Creative Play - Week 5 & 6

Due to my love of photography, and my knowledge from studying it at A level, I really enjoyed the lighting segment from this week 6's 'Creative Play' session. However I never had to opportunity to operate the lighting facilities that were available at Media City, so it was great to learn about how they work, and what certain effects they are good for producing. I felt as though during this segment, I successfully managed to direct the people posing, and feel as though I created exactly what I had in mind because of that. I have picked my three favourites that my group created, and have presented them bellow. The theme was Film Noir. I feel as though I should have opted to be in some of the photos myself, instead of just behind behind the camera, in order to get the full experience, which is something that I'll definitely consider in the future.

These are some sketches which I produced prior to this session after researching film noir. Unfortunatly, I wasn't able to recreate the one on the bottom, however the one on top heavily inspired the creation of one of the following images.

This is without a doubt my favourite outcome, as due to the composition of the lighting, a beautiful halo effect is created on the subject who is holding the gun. This helps to create enigma and mystery, as only the silhouette of the subject is shown, and the identity remains unknown, which I feel would work perfectly in a Noir film, as they are often centered around mystery. The subjects and vantage point of the camera were positioned so that the main areas of interest are aligned with the 3x3 grid, therefore following the rule of thirds and in theory creating a much more visually appealing photograph.

 I feel as though the reason that this photo stands out to me is thanks to the juxtaposition of the different levels of lighting, as the light shown coming from the subject on the left's head creates a huge contrast from the darker, low-key tone of the rest of the photograph. I feel as though that this light represents power, which is also shown through the height of the two individual subjects. My only complaint with this photograph is that I wish we explored an alternative angle as appose to sticking with a direct approach, as we could have perhaps chose an angle which represents even further the difference in power of the two subjects.

I really liked the idea behind this photograph, however I don't feel as though we pulled it off as well as we could have done. The idea for this came from my sketch shown above. The main issue was the lack of sharpness of the shadow, as I feel it is too soft which may have caused the subject to appear a lot less threatening, which wasn't the intention behind the photograph, so in future I will make sure to work out how to properly operate the camera so that the shadows appear sharper. I also don't like the brighter lighting consisting throughout this image, as it doesn't fit with the film Noir genre. However, aside from the lighting issues, I feel that the attire and composing of this photograph is really good and makes it feel very Noir themed.

Unfortunately, I didn't get as much of an fulfilling experience the week prior to this, as we were dealing with a topic which I felt really wasn't for me. Week 5 was based around a program called 'Arduino', which is an open source electronics platform used to create interactive experiences. We were introduced to this via some interactive sand-pits, which caused a disruption on the projected pattern when motion is sensed.

 

Whilst this did interest me, and I had some fun playing around with the patterns and illusions you can create, I still didn't feel invested to this topic. After we finished looking at these exhibits, we then went back to attempt some 'Arduino' ourselves.

 

This was a very stressful process, and it took our group a long time to figure out how to use this program and device to create and activate simple moving mechanisms and lights. Eventually, after a lot of fiddling, help and stress, we managed to create a motor which span a disk, which we could then temper with the speed and timing.

Though I was relieved that we actually managed to accomplish our task, I still couldn't envision me utilising this technique again later within the topic, as I didn't see how it could be of any use. That was until however, I was shown a beautiful video of how this can be used to create some wonderful interactive environments and scenery, which made me realise that if mastered or carried out further, this project may benefit later from this technique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDDFvAYuhRM