of lenses and understand what they are used for. Below is an explanation of different lenses and what effects they do when taking photographs.

Standard Lense

The standard lense comes with most cameras as the default lense. Standard lenses are designed for taking basic shots with nothing too extreme. Although the standard lense isn't designed for the extreme it still has the ability to take some stunning shots.

Macro Lense

The macro lense is designed for close-up shots particulary familiar with close-up shots of flowers. They create such an effect that it is purely the item you want to take the photograph of that will be in focus and the background being blurred out. Some macro lenses can be quite expensive but you can also get macro filters which just go over the top of the standard lense.

Zoom Lense

Zoom lenses are designed for taking shots from long away. They are particulary used for landscape shots like wideangled lenses. You would be able to take a perfect shot which looks like you right next to the area you are shooting but actually you would be quite far away.

Special Purpose Lenses

Special purpose lenses are used to create shots that are not normally taken. Alot of them consist of taking shots to filter out certain aspects or colours in a shot. Below are a few special purpose lenses which can be used.

* Fish eye Lense
* Stereoscopic Lense
* Soft Focus
* Infared Lense
* UltraViolet Lense
* Swivel Lense

These lenses all create different types of effect like the fish eye lense for example. This lense creates a dark effect around the shot creating a bowl like effect for the shot. Ultra violet and infared lenses can also be bought in a filter form to put over a standard lense to get rid of certain colours from a shot which should'nt be there. Soft Focus lenses give a soft but not out of focus shot, particulary used in portrait shots. Swivel lenses rotate on the camera itself to give different angle when taking a photograph to give quite a unique effect. Streoscopic lenses take pairs of photographs which give a 3D type effect when viewed with approriate gear.

Research - Mike McFarlane

For my tenth and final piece of research I have chosen to research photographer Mike McFarlane. Mike McFarlane is a photographer who really inspires me. His work is very similar to what I would like to achieve in the many years that I do photography. Mike Mcfarlane started taking photographs in 2002 and has become a big name in landscape photography. He goes all over the country taking photographs of some of the most amazing photographs of what nature has to offer. Like always I will be choosing some of the photographs which I feel are my favourite pieces of his work and writing about why I have chosen them.

The Miracle of Life

This is the first photograph that I came across whilst viewing Mike's work. One explanation for this piece of work is that it is simple but truley fascinating. As you can see one of his main focuses for this photograph was to get the viewer to see the natural beauty of the landscape surrounding this photograph but also to get the viewer to see the beauty of the rock placed right at the front of the photograph. With this placed here it changes the shot completely making it not only a landscape shot but a unique landscape shot. Very impressive, it goes to show that Mike likes to go the extra step with his photography.





Enlightenment



This is the second photograph I have chosen for my research. This photograph in one word is stunning. Taken at the Loch Vaa in Inverness Scotland, this photograph shows how beautfiul the nature can be in the UK and also how perfect it is for photographs. Obviously taken with a wide angled lense, this photograph has everything in it for a landscape shot. This is most definetly the type of shot I would like to take eventually. With the hills in the background and the Loch in the foreground, this shot has absolutely everything in it. He also managed to take this shot at the right time with the sun shining down on the trees to the right of the shot making this photograph look even better than it already is.

Tombolo and White Horses

For my third and final shot I have chosen of Mike's work I have chosen another photograph which really inspires me. This shot is another landscape shot which was also taken in Scotland. Again, it has a mixture of everything for a landscape shot. It has perfect brightness, perfect colour and everything that is included in the shot mixes perfectly with it. What I like the most about this photograph is how he managed to capture this when the tide was out. This makes the shot look amazing as you can see part of the tide is on the left and part of it is on the right creating a surrounding effect with the becah in the middle. This was the perfect time to take this shot because if the tide was in this would be a completely different picture.

Overall Mike McFarlane really inspires me. I will love to be able to take landscape shots like these especially with Rivers and surrounding landscapes because they are truley amazing.

Research - Alberto Seveso (Digital Manipulation Artist)

My next artist that I am going to be researching is also another digital manipulation artist. Alberto Seveso was born in Milan in 1978 and is a photo manipulation artist. He works on editing portraits of people and turning them in to weird and unreal but fascinating products of art. Alberto does alot of work for front cover magazines like mens health magazines etc. I will be choosing three of my favourite pieces of his work which inspire me and I will be writing about why I have chosen them.

