The “Specialized Journalistic Photography” course I signed up for this semester turned out to be a lighting course. Who knew, right? I didn’t even know this class existed until I was in it. After a ton of assignments based on what seemed totally unknown to me, this is what I’ve got:
This will go by order of -my favorite- not necessarily sequentially.
The assignment was fashion-based. Lighting: 2 to 3 flashes. Harsh. Urban. I went to the sketchiest place I know, and that is downtown Jacksonville (DUUUVAL!). Murder-rate’s too high to post here ’cause its going up as I type!
Title of the Shoot: You know its Urban when it Smells Like…
My next-favorite assignment was the first one: natural lighting. Open-shade. Overcast. Or direct sunlight.
Next assignment: learning subtractive lighting. With a flash. Dun dun dun… Set the shutter speed to 1/30, 1/60, and 1/125. Same photo, different shutter speed. After getting the ISO in ballpark, of course.
Title: (The Apocalypse IS Now–) Newspaper Downpour
For the sports portrait assignment, I took a flashlight to the rock gym and set the shutter speed to 20 seconds. It took a while to get this first shot, so I took some non-motion ones as well, but the green of the walls in that place isn’t too pleasant for still portraits so I’ll continue onward with more flash-light-lit photos.
It was called painting with light, where every photo turns out blurry. Kind of a drag due to how uncomfortable it is for models to stand still between 20-30 seconds so I could paint them with a flashlight for 36 different shots. Some of the photos turned out pretty cool though. (Solution, masochistic models? Or -purposely- blurred photos!) Rule: include sky.
Title of shoot: Dreamland to Terrorscape
Fashion. We had models come in with a bunch of clothes, shoes and accessories. We dressed them up and shot them for 15 minutes with power of three lights.
Another assignment was another one light portrait. (Because we did so terribly the first time around) This was originally called Hippies, Grunge & Samurai, but I cut the second two. We also practiced subtractive lighting.
Some of us used foil, others actually went out and bought reflectors…for the reflecting natural light assignment. I didn’t have any cool title for this shoot but now that I’m posting the pics up here I’m thinking “A Jungly Fairytale.”
Woh, woh, woh. Scratch that. The title of this set of photos is obviously “Welcome to the Jungle.” (we’ve got fun and games!)
Lastly, we’ve got food. Not my favorite to photograph because I’d much rather be eating it. We used a flash in class and put tablecloths all over the desk to make the food portraits a bit more snazzy. And I call this one, “You Don’t Use a Butter Knife to Slice a Tomato.”
Wow, we really accomplished a lot this semester. I feel like I’ve done the most work ever this semester but it’s gone by the fastest.