Lucy And The Lens

Category: Personal Projects

  • How Have You Developed Your Skills As A Photographer?

    How have you developed your skills as a photographer?

    I have developed my skills as a photographer through experimentation, my photography society, masters, workshops, YouTube videos and books.

    Firstly I started off by teaching myself photography through experimentation and trial and error by planning my own shoots before I’d even picked up a book or learnt any techniques and learning how to use all the tools on photoshop.

    Then in 2015 I joined Preston Photographic society where my learning was enhanced through lectures and learning new lighting techniques at portrait evenings.

    My masters taught me how to find my own style as a photographer and it gave me an insight into some shoots in a variety of settings. I’ve attended workshops on how to use different lighting techniques, and I’ve watched YouTube videos on everything from camera gear to post-processing workflow. I’ve also read a number of books on photography, both technical manuals and works by great artists.

    All of this has helped me to develop as a photographer. For example, I learned how to improve my portrait photography after taking workshops with photography session days testing out different types of light and improving my confidence in interacting with models. I was also able to refine my editing skills by following along with tutorials on Photoshop.

    As a result of all of this, I’ve been able to develop my own style as a photographer. I’m now able to take great photos in a variety of settings, and I have a strong understanding of the technical side of photography.

    Ripple effect: Mastering the basic skills of photography makes you a better photographer overall.

    Thanks for following my journey! If you’ve enjoyed seeing my photos and watching my progress, please give this post a like or leave me a comment. I’d love to hear from you!

  • Collaboration

    Let’s Talk About Collaboration

    Why would anyone want to collaborate.

    To start with you need to find those collaborations that you feel will benefit you. Don’t collaborate with someone who appears on the surface to just be looking for a freebie. As one point of collaboration is that you hope to get some future work out of this person.

    I also like to do collaboration when I want to learn a new style of photography that I’ve never done before. This is offering a free shoot or a couple of free shoots to learn about and understand that photography style.

    Collaboration can be a chance for creativity you can collaborate with makeup artists and stylists to make something extraordinary.

    Additionally, it can lead to new and innovative ideas, as each person brings their own perspective to the table.
    -Furthermore, it can build relationships and foster a sense of community.

    Sometimes it helps to get a fresh perspective on the projects you’re working on so somebody can help you out.

    In short, collaborating can be very beneficial. It can make projects run more smoothly, lead to new and innovative ideas, and build relationships. So next time you’re working on something, consider collaborating with someone else.

    Here are a few of my photos from collaborations I’ve done with muas, models and actresses.

  • Facing My Fears: Part 1: Dogs

    I feel as a photographer you should not just photograph subjects you like or things you enjoy. You should also be photographing things you fear.

    I was terrified of dogs since I was about 7 years old when I went to worden park and I was chased by one until I climbed up a tree which seemed to deter it.

    So, a few years ago as whenever I saw a dog, I would cross the road and the owner would follow me across and tell me their dog was okay but when you’re afraid of something that’s the last thing you want. You have to confront your fear yourself.

    I eventually decided to choose to photograph dogs for a domestic animal’s competition. Also, when I went on a trip to Ireland I was around dogs for a weekend and managed to get photos of them. So, here’s a selection of Dog portraits:

    Although I still flinch if a dog jumps on me, I think photographing them has pretty much conquered my fear.

    Is anyone else afraid or has previously been afraid of something they could tap into and photograph. Does photographing the thing you’re afraid of help you to ease that fear?

  • 8 Photography Techniques To Try While In Isolation

    Today I’m going to talk about some effects I have tried during isolation and rate them in terms of level 0 being the easiest and 5 being the hardest.

    The first effect I tried was the twirl effect. This is where you turn the landscape or portrait into a twirl pattern. It’s a quick and not too difficult technique. I would give This a 2/5 rating.

    Next I tried the dispersion effect which took me hours. It’s where you warp part of a photo and turn it into particles. I would suggest you might struggle to attempt this if you have never used Photoshop before as for me it was 4.5/5 in difficulty.

    Thirdly was a shoot with the model over FaceTime. I’d seen a few photographers on Instagram doing a full model shoot over FaceTime, so I decided to try it. This works best on an iPhone as there is a special FaceTime photo button which will take you out of the equation and only show the model when the images are taken. After the shoot I did a few quick edits in Photoshop express to enhance the image using highlights, contrast, clarity and sharpen mostly. I’d give this 1/5 because I feel a beginner photographer could do this type of shoot even without using the photoshop to edit.

    My fourth effect was creating tiny planets. For this all you need is a 99p phone app called tiny planets and you can create them yourself out of any photo. Some photos work better than others like I recommend using landscapes and Street shots for this kind of technique. As this is easily accessible and you aren’t required to be a photographer, I would say in terms of level this is as zero out of five stars.

    Number 5 is the orb and has to be the easiest one I’ve done on photoshop with only 4 steps you only need to spend 2 minutes on it. So, this one gets another 1/5 for me.

    The next technique is the optical art face portrait which actually turns a face and pixels. A series of little geometric squares all the way across the image. As this one is a many stepped tutorials and I did end up re organising some of the layers to fit the overall look, that I wanted for the end results. I also decided to move the layers for side to side in the second image to see what would happen. I’d suggest that this should be a 4.5/5 stars in difficulty.

    The optical art text effect is by far the most difficult. It has 22 steps and it doesn’t always work. For example, you have to make a word cloud on the website it wants you to use to generate this isn’t compatible on every single computer. So, I had to traipse around the Internet to try and find another website that will allow me to create word clouds to the same effect which took a lot of time. Also following the 22-step process itself takes many hours And I feel you need to be a relatively avid Photoshop user to give this one a go. This one is getting 5/5 on the difficulty level.

    Lastly, I tried the double exposure technique which is where you merge a portrait with a landscape or seascape. This one should receive another 5/5 as I think its not easy to get it perfect.

    If you enjoyed seeing these effects why not subscribe to my blog and try some of your own.

  • 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: