Silver Second
Metal Moment
Your Smile
The Poisoner, the Violinist, and the Extras
Part 2: Lighting Excercise
Hollywood Heroine
Side top Lighting
Femme Fatale
Bottom-side Lighting
Writeup:
It is a little difficult to explain composition methods used for decisive moments because my shots were for the most part spontaneous-there was very little time to plan the shot, I just took them. But I will explain the pictures as best as I can.
'Silver second'- was taken completely by chance. This is a photo of the Silver medal winners of the Asian Youth Games Beach Volleyball female athletes for Kazakhstan. I was volunteering at the Siloso Beach for this event and suddenly they walked past me, and I decided to take the shot it happened in a split second. 2 Days later they won the Silver medal. I framed them at the side so they would look like the most prominent subjects at the very busy volleyball court. The background may be busy but somehow these two girls stood out. I think its because of the lack of colour, and that their skin was most prominent as it relfected light better than clothes.
'Metal Moment'- I attended my friends band's jamming session to hear their latest composition- the studio was very small and crammed but I managed to get a photo of the guitarist and the drummer ( there were 2 more members and 2 other people in the room)from the corner of the room. The man in the background is the studio 'uncle' checking to see if everything was alright. There is a triangle made by the guitarist to the drummer because of the two different heights. Its beter in black and white because the lighting made it very awkward for colour photos. It looks better with the colour omitted.
'Your Smile' -is dedicated to my best friend, Salima, who is the girl smiling heartily in the background, amoung all the other people in the scene- the guy in the foreground is the directer directing them to positions. I thought the effect of the being framed by the two guys worked very nicely. It has quite a timeless look to it- in my opinion.
The Poisoner, the Violinist and the Extras- this is a scene from the current production I'm involved in. This scene is that of a mime, with the violinist providing for the background music. At the very back you can see two actors, waiting for their queue, but totally uninvolved in the current scene that is going on. And I find that quite comical: they are the only two in the whole frame not participating in the current scene.
Lighting exercise(these photos were not edited in any way): I have always been interested in fashion photography, and decided to use a myscene doll for an object- its almost like using a human model but easier. (myscene dolls have bigger expressions compared to barbie dolls which is why I deemed her better for this). The light was really soft lighting- I used a really really old lamp of mine which uses tungsten bulb- the yellow light one- except this one was was already dim(due to oldness) and became a very soft, warm amber. The fact that there were no harsh shadows produced shows that it was soft lighting. I did not use flash for this excercise.
The concept was to make her look like a Hollywood actress from the black and white films era. In the first picture, Hollywood Heroine, where the light comes from the side, it lights her face, and it makes her look like the typical wholesome hollywood leading lady of that time. For this shot, the painting 'Girl with a pearl earring' by Vermeer was a rough inspiration for it.
The second one, Femme Fatale, shows her in almost the exact same pose, but because the lighting came from the bottom at a side, her face was cast in shadow, she is looking somehwere else that we dont know, and the midlong shot showed her black skirt- giving the effect of mysteriousness. Now she looks like a femme fatale from a film noir movie.
I think decisive moments was very challenging because it was very time consuming and you only get a few good shots out of a few hundred. Also it was a little difficult to anticipate people's movements- the moment is usually gone by the time I wanted to snap the scene.
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