Lucy And The Lens

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  • Tips I Learned From Fashion Photography 101 by Lara Jade

    “An artists vision creates the image; the camera simply captures it.” This is the opening line of the book and also the most important. Before you even pick up the camera you must have an idea of what you want to create as the camera doesn’t do the work for you, you have to do that yourself.

    Lenses

    Lara’s description of lenses opened up a whole new world to portraiture for me. I usually tend to use my Nikon 70-200 mm telephoto zoom lens for portraiture, but Lara suggested that instead a wide angle lens can introduce a dynamic angle of view and distort an image excitingly. She also recommends using a macro lens for extreme close –up beauty work which is something Id like to try.

    Photographing with movement

    Photographing your subject mid-movement creates a dynamic shot and adds interest to the image. Lens baby creates creative lenses.A fast shutter speed freezes motion, and a slow shutter speed blurs movement. Manual focus works better for fashion shots as it allows you to focus on an eye or a strand of hair.

    Preparing

    To prepare to decide beforehand what you want out of the shoot and create mood boards or Pinterest boards before every shoot. Look on websites to find models and If you can’t afford a stylist choose or source the clothes yourself. Have a plan for whether you want a location shoot or a studio shoot. Decide which will work best.

    Shooting

    Location shoots are better for new models or clients, and studio shoots are better for experienced models. High key lighting creates a comfortable dynamic to an image, and low key lighting adds a dramatic mood to an image. The best time to shoot in natural light is the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset referred to as the golden hour by landscapers. The light during these hours is soft and diffused, the angle low, and the colour warm. Don’t be afraid to experiment with over and under exposure to natural light. Use one softbox to provide soft and flattering light to your subject. Use a white reflector to highlight your subject and a black reflector on the right side of your subject to add contrast and for more variation use a black backdrop. Experiment with different coloured lights. Use a silver umbrella with a white backdrop for clear, detailed high key images. To enhance makeup use a beauty dish as your light source. Backlight create beautifully And visually dramatic photos. Add a second light for a simple backlit portrait. Use a softbox to flatter the subject and a second light behind to illuminate them. Try using natural light in the studio and enhancing it with reflectors. Use two white reflectors on either side to bounce the light back and a gold reflector to add warmth to the shot.

    Personal Assignments

    Setting yourself assignments is also vital as it helps you to find your style. Then Lara Jade sets us tasks to be open to our interpretation which I will discuss at a later stage as I’m going to give them a go. I’ve made several assignments personal to me; I’m planning a childhood memories project which I am accepting ideas of things to recreate. My crystal ball project is continuously ongoing and also the subject of my latest blog. I also like to showcase my hobbies in my work, and I’m planning a few special projects using models. The working photographer You need to be able to work closely with people, stick to a brief and create your own. Charge what you believe is a fair price for your time but never lose your integrity.

    Retouching

    To make your images pop this is something that is typically done after a shoot. I used to use photoshop files with many layers so I can always go back and adjust. Now I have changed my editing process using Lightroom to batch edit and then using photoshop to fine-tune whichever images I feel need more work. Lara states that she applies layer masks to create composites which is something I haven’t tried but id like to give a go. You can use curves to change the tone of an image by using it on the RGB channel. Use a hard healing brush to correct skin blemishes or use the spot healing brush or a clone stamp tool. Use textures to add a vintage film feel to your image. In Photoshop You can turn an image into black and white by creating a channel mixer adjustment layer by going to layer>new adjustment layer>channel mixer. Click the monochrome box. Move the RGB sliders. Then form a selective colour adjustment layer and select neutrals and move blacks slider to +30. For more contrast then select blacks and mover the slider to +10 or +20.

    Marketing

    Think about who your intended market is. Use push marketing to showcase your photography to potential clients, art buyers and directors. Also, pull marketing uses social media and word of mouth to create your brand. Think about your brand and how it appears to clients. Prepare both a physical and an online portfolio.

    I hope you enjoyed this post and you stay tuned for more of what I’ve been reading and shoots I’ve done recently.

  • Crystal Ball Photography

     At the beginning of the year, I set myself 30 photography related goals. Currently, I have started 11 of them, and today I am going to talk about goal number 24 which was to begin using props within my photography.

    My First prop of 2018 is a Crystal Ball because this is something I’ve wanted to try for a long time. Crystal ball photography is a type of photography that distorts your image, simularly to a fisheye lens except your subject will appear upside down inside the ball, which is the main reason it appeals to me. I also started following the #crystalballphotography on Instagram to find inspiration.