This is the first picture that I found when looking at Alberto's work. This image is truely amazing with what he has done to it. This image looks like it has been taken from a front cover of a magazine. As you can see the original image would've been just a straight up portrait. As you can see Alberto's style of work is taking the portrait photograph and then designing his own artwork onto the portrait creating this amazing effect. On his chest it almost looks like a tatoo effect but when it moves up to the top of the head the editing gets a lot heavier and makes this image look amazing.

This is my second image that I have chosen for my research. This image is also very unique to anyone else digital manipulation work. As you can see again he would've taken an original portrait shot and he has really heavlily editied the original photograph using a piece of digital manipulation software. I would personally love to do this sort of work but it would take alot of practice. He has not only edited the shape of the origninal portrait but he has also added his own splatter like effect onto it aswell making it completely unique. Amazing.

Now, as you can see most of Alberto's work relate to a theme which is editing the persons face or body in a very unique and effective way. This third and final photograph which I have chosen is also an image which has been heavlily edited. Again, this was originally a portrait of someone which has been manipulated to create this awsome effect. This image was also probably used for a front cover of a magazine because it has that style to it.

Overall I feel that Alberto's work style is similar but they are all unique. Again I would love to create this masterpiece style of work as when the final products turn out like this they are truley rewarding.

Research - Marja Leena Pelho (Digital Manipulation Artist)

Other than taking the photographs for my project this is one of my favourite parts of this assignment purely because I look digital manipulation. After taking a good look at all of the digital manipulation artists I have decided to research an artist called Marja- Leena Pelho. I have decided to research this artist because her work has such a unique style. Ny this I mean she will take a photograph and then completely change it into something else with a very unique artistic style.

Marja- Leena is also interested in constructing aswell as her photography work but her photography and digital manipulation is her prime subject. She has won many awards for her work and her work really does inspire me to learn how to create such amazing images.




GuaranE

This was one of the images that caught my eye when I was looking through Maja- Leena's work. The final product consits of two images combined together using a piece of digital manipulation software to create a giant bottle like effect dropped into a forest type area. This image is truely fasinating because she has managed to create the image perfectly making it look like it has been dropped from the heavens. What I like the most about this image is how simple but effective it is. All you have to do for this image is get the two images and over lay them onto each other and then give them a nice touch up to make them blend together but it gives an amazing effect. This image is obviously an advertisment to say that this Cider is Cider from the heavens.

Head3_b

This is my second image that I took particular interest to. This is image in one word is spectacular. It is very heavily edited and looks amazing. From just a single portrait image she has managed to create such a desiring effect whoch must have been very difficult to create. She has managed to take a portrat photograph edit the person in the photograph and insert them into another photograph aswell creating a wildlife type effect. Very artistic.

Dollar Tree

Ever heard of the saying "money grows on trees" well apparently it grows on leaves aswell now with this image. This is the third and final image that I have chosen for my research on this artist. It is proberbly one of my favourites. Again two images have been taken and then blended into one final product. She has managed to take a photograph of a dollar bill and a close-up photograph of a branch from a bush and actually blend the dollar bill onto the leaves to make it look like they are growing on them. This is amazing as she has made it look perfect and real.

Overall this artist has a very unique editing style to many other digital manipulation artists. Alot of her other work is so heavily manipulated it actually looks like she has drawn them herself.

Presentation Research

Amongst my research tasks for this assignment I have also been asked to not only research photographers but to research ways of presentation. Now, there are many different ways of presenting images so I will be describing a few different methods which are my favourite and ones which I may well use myself for my final product.

Firstly I will start off by describing the main way of presenting images which is printing. Printing is the most popular way of presenting images as it is proberbly one of the most open for opportunity. It is the most open for opportunity because you can do so much with a print rather than just show someone. Below are many different types of printing methods which can be used to print photographs:

Digital Printing

This is the most common printing method. This printing method is designed to transform a digital image from a computer onto a physical surface (Paper). This printing method is mainly used for making alot of copies of one piece of data, mainly used for photocopying.

Letterpress

This printing method is a very old style of printing. This is a style of relief printing, where the image being printing is raised from the surface. Like I said this is a very old style of printing as is slowly dieng out.

Electrostatic Printing

This printing method is very much like photocopying. The image colour is attached to a drum and is then blended with the paper alongside heat to produce the image. This method is similar to digital printing and is more cost effective.

These are just a few different ways of printing an image to present but there are many more. Now I am going to be describing different ways of presenting your image that has been printed out.

