AS Exam

MUSIC AND MUSICIANS

I wasn't totally sure what to choose for my exam to start with as I find it very hard to come up with a starting point and to think about expanding my ideas further. I thought of a variety of things to do with issues but I just wasn't sure. My final decision however, came down to music and musicians as I think I can do really well within this overall subject as I am very keen on music. I also wanted a challenge. I have never photographed anything within this category before and so I wanted something that will test my imagination and photography skills; hopefully I will look back at this exam and say it was the right thing to do. My general idea for this exam is going to be based on and around the true feelings of the musicians behind the madness and what really goes on behind the scences. I may tweek this along the  way if I come across new ideas etc but this is what I'm going to start on. I have quite a few concerts coming up during my exam period so hopefully I will be able to capture some real emotions within the musicians themselves as well as other shoots.  I am going to start off with some basic shoots on people playing the guitar and squeeze a few techniques in such as shutter speed. I want to start on these sort of shoots as it is the basis of music and how music is made; usually with a man and his instrument(or her). Throughout the exam period I also want to challenge myself with staged lighting and also concert studio lighting; I feel this will be a real experience for me. Putting aside the fact that I have quite a lot of things I can photograph to do with music and musicians, I was thinking about all the other experimental techniques that I could use such as sellotape transfers, emultions etc and see if I want to link these at all to my final piece. Throughout the exam period, I could use a particular song that links in really well; creating responses to it and experiment on top of that; using photoshop etc. I thought this could work out really well and will show the extra techniques and skills that I have.

Kate T. Parker Photography

I have researched Kate T. Parker because I really love her photography and it’s all to do with the interests of the person they’re photographing, their personality, feelings or appearance. In most of her photography there is something included to do with them. As my first couple of shoots are going to be based on portrait photography of someone on the guitar, this lady has really inspired me. Within my shoots, the guitar he is going to be holding is his hobby and what he is interested in. In just one photo it will tell you something about that person and what they enjoy doing in their spare time, or it could be a full time job, I leave the viewer to make their own mind up about that. However, Parker has also really inspired me with the atmosphere and mood she presents within her photography. It’s quite dark and lonely. They have quite a gloomy atmosphere and as my main idea is “issues within music” this works really well. After I have experimented with my shoots I will go on to Photoshop and hopefully make them similar to how Parker has her photographs and how she photographs her 

work.

The main reason I really love this photograph is because apart from the girl on the far left’s face, you can’t see any emotion except through the body posture and the outfits. This is what I absolutely love about Parker as she usually creates the atmosphere and mood of the picture through other things other than the facial expressions. This photo has a secret contrast within it. The lighting and the atmosphere looks quite gloomy, as well as the little girl on the left’s face. However, the outfits that the girls have on have a completely different side to this. Just through the outfits you can see the personalities and maybe hobbies of the little girls. This is a really strong point of Parker’s photography in my opinion, and links to what I want to get across within my first couple of shoots.

I absolutely love this photograph purely from the face she is making. Straight away when you look at the image you can see straight through this little girl and what her emotions/feelings are. Within my first couple of shoots I really want to capture some emotion and facial expressions such as this, but natural and make sure they’re not staged. When my model is playing the guitar I am going to make sure I capture real expressions within the face so my photographs look real, I don’t want to ask him to do anything just for the photography, it has to be real. This photograph has really inspired me as you can tell those feelings are real and the angle and the background of the photograph makes your eyes go nowhere else but the little girl who is the main subject.

I really love this photograph mainly for the mood and atmosphere she portrays within her work. The colours she has captured portray really great contrast and I love this. I probably won’t use this contrast technique within my first couple of shoots as I’m just trying to get across the hobby/what he’s interested in and his mood. However, in future shoots I will probably try out capturing really lovely contrast like this as it really adds hugely to the gloomy atmosphere and I love it.

Shoot 1

Shoot 2

Opinion on the shoots?

After doing my first shoot and it turning out really well, however the lighting I used was very harsh on his face and created dark shadows. I wasn't too happy with this but it is an improvement step and I can work on this throughout my upcoming shoots. I thought I should add a little bit extra into my photography to make the photographs look a more interesting. I thought playing around with the shutter speed would do this and add that little bit more excitement into my photographs. I gave this a try and it did work really well. I used a longer shutter speed so that you could see the movement in the guitar players’ hands and it just brought a little more atmosphere to the photograph so that it was more interesting for the person viewing the photos. I wanted to try it out so that I have different techniques within my photography and I could look back on both of the shoots and decide which I like better. If I’m honest though, I like both shoots the same. However in the second shoot my lighting did improve as I used natural lighting and not the flash from my camera. However I wanted the photographs to be natural and there wasn’t very much natural light coming through the window to the side of him so this didn’t work out as well as I was hoping for; I have time to correct this in upcoming shoots, however. The only real problem with the second shoot is that I didn’t really think about the background and you could get distracted away from the photos quite easily. If I re-take this photo shoot in the future, however, I will make sure this is sorted and work on my faults.