    The first time I used it was sometime in mid-February when it snowed overnight, so I went into my garden the next morning and experimented with my Nikon D3200, my iPhone 8+, and my crystal ball.

    I decided my sigma 10-20mm (wide angle lens) was the best one to use for this experiment, so I placed my crystal ball on my garden wall making sure I had foliage behind and shot at ISO 100 but kept varying the aperture and shutter speed to achieve a variety of different photos. I decided that the crystal ball in the snow tended to look better in black and white, so I adjusted this in the post-processing in Lightroom. I did this by taking down the contrasts and highlights and upping the shadows and exposure and then converting my image to black and white.

    I also used portrait mode on my iPhone 8+ to test a variety of different types of lighting my crystal ball and edited these in photoshop express. My favourite set-up in portrait mode is the stage lighting in black and white as I felt it made the snow stand out.

    The Second time with my Crystal Ball I went to Beacon Fell with a friend who held the crystal ball for me while I photographed some sunsets. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a type of shot I thoroughly enjoy taking so I couldn’t wait to try a new approach.

    Finally the third time I took my crystal ball out it was also snowing except this time I went to Avenham Park using the landscape as my backdrop.

    Here is a gallery of my Crystal Ball photos:

    If you enjoyed my article be sure to keep checking out my website and for further reading check out what other bloggers have written about this topic  in the links below:

    1.  Photography Fun With A Crystal Ball
    2. How To Create Glass Ball Landscapes
    3. Glass Ball Photography
    4. The Travelling Crystal Ball

     

     

  • 30 Photography Goals To Kickstart 2018

    So I thought I’d kick of 2018 by setting some goals to help me focus on how to move forward with my photography. So here is a list of what I want to achieve this year:

    1. Sort Out Business Cards.
    2. Enter National and International Competitions.
    3. Start Putting my Ideas into Motion.
    4. Start a hashtag a day project on twitter in order to improve my marketing strategy.
    5. Start a 52 Week project and document it on my Blog.
    6. Photograph more things outside my comfort Zone.
    7. Interview other Photographers.
    8. Do more solo days out.
    9. Think more about the stories I want to tell, than the technical aspect.
    10. Set more creative challenges for myself to refocus my vision.
    11. Regularly Update my blog whenever I do new work.
    12. Join some photography sites and upload images at least once a week i.e. update viewbug, Flickr.
    13. Get more feedback from other photographers and make a note of it all.
    14. Learn how to shoot with a new lens: Got a Fisheye 5.8mm for Christmas so will start with this.
    15. Try new photographic software i.e. Luminar or Pixlr.
    16. Create A Schedule for Taking Photos.
    17. Shoot more personal projects.
    18. Sort all Photos into dated folders for easy navigation.
    19. Create more time-lapse videos.
    20. Start doing a few tutorials.
    21. Learn a new type of photography.
    22. Study more techniques by reading books and doing courses.
    23. Listen to photography podcasts.
    24. Buy some creative props- not going to give this away just yet but I have two in mind.
    25. Get rid of what’s holding me back.
    26. Focus more on the blogging and business aspect of photography.
    27. Talk about the why – Why do I do photography?
    28. Finish the projects I started in 2017.
    29. Photograph a completely new place.
    30. Take more photographs.

    Lets start the new year right by working through these in the upcoming months. Hopefully these goals are all achievable and im looking forward to the year ahead.

  • 10 Ideas To Stay Inspired With Little Time

    The first challenge is to write a list post and I thought seen as I’ve been busy lately  I’d make a list of 10 ideas to unleash the creative photographer within you. This list is typically what I might do on a week when I have very little time to get out and about and photograph. This keeps me focused on getting out and about and not giving up because my time is limited. So here is just a few ideas of things i like to do to get inspired to photograph:

    1. Find a local museum, familiarise yourself with the exhibits and challenge yourself to photograph every new exhibit. Sometimes I spend one day a week just wandering round the Harris Museum in Preston with my camera seeing what i can discover.
    2. Create a series about something your passionate about. For me this could be reading, reinterpretting movie scenes through photographs, portraiture or fencing.
    3. Turn yourself into an alter ego. If time contraints mean you don’t have a model this week why not take pictures of yourself in your normal state and showing different aspects of your personality. You can also create an entirely new persona of yourself by wearing something different or doing something that isnt usual for you.
    4. Create a campaign about something just for yourself. I haven’t done this yet but i’m hoping to work on a few different ones but i’m not going to give anything away, just yet.
    5. Get on a train and go somewhere alone and document your day.
    6. Spend your day in a familiar place and find new ways of looking at it.
    7. Go for a walk to focus your mind. I find that going for walks really helps me to clear my head and form ideas for new projects.
    8. Only use one lense. This helps to improve your composition as your really have to think about making use of what you’ve got. Here is a more indepth explanation of why you should do this challenge: One Lense Challenge.
    9. Add a signature motif to one of your images during a day shoot. I’ve seen this done many times by various photographers. Usually something simple like A Red Umbrella or a Yellow Coat.
    10. Invest your personality into your images.

    I hope you enjoyed this post. Here is a few photos taken during these challenges:

     

  • Blogging Challenge

    Hey Readers I know I’ve not blogged in a while and I wish this was because I’ve done nothing. However it’s quite the opposite I’ve been doing so many things. I’ve spent almost all my free time outside of work taking images and editing them, but somehow I haven’t managed to get my blogs ready to go with them so I’ve been posting on my Instagram @lucyandthelens. While I will still be sharing my work via instagram today is the day where my lack of blogging stops. In Order to help me do this after a little bit of inspiration I decided to participate in 31 Days Of Building A Better blog which can be found on Problogger.com.

     

     

     

  • Victorian Fair

    A Few months ago I went to Winckley Square in Preston to photograph a Victorian Fair with Preston Photographic Society. This involved people lots of people dressing up in costumes that depicted the victorian era and a couple of comedic acts.

    There was a juggler and a magician who used a crystal ball as a prop. He was my favourite because it enabled me to get reflections in the glass and made it a more interesting shot.

    I really enjoyed the fact that you could print your own victorian shopping bag by pushing down a wooden block through the ink to print the pattern on the bag and leave it to dry for 30 minutes.

    Lastly, there was a theatre performance titled The Palace of Curiosities from some actors dressed in Victorian Attire and I rather enjoyed the afternoon. I decided to post this now because from the 13th May-9th June there is an exhibition for this in Avenham Park Pavilion Cafe where three of my photos are on display so watch this space.

  • What Lead Me To The Fencing Selfie?

    What Lead Me To The Fencing Selfie?

    The Inspiration

    So towards the end of 2015, I joined Preston Photographic Society and I started entering the competitions. One of these competitions is a theme competition, which changes each month and one of the themes was sport. I had two choices to photograph someone doing taekwondo or someone doing fencing because I do both of those.

    As I thought fencing was less common I decided to shoot one of my friends doing that. The competition judge from this moment didn’t understand my image and didn’t classify fencing as a sport, it was this determination to prove him wrong that convinced me to use one of the themes for this year’s competition to change that view.

    So this year I came across a theme called the faceless selfie which required me to think outside the box. So I got out my studio lights, set up a black background and my tripod and set my camera to a 10-second timer to photograph myself in a pitch black room. Then I put the mask on but my idea failed but In failing I created some half face selfies that I liked.

    A week later I tried again and got the image I wanted, but you could see the background I shot again so I still need to go back to the drawing board until I obtain this shot. However in taking a series of selfies I have now decided that I still want to get my original shot idea to work but using a model, as I found that shooting myself was more difficult and a lot less fun than shooting someone else. However, I did learn a lot from this experience which I would like to share with you.

    What is A Faceless Selfie?

    In my opinion, the faceless selfie is a picture of you that doesn’t include your face or it can be something quite conceptual so something that embodies your personality.

    A faceless selfie can be about how you see yourself or how you think others see you. I decided to use an idea that states that not everyone is who they appear to be to the world.

    So I set up my tripod and put on my fencing mask aiming to obscure my face. I was going to call it behind the mask because if you put your hands up and ask people how many people see the real you, it’s usually two or three people. People only show what they want you to see and the rest should leave a mystery.

    But as I wanted the mask in this instant to be an embodiment of myself, I used a pun and called the image daughter of mask because that is one of the many aspects of who I am. Everything in life has a purpose and you gain something from everyone you associate yourself with.

    For example, when I fence I am a fencer but it doesn’t matter who I am beyond that at that point and it shouldn’t matter unless I choose to share other aspects of myself with someone.

    In Conclusion, don’t let anybody disrespect anything you believe in and if you believe in it strongly make photography that changes their minds. Don’t just sit there and do nothing keep on photographing that thing until you create something for yourself that becomes a passion project. I admit that because of that one image that a judge was ignorant about fencing is currently not only one of my hobbies but one of my photographic passion projects and it is one of which I can test ideas out on myself.

