Tag:

52 week photo challenge

Silhouette

by Ally April 5, 2019

I have no idea how this happened but somehow we are at Week 14 already. It’s April! We should be enjoying the lovely spring weather, but instead winter has come back with a vengeance and hale stones!

That’s ok though, because these silhouette photos are smoking hot!

If you remember, Pavlina featured in my last week’s blog when I published completely un-edited photographs Straight Out of Camera. If you haven’t read it yet, click here.

During the same session, Pavlina and I also worked on some cabaret inspired silhouette images.

The principle of taking a silhouette image is quite simple. The light source has to be behind the subject. If you adjust your settings so that the background is correctly exposed, anything in front of it will appear much darker … like a silhouette.

My challenge was to decide what to photograph. What would make a good silhouette image? In fact, what would make a striking one?

A few weeks earlier, I was out in Brighton with a friend of mine celebrating her birthday, and we ended up at the Brighton Cabaret. It is such a fab place! If you like a bit of fun and a bit of cabaret, I definitely recommend it. Whilst we were there, inspiration struck …

Some cabaret inspired silhouette images!

As a model and a dance student, Pavlina was really comfortably in front of the camera, and instinctively knew the kind of poses that would look good as a silhouette. Together we created some amazing images, even better than I could have ever imagined.

What do you think?

14 weeks done, 38 weeks to go!

April 5, 2019

My photo challenge

Blurry photograph or art?

by Ally March 8, 2019

When you ask and pay someone to take your photograph (be it a LinkedIn profile or a family photograph) you expect to receive images that are perfectly in focus and not blurry. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what most of my clients expect.

Being able to take photographs that aren’t blurry through movement or lack of focus is one of the first things you learn as a photographer.

So to unlearn it and deliberately go out to capture blurry photographs has been somewhat of a challenge – an exciting challenge at that! Photographs are still images, so to try and portray movement through a medium that isn’t naturally aimed at this was quite inspiring.

As soon as I knew this week’s theme would be movement, I knew that I wanted to photograph movement through dance. Don’t ask me why! I would love to say that this concept was born from my big love for dance or ballet … but apart from a year of ballet lessons (if you can call it that!) as a young child, and throwing some moves on sticky nightclub floors as a teenager, dance and I haven’t really got an awful lot in common.

And yet, something attracted me to this subject.

Ruth is a beautiful and extremely talented dance graduate who needed some photographs for her dancing portfolio, so she could apply for some jobs in the industry. So we quickly booked in a date for a photoshoot.

I made sure that Ruth left my studio with plenty of great, in focus, not blurry photographs for her portfolio. If you follow me on Instagram, you would have probably seen Ruth’s headshot I posted yesterday. It’s one of my favourites! (If you don’t follow me on Instagram, you totally should. Just click here!)

Throughout the session, we also made sure that we turned off the flash and took some beautiful blurry photographs to convey the expression of movement through dance. And I am over the moon with how they came out!

The light coming through the window was ideal, and Ruth’s red dress was perfect for this, with the sheer fabric creating some beautiful effects.

For those of you who like numbers, here are some setting figures for you. My usual camera settings when using flash are f6.3 at 1/125th of a second. To capture the movement, I knew I needed to slow down the exposure time quite considerably, so I set this to 1/20th of a second. I also turned off the flash, as there was plenty of natural light coming in for such a slow exposure time. I did however drop my aperture to f2.8.

And so here are the results!

So, in answer to the question is this just a blurry photograph or is it art? Well … I’ll leave it up to you to decide!

I’ve made up my mind already!

With huge thanks to Ruth, for being such an amazing dancer, and for being game to my crazy idea, and for repeating a dance move over and over and over again until we finally got it right in camera! You’re a star!

March 8, 2019

My photo challenge

I had a very different blog in mind …

by Ally February 1, 2019

Today’s challenge theme was Rain and the blog I typed up yesterday was very different to what I am publishing right now. Because last night, it snowed!!!

It did! It really did!

I am far more excited about this than most other people, I realise that. Even Max rolled his eyes at me when I shouted with glee “It’s snowing!” at the sight of the first snow flake on the way back from school.

“Oh, mother!” he mumbled disapprovingly.

I remember being a child and waking up and seeing snow settled in the corners of my bedroom window, and jumping out of bed to see everything looking beautiful and white outside. I get the same feeling every time it snows!

You can imagine therefore my excitement when I noticed, after dinner, that the snow was actually settling …

Before I started my photo challenge, I probably would have run outside, tried to make a couple of snow balls and then come back in. But since I am on a mission to try different photographic techniques and genres, I decided to take my camera out to try and capture some snow photographs. After all, I had never photographed snow before!

I mean I had never photographed snow with my big proper camera.

I have to admit, I didn’t know which settings to use, so I had to google it. According to the article I found, the best shutter speed to use is a 500th of a second, which I’m sure is great in daytime, but less so in the dark. The photos I took are at 1/250 and I think they are perfectly adequate. My ISO was set to 1250 to let as much light in as possible without making the photos too grainy, and my aperture was f2.8 … because again, light!

What I love about these photographs is the colours … They are dark, yet brightly coloured, mysterious and beautiful at the same time … Because snow makes everything beautiful!

My Rain blog would have been rather rubbish in comparison, because I hadn’t managed to take any photos of rain. But I do have lots of ideas in mind, so I promise there will be a rain blog somewhere down the line, when the rain is more predictable and the models crazy enough to stand outside in the rain while I photograph them, aren’t likely to end up with pneumonia.

Happy Winter!!!

February 1, 2019

My photo challenge

I failed miserably at this …

by Ally December 31, 2018

January is usually a quieter month in the photography world, so last December I decided January would be a good month to do a photo challenge … a themed photo each day for the whole of January, which I would post on Instagram. What a great idea! (or so I thought!)

January turned out to be one of my busiest months yet, and I had to abandon my challenge half way through.

If you haven’t followed me on Facebook or Instagram, here are just a few of the photos I did take.

So this January I am going to try again … why you might ask?

I absolutely love being busy, I love meeting you, getting to know you, and capturing some beautiful photos of you, your family, your children. It’s what makes my job so amazing, and what makes me wake up with excitement every single day (oh ok, most days!) … but you see, you all book me for the work I produce day in day out. You book me because I have photographed your friend, or your business colleague, or you have seen my blog, or my post on Instagram; and what you want is something similar.

Which leaves me with little space to be creative, to try new things, to step outside my comfort zone as a photographer and try new techniques, new equipment … essentially to be able to offer you, my lovely clients a little bit more.

And therefore I’m going to try again … but this time, I’m going to try a slightly different challenge – a photo a week for the whole of 2019. Fifty-two photos, fifty-two challenges, and a blog about each one. As I write this, I am beyond excited! I can’t wait to get creative, get some ideas bouncing around, and testing my ability to produce in a photograph what my imagination can create in my head. I am also looking forward to letting you guys know the girl behind the lens a little bit better, and to interact with you more through my blog and other social media platforms.

So here is a list of all my photographs for next year, week by week. Some are going to challenge my skills and techniques as a photographer, some my imagination … but most of all, I’m hoping to have a lot of fun!

Now, I’m going to dig out my highly underused tripod and start taking some photographs. My first post is going up on the 4th of January, so keep an eye out for it.

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December 31, 2018