Lucy And The Lens

Tag: #TelephotoLens

  • 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.

  • 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:

     

  • Read This If You Want To Take Great Photographs of People by Henry Carroll

    So after reading Henry Carroll’s other book discussing how to take great photographs in general which I posted on this blog and absolutely loving it, a couple of months later I walked into Waterstones and found that he had written another one but this time it was only to do with people, my favourite subject to photograph.

    The Question

     The first thing Carroll tells us to do before reading this book is close the book and ask yourself who am I and why do I want to take photographs of people. I think what he is trying to do here is telling us as a reader that no one is born ready to do something and until you know what your purpose is then you are not ready. In my opinion the question he asks when rephrased would work for any subject so think about what job you want to do and ask yourself that very same question who am I and why do I want to do the job or hobby I want to do and until you know then you are not ready.

    The Answer

     The Answer is also personal because everyone will have a different answer to the question and the way I’m looking at it on a deeper level is that not everyone will be asking himself or herself the same question. My Answer is to the exact question Carroll poses who am I and why do I want to take photographs of people. My name is Lucy and I am a media graduate with a passion for taking photographs. Yes I love taking photographs but why people in particular, you ask? I love the way that you can tell a lot about a person by the way that they express themselves and I want to capture that in my photography. Photographing people for me tells a story and every person has a different story to tell and I want to convey that message in the photographs that I take.

    Composition

     Carroll states that when you are composing a shot of a human subject you need to trust your instincts and think about whom you are photographing. What is their mood? What is your mood? Where is the shoot taking place and what’s going on around you?

    In photographing people the rule of thirds is the most important aspect of composition because placing your subject in the centre of the frame or in the far right third of the frame creates an essentially perfect composition.

    Carroll depicts that linking layers is a brilliant idea as you keep one eye on the subject and the other on the background. In my eyes this means that you need to let the background compliment the subject and not the other way round.

    Think about who you are shooting and where and play around with different camera angles to change the perception of a subject.

    Lens Choices

    My favourite idea Carroll has is that nothing impacts your composition more than your choice of lens. I have three lenses now and for my first studio shoot since university I only had the lens that the camera came with (18-55mm) so this was restrictive as you could see too much of the background which was distracting. Now I use a Nikkor Telephoto Zoom lens (70-200mm), which is a lot better for portraits, and you can see more of the subject. A couple of months ago I bought a brand new Petzval (85mm) Lomography art lens, which so far I have only had the opportunity to test once. This lens is made for portraits but on a recent shoot to Crosby I used this lens to get a different perspective of Anthony Gormley’s Another Place because I had already shot it a year before. The Petzval lens comes with fixed aperture plates that allow me to change the aperture according to the setting. It is also manual focus, which means the lens pushes me to find my own clarity to the extent that I want it to be. The best thing about this lens is that it allows me to obtain different shaped apertures where the light hits the out of focus areas of an image or reflects off a subject.

    Breaking the Rules

     It is important in photography to create your own rulebook by thinking outside the box or recreating interesting images. In life I always go with my instincts and I feel that these rarely fail me. Carroll illustrates that the same rules apply with photography: “Shoot what your comfortable with, step outside of the comfort zone but don’t shoot anything that makes you feel uncomfortable to be shooting.” In my opinion if you abide by this then you will develop your own style and others will be able to know your images by sight.

    Context

     The subject has to blend into the environment and you can also use a plain backdrop to isolate your subject so nothing distracts you from them. When taking an image of a person always be on the lookout for juxtaposition because in photography opposites attract. You can reveal a lot about a subject by the traces they leave behind. So don’t always photograph a person photograph things that belong to them in order to obtain a different dimension to their story.

    The Gaze

     One of the hardest things that you aim to do when photographing people, is to achieve a natural look because in order to do that you have to appear unobtrusive. This statement is one of the most accurate descriptions of my beliefs about photographing people that Carroll expresses: “ A smile is a mask that a person wears, you can see a lot more by breaking your subject out of their shell to see another side of them.” This means a lot to me because only when your subject gets comfortable with you do you start to notice what they are trying to tell you through their body language and their attire.

    Control

     There are many different techniques you can use in order to photograph a subject. You can make them feel a little bit uncomfortable for a different dynamic to a shot or you can give them something playful in order to expose their subconscious.

    Nobody is perfect so looking for flaws in a subject is what makes them unique and interesting. But always remember the only subject you have complete control over is yourself. This last statement has stuck with me and I am planning an exciting new self portraiture project that so far until I complete it, only one person other than me knows what I’m planning which makes it all the more intriguing.

    Black and white or colour

     I tend to shoot in colour and when I envision the shot as black and white I use a Silver Efex Pro filter taken from the Google Nik collection on my photoshop and typically choose the high structure black and white effect as it is usually images where I want to add depth to the background that I add these too.

    Conclusion

    To conclude in referring back to Carroll’s original question who are you and why do you want to take photographs of people? This post is my answer so yes I love taking photographs but why people in particular, you ask? I love the way that you can tell a lot about a person by the way that they express themselves and I want to capture that in my photography. Photographing people for me tells a story and every person has a different story to tell and I want to convey that message in the photographs that I take.

     

     

     

     

  • Skippool Creek Photowalk

    On Thursday I went on a photo walk with Preston Photographic Society to Skippool Creek, which was a little bit different than usual because it was a members choice rather than our photo walk organiser, Nancy’s and we were photographing rusty old boats.

    This time I took one of my cousins who is also interested in photography with me and although we were both wearing inappropriate shoes the walk was thoroughly enjoyable.