Framed Photograph

This is one of the most common ways of presenting your photographs to someone. Whether it be for advertising purposes or to show a client, framed photographs can't really go wrong as you are showing the client your work at a nice size. What also makes this method a very relible way of presenting is that you can have many different styles of frames to present your photographs in which can come to a huge advantage.

Multiples

This method is mainly used for portraits or a photoshoot with the same theme. It is designed so that you put most of your photos from a photoshoot that are similar into one frame. Quite a nice style of presenting images.

Book

This is also a very common style of presenting your work. Using a book style method to present your work is very effective as this is also very open for opportunity. With a book you can not only present your images but you can also add to them aswell with text for example to really catch the viewers eye. This is also a very proffesional method of presenting images.

Portfolio

This is the method that I will be choosing to present my work in. A portfolio is a collction of your best work to present. You can have many different styles of portfolio whether they be on an internet site or from an application from your iPad, you can go to some great proffesional extremes to presenting your portfolio. I feel that this is the most effective method of presenting your work because you can go that extra step to show your proffesionalism of your work.

So these are just a few different methods of presenting your work. There are proberbly hundreds of other different ways of presenting your work like basic presentation of images or using slideshows etc you could go on forever with the differnt methods alongside making up new ones, there are endless possibilities. The above are the ones which I feel are the most effective and methods which I will most likely use in the future to present my work.

Assignment- Digital Image Manipulation

For the main assignment we have been asked to show our skills in digital manipulation. For this we have been asked to get four pictures which we have taken ourselves and then show clear evidence of modification on the pictures.

For this task I will be using four images which relate to my Rivers theme and then I will be using different tools to edit them. I will be using a range from background tools to change the background of my pictures to different filters and effects. This is the theme I am choosing for this task.

River Trent Present

This is the first image that I am going to be editing. When I was on a practice shoot when I had just bought my camera I decided to take a few shots of the River Trent with the Trent bridge included in the shot. This was my favourite image from the shoot. In this image I will be adding a different background to the picture to make the picture look like it was taken a very long time ago.

River Trent Ancient

This is the final product of my manipulated image. For this I took a shot of a piece of paper with spilled tea on it, waited for it to dry to give it and ancient looking effect. I then went onto photoshop and loaded both pictures up. I selected my paper picture and moved it onto my picture of the River Trent. I then clicked overlay so the layers then merged together. I did this twice to get a stronger effect. So as you can see by using this method I managed to get a picture from the present day and made it look like a picture from the olden days.

The Underside

This is my second picture that I am going to be editing. This shot was taken by me on the same day that I went out to take some practice shots when I first bought my camera. This picture was taken underneath the Trent bridge from the picture displayed above. For this shot I will be using different filters to create different effects. For example I will be changing the pillars by using different filters and I will also be creating a whirlpool effect in the water between them also by using filters.

This screenshot shows me editing the first part of the picture. As you can see I needed to sharpen the glass alot more so that I could get the effect shown on my final product.

This screenshot shows how I managed to create the whirlpool effect in the middle of the two pillars. I selected the area I wanted to edit and then selected the twirl effect from the filters menu. I then changed the angle of the twirl to make it alot sharper.

Whirlpool

This is the outcome of my final product after applying the filters. As you can see I have changed the four pillars. The first two i added a glass effect. At first there wasn't a big change to them so i increased the distortion of the filter to make it look alot stronger. As you can see the front two pillars have a strange looking effect to them. For the back two pillars I also added a filter. The filter I added to these was called an ocean ripple filter. Again at first the default setting for the filter wasn't very strong so it didnt look like there was much of an effect being added. So I changed this by increasing the ripple size and increasing the ripple magnitude. As you can see this resulted in a watery effect on the pillar. My final filter which I decided to add was the twirl filter. This filter basically twirls the selected area. I wanted to create a whirlpool effect between the pillars so i selected that area and then added the twirl effect. I then increased how much of twirl depth I wanted to make it look perfect.

Stone River

This is my next image that i am going to be editing. For this I am going to be doing something a little bit different. I am going to be adding another part from another photograph of mine to this photograph. This is to show that I can use different tools on a piece of photo manipulation software to add another piece of a photo to another photo.

This is the other image that I am added. I added selected the duck by using the magnetic lasso tool from the tool bar on the left hand side of the screen and then drew around the duck to get get a perfect outline for moving it across to the other picture.

This is what my image looked like after dragging the duck across to it. After a bit of resizing I decided to put him on the end of the piece in the middle of the river. I thought that this doesn't look finished just like this so I wanted him to blend in with the surroundings so I decided to add a new filter.

This is the filter I decided to add. I wanted the duck to blend in with the pictures surroundings so I decided to add the graphic pen filter to it. It got rid of its original colours and made it look like it had been snowed on which fitted perfectly into the picture. I did this by clicking on filters and then sketch and then graphic pen.

White Ducks

This is what my final image looked like. I decided to duplicate the duck layer that I had put onto my photograph and put him next to the other duck. I put him slightly at an angle to make him look slightly different.

River Side

This is my fourth and final image that I am going to be editing. This image I am going to be showing that I can use tools on a piece of photo manipulation software that can clean up images to make them look alot better. This photo that I took was from one of my practice shoots. This could have been a good photograph but there are way too many things in the shot that make it not very good. For example the big piece of grass sticking out right in front of the shot should not be there, there is way to much traffic in the shot aswell.

This first screenshot shows how I am getting rid of the grass sticking out at the bottom of the screen. To do this I used a tool called fill. What this tool does is it replaces the selected area with something as close to is as possible. I did this by selecting area I wanted to fill and then clicked on edit and then fill and then clicked ok. This then replaced the selected area without making the picture look badly effected.

River Clean up

This is my final product of my manipulated image. As you can see I have taken alot of items of the image that were on the original just by using the fill tool. Below is a list of the items that I have taken off:

* The grass at the front of the photograph
* The bird flying in the middle of the shot
* The post on the left of the shot
* The pylon in the background of the shot
* The traffic on the bridge
* The signposts on the bridge

After taking all of these off this photograph looks alot better and would make the viewer be more focused on the main theme for the photograph which is the river without being distracted by all the other objects that were on it before. I also used to the auto colour tool to change the colour slightly. This makes the photograph look a little bit more cleaned up.

Research- Ansel Adams

My next photographer am going to research is another photographer that has inspired me to do River and surroundings photograhy. Ansel Adams photography is phenominal in the area that he works with. Below I will be explaining why this photographer has inspired me alongside a few of my favourite shots of his and all about this photographer.

Ansel Adams was born in 20th February 1902 abd died 22nd April 1984. He was an enviromentalist as well as a photographer. From when Ansel was a child at the age of 12 he was very interested in the environment. His original intented profession was being a pianist but as he was learning to play the piano he was also showing great artistic skill in photography which eventually replaced the pianist profession.
He started off with the photography from 1916 using a kodac no1 Box Brownie which his parents gave to him, and from there he didnt stop his photography. He explored everywhere pretty much to become what he was. Below are three of my favourite shots which I feel have inspired me for my work.

Tetons-Snake River

 I will firstly start off with my favourite shot of his. This is a picture of the Tetons-Snake River. This picture in one word is phenominal and I would one day love to be able to take pictures like this. He has everything perfect in this shot. He has made the main subject (River) become the first thing the viewer looks at when this picture is viewed. He has managed to take the shot just as the sun is shining on the river to get a lovely reflection on the river and the mountains in the background. Also what I love about this picture is how he has managed to get the surroundings especially the background looking so brilliant with the mountains and trees at the side so the viewer will also be able to look at this aswell as being drawn to the river at first hand.
Overall this picture is absolutely stunning and is a huge inspiration for me to take these sort of shots because when they are taken like this they look amazing and faultless.



McDonald Lake

This is another shot of Ansel's work which I was very impressed with. This beautiful shot is of the Mcdonald Lake. As you can see from this picture and from the previous picture his pictures were taken in black and white. This, I feel can add a really nice effect especially with this sort of photography and they Ansels shots are taken makes them look even better. This shot of the Mcdonald Lake looks amazing with the background and surroundings looking so beautiful. The way he has taken this picture with the mountains going off into the far distance adds an amazing distant effect to this shot. Amazing.



El Captain (Merced River)

The final picture I have chosen for my research is of the Merced River. This shot was taken in 1950. The River is at Yosemite National Park. Obviously this photograph had to be taken in black and white but I fell that this makes the picture look alot better. I dont really think that this picture would have the same effect if it was in colour. As you can see his main focus for this shot was to get the river to stand out but to also blend in the huge cliff aswell and he has done this perfectly. You can tell that Ansel was an environmentalist because he explored almost every location like this to take these sort of pictures. Also I love how the cliff in the far background is blurred. This is proberbly due to the camera that he is using but it adds an extra effect to the shot which actually suits it.

Main Shoot- Part Two

As I stated in the post before we were asked to choose six photographs which are all thematic with each other. I decided to go with the theme of Rivers (River Trent) I decided to split my photoshoot into two parts. I did this to show the same area which I chose to photograph in two completely different climates. Luckily we had a massive downfall of snow so I thought this was the perfect time to go down for my second part of the photoshoot. My original plan was to go down when it was dark and gloomy with rainfall, but it decided to snow instead so this was a better opportunity for some amazing pictures.

Again, like before safety was top priority and it was even more dangerous this time as when I went down it was still snowing quite heavy so I had to be extra careful this time. Again for this I took a spare battery with me just incase I ran out of battery. I also took my tri-pod with me aswell although it was quite hard to use with the weather conditions. Below are my favourite pictures which I feel go well with my theme. I have also described what settings I have used and why I have used them for the shot.

1/320, F-Stop 7.1, ISO 400

This is the first photograph I have decided to choose for my second part of the shoot. I have decided to choose this photograph because it has a great comparison with the third photograph I chose for the first photoshoot. This is great because it shows the same area but with a completely different climate which intern makes it a completely different photograph all together. On the other hand I have also chosen this photograph because it fits in very well with my theme. I managed to get a nice clear view of the river in the middle with a great surrounding landscape. I managed to position the camera perfectly to get the tree into focus alongside a clear view of the houses deep into the background. At first I chose to have the shutter speed set to 1/200 and the F-Stop set to 4.0. These settings that I initially chose were not right for the shot though. I found that after I had taken a few practice shots the photograph was appearing very bright, way too bright in fact. So I changed them to the settings labelled above. As you can see using these settings were perfect as I managed to get the right brightness alongside the right colour for the shot.

1/250, F-Stop 7.1 ISO 400

This is the second photograph I have chosen. When I was in the area for where my photoshoot was to take place I took a look around the area first to see if I could see anything different from my other photographs but still have my theme involved into the picture. I came across ten trees together next to each other with the River in front of them so this opportunity couldn't go a miss. I decided to take a few practice shots to begin with to find out what the final picture would look like. I did this to test out wether it was a good idea to shoot these trees or wether the photographs were a waste of time. At first I thought that it was a brilliant idea after viewing the first shot. I had my F-Stop set to 11. Obviously having this set to what it was made the background very visable. I was going to keep it as this setting but I wanted the viewer to mainly focus on the trees and River rather than looking at the deep background so I decided to change the F-Stop to 7.1. This made the background a little bit more out of focus but not too much so that it is completely out of focus.

My shutter speed was set to 1/250 to get the right amount of brightness. It was set to a little bit lower than the previous picture because it had stopped snowing as much and the light had dimmed a tiny little bit. At first I tried to use my Tri-Pod for this picture but I was really struggling to use it because of the snow on the ground, a few times it nearly fell over so I decided not to use it in the end and just hold the camera myself. Overall I am very happy with this picture because I fell that I have succeeded in what I wanted to do with this shot which was to make the viewer be automatically focused onto the trees and River.

1/200, F-Stop 10, ISO 400

This is my final photograph that I have decided to choose. This photograph that I took was right next to where I took the first one and was one of the last photographs I took on the shoot. The snow was starting to come down even heavier so I decided to go back to the original area of my photoshoot. This was again a very dangerous shot as I was right next to the river and could not see if there was any faults with the bank which made the shot even riskier so I took extra precautions when taking the shot. I wanted this shot to have everything in it. I wanted the river to be in full focus and look very sharp and I also wanted the background to be in focus aswell. This is why I chose to take the shot with an F-Stop of 10 because as you can see the background is in focus which adds extra detail to the shot. I decided to take a shot like this because my other shots were taken at an F-Stop that makes the background quite blurred out to make the viewer focus purely on the River and the near surroundings. Again, like before I did a couple of practice shots to make sure that I had a choice when choosing my final shot for this task. I tried a few more shots with a lower F-stop to see what the background looked like a bit blurred out but I decided not to go with that idea for this shot. I had to have my shutter speed set to 1/200 because it was getting duller by the moment when I was getting nearer to the end of my shoot so I had to let a little bit more light in but not too much because the snow was brightening up the shots anyway. What I also lie about this shot is the big stone piece with foliage growing on it in the middle of the shot. I feel that this goes very well where I have chosen to take the shot as it adds perfectly to the shot so the viewer will also be drawn to looking at this aswell as the main river itself. I also took this shot because there was a slope in the river just to the right of the shot which was creating a crashing effect at the bottom of the slope. Overall I am very happy with this shot that I have taken as it includes a bit of everything. The main piece it includes though is my theme which is the river which I have managed to add more too by taking this shot with the  river and the slope in it.

