Most of these shots involved a projector, a dark room, some people I somehow convinced to help me out, and most significantly, an amateur photographer who is always too ambitious for their own good (aka me).
I initially planned on having one encompassing concept for the five themes because I didn't want to get bored shooting photos of sights that conveniently fit the themes; I wanted to create the sights themselves. And then take pictures of them. Which made the activity far harder than I imagined it to be. Which was probably a bad decision now that I think of it. Did I have fun? Yes. Did I consider giving up? Also yes. Will I do it all over again? Of course!
Even though I wasn't able to follow a singular concept for this collection, and even though the resulting pictures are far from what I prayed they could be, this is a step further than where I was in the beginning of this term. I'm proud of myself even though I still have that tiny voice in my head saying that I could have done better. (Of course I could have done better, I am a beginner after all!)
presenting my (pre) debut collection...
(Expand each picture to view their respective EXIF data.)
This hallway isn't normally this dark but one night someone forgot to open the lights, making the warm light from my parents' room bleed aggressively into the dark. Enamored, I quickly grabbed the camera and decided on a whim that there's no better time to practice photography when the beautiful view is right there. Hence, my first experience in shooting in low-light (and in general).
As a dramatic amateur photographer, I bumped the ISO to 6400 because I wanted light! light! light! and somehow forgot that I could adjust aperture and shutter speed as well. I also used the widest aperture possible because I wanted, again, more light. I don't remember setting the shutter speed so I might have had it on auto at the time. I was taking photos when Jindo, our dog, suddenly walked directly in front of the doorway. Again, I was so enamored that I didn't even try adjusting the settings first before taking photos. I tried multiple times to replicate this specific scene (but with better settings) but I ended up choosing this first one because, conveniently enough, this looked the best among them.
Even though the theme for this picture is flower, I thought it would be lazy to just shoot the floral wallpaper so I bribed my cousin to act like my model. I had them wear a red hoodie to complement the greenish wallpaper and found a red candle holder to match. The candle was completely unnecessary but I wanted a bit more oomph.
We went through a ton of practice shots before I decided on this camera setting. I prioritized ISO and aperture because I was shooting in a dark room and I wanted the floral wallpaper to remain detailed and textured even though it served as the background. I settled for a slightly wide aperture at f/5.6 to softly define the subject without completely blurring the background. For ISO, the lowest I could compromise was 1250. Since I had my subject stay still (despite wearing a hoodie inside a room where I strictly prohibited the opening of fans), I set the shutter speed to 1/60 to let in more light without risking much motion blur.
For motion, I wanted to capture the candle flame as a ghostly trail so I went with a slow shutter speed at 1/60 then set the camera to continuous shooting. My room was fairly dark when I was taking this picture and the only light source was a projector that I used to create a soft spotlight effect on the wall. I chose a mid-range aperture to slightly blur the wallpaper in the background without erasing the details on it. After shooting this picture, however, I realized that I should have gone with a wider aperture to further emphasize the candle flame but I mainly focused on the shutter speed and the ISO, which I set at 1000 because I needed to bring in more light. Despite the small regret of not utilizing the exposure triangle well, I was lucky to have captured the flame in such a beautiful sway.
Using Lightroom, I blurred the background to make sure it wouldn't compete for attention against the candle flame. The photo would have thrived even without stylistic editing but I wanted to achieve the dreamy look that I had in mind so I also adjusted other settings such as dehaze, vibrance, and clarity.
I wanted an unconventional take on height so I thought it would be creative to play with perception. Instead of looking for something that's tall or finding a place that's high, I made something normal-sized look eerily tall. I grabbed a flashlight and convinced my cousin (again!) to make all sorts of poses so we could create a tall monster-like shadow.
This is another instance of shooting in low-light so I had to increase the ISO to 1600. The shadow in the background was my main focus but what I wanted more was a subtle juxtaposition between the subject and their elongated shadow to achieve a visual metaphor. I used f/4 to let in more light and show both my subject and their shadow. I actually like that the distinction between the two is not that obvious. In post-processing, I made the picture black and white to get rid of the distracting colors. As an added bonus, the picture looked even more terrifying which fit the concept I had in mind.
This is admittedly the laziest and most random shot of the collection. I was at the grocery store desperately looking for any pattern I could shoot. I was getting antsy and therefore I was seeing patterns everywhere. The aisles looked identical, the carts were arranged methodically—everything was rhythmic. But there were too many people in the area that if I attempted to take photos, any of the patterns I saw would have been disrupted by the chaos. So I looked for places where people can't physically access and the first place I thought of was the ceiling.
For this shot, I used my phone because I was in a public place. The pro mode in Samsung's camera app doesn't allow aperture adjustment (at least in my model it doesn't) so all I could adjust were the ISO and the shutter speed. I set the ISO at the lowest setting because I was taking pictures of lights and I didn't need any more light and grain in my picture. I adjusted the shutter speed to work well with the ceiling lights. This setting was fast enough to minimize blur as well. I used the Sepia preset in Lightroom to add a moody flair and get rid of all the unnecessary colors.
in courtesy of:
Elle's camera
Sarah Jane's modelling
Jindo's waddle