Opinion on the Shoot

I am really pleased with this shoot as I achieved everything that I was aiming for. Within my best prints above, you can see I was able to capture my subjects in crisp focus which was exactly what I wanted to achieve, and to also have the background out of focus so that there is nothing huge distracting the audience who look at my photographs. I think this is a really lovely development shoot from my orchestra images as capturing that shallow depth of field was exactly what I've always wanted to capture. I really feel it makes the images powerful as all of the focus goes onto that one musician and captures the audience's attention. The lighting also turned out really good as I had the lights on that were above them. Overall I am really pleased with the photography I'm doing at the moment and my next shoot will be another live concert one.

Shoot 8

Opinion on Shoot

I had a really big problem with this shoot as the concert was in a small club called the O2 Academy. This meant they wouldn't let members of the audience take SLR cameras in that they may have thought were going to be used professionally. Prior to the concert I took it upon myself to email the press themselves at the O2 academy and also Jake Bugg's manager. However, neither of them got back to me in time and so I had to settle for using my phone as my camera for this particular night. This resulted in the photographs I took being quite out of focus... However; once I had edited my best ones and turned them into black and white, I really loved the grainy affect they provided. I really love the old fashioned look the black and white along with the graininess gives the photographs and this resulted in me being very happy with the overall shoot. Even though it wasn't exactly what I wanted, it has now let me experiment and made me realise that I like the graininess within the photographs, maybe meaning I will try this again in the future.

My next shoot is going to be focusing more on the drugs side of my project...this is where I'm going to hopefully start going deeper into my photography and really pull out the problem of drugs within music and musicians, going behind the scenes. I am going to start off with a simple  musician smoking a cigarette as I was influenced to do this by a few of Jake Bugg's pictures that I've seen. I'm also going to start making some responses to music that I listen to. I thought from choosing Jake Bugg, this would link nicely to my previous shoot and the lyrics are perfect for what I'm going to go onto. The lyrics from a song called "Two Fingers" is "I drink to remember, I smoke to forget". This is the specific part of the song I am going to be focusing on...and the pictures that have inspired me for this photo shoot are below:

Shoot 9

Opinion on the Shoot

I was over the moon with this shoot, not only because I was able to capture the smoke which was what I really wanted to do, but in my opinion it doesn't look staged at all and very natural. One thing I am always scared of with portrait photography is that it will look very staged and fake, so that's why I made my subject look very relaxed and calm through this shoot so it doesn't look staged. The one thing I'm really happy about was that I captured a couple of really good ones that caught the smoke coming out of his mouth and around his body. I really wanted to show off my camera skills with this as it wasn't very easy to do, it being a bright day also. 

FINAL PIECE PLAN

I have finally decided what I want to do for my final piece. As I am focusing my project on the drugs behind the scenes with music and musicians, I have decided to focus my final piece on a friend of mine called George. He does music technology and music at A Level and composes his own music. I thought this was a great opportunity for me as I had access to a real life musician and I could play around with his skills within my photography. For my final piece I'm going to do a sequence of three photographs. The first one of these will be my response to a piece of his music and how he wants his music to be portrayed, the second photograph will be himself singing some of his music and looking just how he wants his audeience to see him as. Then finally, the third picture will be portraying what goes on behind the scenes; this will relate to drugs and the things musicians get into behind the scenes. I think this is a really nice idea for my final piece as it basically shows the musicians life in a sequence of three images. I start off with the music he produces and how he wants his audience to think about his music, etc. and then I carry on with his appearance and the reality of the music world in most cases. Along with my final piece I will include a cd with the music on it so the examiners can listen to the piece of music I responded to within my first photograph.

Tony Whittle Photography

For my first response to George's music I want to go to the severn near my house and hopefully capture a gorgeous sunset over the water. The reason for this is that when I listen to this piece of music it makes me feel really relaxed and want to be on a beach somewhere. I really love the sound of it and a sunset just reminds me of a relaxing movement/moment. However, I also want to be able to capture a mysterious and gloomy side to the photographs as this is another feeling I receive while listening to George's music. I may have to attempt several times to capture this, however we have been getting some gorgeous sunsets lately and so I hope I can be lucky enough to capture one of these. I am really lucky to live very close to the severn bridge and so capturing the smooth, twinkling water along with the sunset would be absolutely beautiful and create a really lovely response to his piece of music. For this shoot I have been looking at a man called Tony Whittle for inspiration. He is a landscape photographer who is based in the Peak District and so has a great opportunity to capture the photographs that he does. I have really enjoyed looking through his site as he has taken some beautiful images. Some of his work captures exactly what I'm after; the sunset/rise and the water and that's what I've been focused mainly on to inspire me. He has a philosophy that "capturing great landscape photos is to make the most of every interesting weather opportunity in our great countryside". Tony usually captures dramatic, breathtaking and thought provoking landscape images which are truly wonderful and that I've really enjoyed looking at. Here are a couple of the images that have really inspired me for my next shoot:

This is one of the photographs of Tony Whittle's that has really inspired me as it's that gorgeous sun that I'm really aiming to capture. When I look at this photograph I feel so relaxed and this is what I want the viewers of my images to feel like which will portray the feelings of when I listen to George's music. He has also captured the water within the photograph which is another part I want in my shoot. This will be easier as I will be on the side of the severn anyway. I don't think I'm going to get as close as he is to the sand but in every other way Tony has really inspired me with his photographs and I now feel really confident to go out and attempt this shoot.

  

This is once again another great photograph that Tony Whittle has inspired me by. Within this photo it's more the atmosphere around the sun rather than the sun itself. Within my shoot I really want to be able to capture a dark mood and atmosphere as well as making it look and feel really relaxing; just like this photograph. I really want to aim to capture the orange and yellow colours within the sky, as well as making the water and land around it quite dark to show the mysterious side of the music that I've listened to. I think this photograph shows a really gorgeous contrast and I want to be able to capture this within my photography.