                 

Main Shoot- Part One

The aim for this whole unit is to show that I can use my camera on manual settings. By this I mean that I can show I understand how to use shutter speeds with depth of field to take photographs with the correct light and colour. As I stated earlier on in my blog my theme is Rivers and what surround them. I decided to go down to the River Trent for my first part of the photo shoot. In this blog I will be showing some of my favourite pictures that I have taken and talk a little bit about what settings I had the camera set to and why I have chosen them. After this I will be going out again and choosing three more pictures and talking about them. In a previous blog I have talked about precautions I have taken for this task because it can be quite dangerous due to there being a River as the main subject.

The time was around twelve o clock ish, so I had some good light to take my photographs. I went to a place called the Washlands where the main river (River Trent) was situated.

1/320, F-Stop 7.1, ISO 400            

This is the first image I have chosen. Whilst looking through my images from the photo shoot this was one of the main ones that caught my eye. I managed to get the right light settings with a perfect picture of the river flowing. I also managed to get some nice surroundings in the background as well but the main focus is the River. I took a few shots exactly the same but used different settings. These settings that are labelled above were the ones that made the image look it's best. The shutter speed was set 1/320 due to how much light there was at the time. I tried having a 1/200 and 1/250 shutter speed but the pictures were way too bright. My main focus for the photograph was to have the picture bright but not too bright so even if I had a  slightly faster shutter speed the photograph would still have looked very good. I managed to time the shot purley out of luck to capture a bird flying past. Like I said this was pureley luck at the time I was taking the shots but it makes the image look even better. For this shot I also used my Tri-Pod. I used the Tri-Pod because I wanted this picture to be perfect and not tilted or blurred. I think that overall this photograph relates to my theme very well and the settings that I chose alongside exposure to light were perfect for the shot.

1/125, F Stop 6.3, ISO 400

This is the second photograph I have chosen. After many previous photographs I decided to go along the River a little bit to see if I could find any more different spots to take some nice photographs. I decided to try something a little different rather than just take a straight shot of the River. This was a complete bank shot as I didn't know what it would turn out like but I was quite surprised at the results. After looking through the shots of this area this was the one that I found stood out from the rest of them. I decided to go with the picture within a picture frame. I have lined up the two trees to create a frame with the river being the main subject in the centre. I decided to use a slower shutter speed for this picture because where I was standing there wasn't very much light so by using a slower shutter speed it brightened up the picture alot. I took two pictures of the same subject. The first photograph I took I used the flash so I could see the trees with all there colour. The second photograph I took was the one above without the flash. At first I was going to use the first picture I took with the flash but I decided that I liked the dark tree effect more because it makes the main subject (River) stand out a lot more. Again for this picutre I used my Tri-Pod so the image was completely stable. I feel that this image has turned out quite nice with the right exposure to light. I managed to get a nice reflection of the clouds and the sky from the river as well which stands out a lot more due the boldness of the trees.



1/320, F-Stop 7.1, ISO 400

This is the third photograph I have chosen as one of my favourites from the photo shoot. I had to take extra care when taking this shot as I was quite close to the river and there was a good chance of falling in if I had got any closer to the edge of the bank. I decided to choose this picture for my assaignment because it is what I like to call an all rounder. By this I mean it has a bit of everything in the shot alongside a nice colour set with the perfect brightness. The sun was just coming out when I was taking this shot so the original photograph I took didn't look that great because I had my camera set for the sun being cloudy with lowered light. So i increased the shutter speed from 1/200 to 1/320 to increase the speed of the shot and letting less light into it therefore getting a perfect picture with the right amount of brightness. At first I tried this shot with the tri-pod to see how it would go but I was worried that it might fall into the river and the practise shots I took didnt look great either so I decided not to use the tri-pod for this shot. My F-Stop was set to 7.1 with an ISO of 400 this enabled me to get the perfect sharpness for the picture with no blur what so ever. If I was to take this shot again I woujld proberbly try and not get the edge of the bank into the shot in the right hand corner of the shot. I would proberbly change a few settings on the camera aswell although this would not make much different to the current shot to make it better.

So these were the first three pictures that I have chosen and whhy I have chosen them. I think they are quite beautiful pictures of the River Trent and the surroundings of the River and it falls nicely into my theme which is Rivers. In my next photoshoot I will be returning to the same area but when the climate is alot different so there is a completely different feel to the photographs. This will be because of brightness and weather conditions.