    The boats looked like they had been abandoned for many years and were starting to rot and decay which added a new dimension and character to the boats. According to derelictplaces.co.uk Skippool creek went from being a busy port used for smuggling goods and transporting produce to an abandoned port in the 1840s when they started to open bigger ports and railways.

    My favourite photo from this walk was a side view of a beach hut, which was taken just as the sun was starting to set and anyone who knows me knows I can’t, resist a sunset photo.

    What I like to do is keep photographing whenever and wherever I can, and stepping outside my comfort zone is the best thing ever as I’m broadening my photographic horizons. It also gets me to experience a vast array of new things and look for beauty in unexpected places.

    Below are a selection of my favourite images from the walk shot on my NikonD3200 with both my 18-55mm Lens and My Telephoto Zoom Lens:

     

  • Owls At Waterstones Preston

    On the 31/07/2016 I went to Waterstones to pick up my pre-order of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Now I like to go to Waterstones quite often for a browse and usually never leave the store without three books and I also order books on Amazon. For Harry Potter and the Cursed Child I made the decision to pre-order my book and pick it up from Waterstones.

    A few months later I am really glad I chose to do this because I got to combine my love of reading with photography yet again as Waterstones had real owls in the store courtesy of Barn Owl Bill. I was really excited about this because I love owls and I have never had the pleasure of photographing them before. The best thing about photographing owls is that you don’t have to tell them to pose, they just do it anyway.

    My Favourite shot taken on my Nikon D3200 with my Telephoto Zoom Lens was of the beautiful owl who lost one of its eyes when it was run over by a car as for me beauty appears in the unlikeliest of places, the owl did not need two eyes to be beautiful, it just was. The detail on its feathers was striking.

    But for me the event was not complete without one more thing. I couldn’t go and photograph the owls without holding one and the wonderful event organisers kindly captured a shot for me.

    Below are my photographs from the event:

  • My Camera and Lens Collection

    For this post I have decided to discuss the types ofd cameras and lenses i typically use and those I want to try and use in the future. I will be discussing my phone camera, digital SLR and my Polaroid Socialmatic Camera.

    First of all I am going to talk about my phone camera. I know this isn’t technically a camera but this is something I always have on me and there are lots of apps you can download to make your photos look more professional. At the moment my friend has inspired me to do a 366 days of positivity thing on my personal Instagram where I have to do 1 post a day. Sometimes I use quotes and screenshots but most of the time I take pictures and I admit when I first started to do the 366 days I used images straight from the mobiles camera roll. But now I have started downloading post edited images from my camera on my phone to use for my Instagram and now if I do, do mobile photography itself I have a photoshop express app for slight touch-ups. Another trusty sidekick app for me is Layout for Instagram so I can create a simple collage of multiple images for my accounts. Another Great app is Vsco cam because it has professional camera settings and it comes with its own filters and you can also buy filters for different types of photography. There is also a range of free filters you can download and add to the app.

    Typically I shoot on my  Digital Slr which is a Nikon D3200 with an AF-S Nikkor 55-200mm Telephoto Zoom Lens. Either these shoots are planned days out with Preston Photographic Society or Lancashire photo walks. I also take this camera on Holiday and pretty much everywhere I plan to go and sometimes even on spontaneous trips away. The subject of the shoot is the deciding factor for the settings I normally use.

    A studio portrait shoot is typically shot on a 70-200mm focal length depending on how much of the subject you as a photographer want your viewers to see. For this Kind of shoot the ISO should be no more than 200 because the studio lights already brighten the subject so you don’t need to add even more brightness. The shutter speed is set at 1/125 to avoid camera shake and if the subject isn’t moving and you up the shutter speed it will become blurred. Only up the shutter speed if you are doing an action shot.

    For most of my shoots I tend to use the manual setting on my camera and you can usually end up with a pretty good guide of what your aperture and shutter speed need to be and adjusting accordingly.

    Finally I am going to discuss my most recent addition to my cameras, the Polaroid Socialmatic. So for months I had been looking at Polaroid cameras on the Polaroid website and I got one a couple of months ago for my birthday. There’s a funny story behind this though. I was planning on getting a Polaroid Z3100 as I thought the Socialmatic was too expensive. However on my birthday I happened to be in Cardiff and I knew they had cameras in urban outfitters and so I went in on the off chance and there it was the exact model of the polaroid Socialmatic I’d seen on the polaroid website at a bargain price, so I was ecstatic. But I had no idea why until I got home, the camera was in Chinese and although I did Chinese Gcse years ago I just didn’t have the skills to figure it out. So I spent a couple of months with a camera I couldn’t use until earlier this month when the problem was finally solved.

    So now I’ve told you this story I am going to talk about the camera itself. The Polaroid Socialmatic is a modern version of the vintage polaroid camera in that it has its own phone network that allows you to upload pictures straight to Instagram as well as choosing and printing the shots you desire, straight from the camera.

    What’s Next?

    Now I have a Digital SLR camera and a telephoto zoom lens my plan is to keep adding lenses every Christmas and for birthdays and also saving up money to buy my own lenses.

    There are four lenses I currently have my eye on but I am waiting for a defining moment to buy one, as that is when I usually tend to indulge in material things.

    The first of these is a 50mm prime lens to give my images a wider depth of field.The second is the most expensive of these which I recently had the opportunity to test it is the Lomography 58mm f1.9 Petzval art lens which comes in brass or black and allows you to alter the distance between the lens elements. Any lens that gives your image a different perspective like the fisheye and the wide angle also fascinates me.

    I hope you enjoyed this post, stay tuned for photographic ideas, additions and events I’ve been to.