Sinking
by
Tony Barros
During the briefing of this assignment we were introduced to a various series of photographs by different artists. Ideally, the photographs were meant to be viewed mounted together either because their sequencing told narrative stories or because they recounted different perspectives in relation to a topic.
Research:
I was inspired by Bill Viola's "Ascension", Elena Kalis's Underwater series and Steffen Knausts' "Mary - Smoking".
Here are some examples:
I believe these images convey mysteriousness due to their abstract nature so I decided to construct a series of abstract images under the idea of sinking
Shooting:
Equipment wise I utilized my personal Nikon D5600 with a 50mm lens and an extra 70-300mm lens courtesy of the university's equipment hire.
We shot the pictures in two separate days:
Day 1 - We utilized the 50mm lens and placed the models in a bathtub. I ended up taking close to 200 pictures as I used more than 8 different models and different props for each person.
Camera Settings -
Between F5.6 and F10, 1/200th Shutter Speed (applying minor changes here and there) and ISO in between 100-640 only going slightly above to 800-1000 ISO when less light was available.
Camera flash was used when trying to capture more detail but I also had two LED water resistant work lights placed differently with each model.
The placement of the lights allowed for dynamic range when trying to express human emotions and also setting a mood for the scenery accompanied by the water's reflections.
Day 2 - This time we applied the close-up lens in a studio and I decided to photograph ordinary everyday items being dumped into an aquarium.
4 studio lights were necessary to achieve the look I wanted because the Nikon D5600 doesn't have much range in itself compared to recent cameras. Nonetheless, I got the effects I wanted by keeping the F stops in between F8-F16, ISO at 100 always and Shutter speed at 1/80th or 1/200th.
Editing:
Software for editing - Photoshop. I'm not one to edit pictures I take as I like them to look as 'natural' as possible so when editing I'd like to say I did the bare minimum. For the aquarium shots I exposed them more and revealed the blacks while turning down the whites so we could get that crisp black background and have nice detail over the items and how they would splash when dropped in the aquarium. The only technical bit I had a hard time trying to adjust at first was the added enhances such as the candle lights in the bathroom. I used the brush tool with low opacity and brightened certain areas of the picture to give it that look that the lights were shining.
Ultimately, the pictures I chose ended up looking like this post production:
Conclusions:
I'm happy with how they look but if I were to redo them I'd shoot the bathroom pics with three working lights and maybe only use flash when not using the lights to have different lighting effects and also so I could control the shadows more as I think they weren't well placed in some pictures. After the added 'lights' the problems with the shadows aren't as visible but they're still there.
Also, I would expose the Jesus picture slightly more because when it print it looked quite dark unlike my computer's monitor and the bottle with the rose I would go onto set and light it up differently so it can be easier to understand what we're looking at.
Finally, with this project I learned the importance of layering and composition on Photoshop as in one of the pictures I didn't layer the effects I was adding onto the picture instead I just added them to the RAW file which caused slight loss of detail to which I only noticed after printing the images with satin paper.
Thank you so much for tuning into my portrait series!