    Below is the shot that started it all off and two of my fencing selfies all shot on my Nikon D3200:

     

     

  • Photography And Social Media Marketing

    I’ve been passionate about photography for as long as I can remember and it’s only in the last couple of years I realised that you need more than just photographs.

    I’ve made social media marketing into one of my top priorities on the way to starting a business. It all began when I decided I needed a platform to showcase my images rather, than just making photo books as a portfolio and for people that know me personally to see.

    These days everything is online so in around February 2016 I bought my domain name Lucy and the Lens and I continue to update my work as often as I can. For the first couple of months I wasn’t sure where my idea was going to go and it wasn’t until April that I decided to start my blog and add a gallery.

    In August I decided that when your working it becomes even harder to take a trip to photograph something every week. So with my current busy schedule I decided that setting up photo challenge Friday as a new page where I challenge myself to post a new challenge every week was a good idea. I also tell people to participate in challenges on my blog and upload them to #lucyandthelens on twitter and instagram.

    I also set up a Facebook page and once I have completed a couple of new shoots I upload a set of new images on their and I also promote this website on my page.

    For my Instagram channel after every new shoot I upload my photoshop edited images to my phone and select my favourites for Instagram and make sure I #. No matter what I post I always #lucyandthelens and #photographer and I have also started to #nikond3200 (the camera model) and the lens I shot on and I believe that the rest should be kept a mystery apart from on my web galleries.

    For me I use twitterfeed.com because it creates a quick and easy way for me to upload my blog posts to my twitter and Facebook accounts.

    I am currently in the process of creating my twitter chat schedule as at the moment my twitter simply reposts my blog, but my aim is to do at least one tweet a day other than my blog post and Instagram feed. To be successful in my eyes I need to be tweeting other photographers and re-tweeting and reimagining trends in photography.

    In conclusion I think that the way you market yourself in this day and age is just as important as taking the photographs as you get nowhere without an online presence.

    I hope this post has opened your eyes to how I market myself and if you’re inspired then get social media savvy, you won’t regret it.

  • Street Photography

    So recently I’ve been doing a vast amount of street photography so I thought I’d share with you what I’ve learnt.

    The first time I did street photography it felt obtrusive, I felt like I was doing something wrong because it is essentially photographing people without their consent.

    Later I found out that street photography is legal in a public place. A subject is also allowed to ask you to delete images and it’s always better to agree to avoid an argument, as chances are you will find another interesting subject pretty quickly.

    Street photography involves observing the people around you when your wandering aimlessly round the streets and people are an extremely interesting subject when you find what you’re looking for.

    Everybody has a story to tell and after photographing them on the streets you become an author, a writer of images waiting to be discovered.

    But for me on the streets I don’t just look for people I look for something quirky, something out of the ordinary.

    Street photography is essentially speed dating for the minds eye, you see what you envision as an interesting subject and shoot them as fast as you can before the opportunity disappears.

    So previously I wrote a post called read this if you want to take great photographs of people by Henry Carroll but I purposely left out his street photography tips to use here.

    Henry Carroll says that ‘capturing fleeting moments on the street is all about making your own luck’. To me this means that street photography is hit and miss if you don’t capture the right person at the right time you will lose the opportunity or if you see something interesting it might have moved before you have the chance to photograph it.

    Carroll states photography is all about finding the right spot so all the action will come to you. If lots of people are looking at something you can’t see then assume they are an interesting subject. Approach people as well as capturing moments. Slower shutter speed blurs your subject and faster shutter speed captures less movement.

    To conclude this post street photography opens your eyes to the world around you and it gives you an in depth view into the people in any city and the stories they have to tell which is what makes it all the more intriguing to me.

    Here are a few of my street photography shots from a variety of walks in different cities:

     

  • Photo Challenge Friday: Week 8: Textures and Patterns

    This week I had to photograph Textures and Patterns and it took me back to a time when rather than ordering photo books off Photobox I used to order photos and buy patterned paper from Hobbycraft. So for this challenge I decided to take a picture of one of them because it brings me back to an old creative hobby of mine, making scrapbooks of my photos. I chose this idea because it showcases my early days of displaying my photographs.

     

    My Week 9 Challenge is going to be to shoot Organic Shapes. This means shooting anything that is created by nature. I think I will have fun with this challenge because nature is full of endless possibilities.

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    So if you enjoyed this weeks post why not have a go at my challenge for the upcoming week and tweet or Instagram to #lucyandthelens and don’t forget to #organicshapes.