Independent Shoot One | Formal Elements

I'm going to be looking at tone so that I can focus more on portrait images instead of still life images.

Feet

Legs

Fingers

Hair

Arms

Hands

Belly

Eyes

Elbows

Body Parts

Knees

Ribs

Lips

Tone Featuring People

Teeth

Ears

Nose

Emotions/Expressions

Joy

Frustrated

Confused

Sad

Angry

Happy

Peaceful

Heart Broken

Wonder

Hateful

Curiosity

Tone Photography Image Bank

Research a photographer and they develop ideas from other resources.

While writing about my Edits make links to elements and Artist research.

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress. Discuss the ideas you had.

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.

Do this while writing about my Contact Sheets and Edits.

Do this in Edits and while developing other ideas.

Artist Research - Runar Eilertsen

Runar Eilertsen started photography during January 2008 however he still currently works as a Intensive Care Nurse, he was born in Kabelvåg but now he lives in Norway Tromsø where he continues his love for his photography hobby.

In this image it shows a freeze frame photo where the women has gotten her hair in her eyes in front of a black background. I like how the artist has edited the image using Photoshop to make the image Black and white and how he has used many elements such as form and tone. I think the message the artist is trying to send behind the image is that you should never hind who you are he shows this through the use of artificial lighting and low shutter speed as well as tone elements. The emotions represented in the image includes bravery and ignorance. I feel as though if I were to use a similar style when taking my own images I would include the elements and emotions captured in the photographers work.

For this image the photographer has captured a women in mid jump, the women seems happy and carefree, the artist has even used Photoshop to achieve the black and white image. I believe by using a freeze frame type of image and a representational style the photographer was able to create emotions such as joy and playfulness, thanks to these techniques and emotions we can understand the message behind the image, this message being that it is okay to take your shoes off every now and then and enjoy life. I like almost everything about this image as the subject is in the centre of the photo making her the centre of attention the only thing I dislike is the large amount of negative space. If I were to take ideas from this to use in my own work I would take ideas of tone elements, representational style and artificial lighting.

This photo includes a black and white edited image of a man, the photo has been edited to make it look like the front has been blacked out by the lack of lighting creating a glow around the edges of the man’s body. I like the use of negative space in this image as it helps to highlight the tone elements and use of artificial lighting. The artist is trying to send a message of masculinity and power over others through the emotions in the image such as manipulation and determination. The photographer has achieved this image through Photoshop and has used techniques such as tone, form and shape. If I were to take anything form this edited image to use in my own photos I would use the ideas of form and tone elements as well as the use of Photoshop and artificial lighting.

In this image it shows a very old man in his house, the background has been blurred and the image has been turned black and white to draw attention to the detailing in the man’s face. Although the black and white effect on the image gives us the idea that the man is not very happy there is still a small smaller on his face, due to this I think the message behind the image is that no matter how old you get there is always a reason to smile, revealing emotions such as a conflicting joy a sadness. I like the style and elements such as tone and form which have been used in this image. Therefore if I were to take ideas from this to use in my own work I would use the tone elements and natural lighting.

Thanks to my artist research i now understand more about how I will take photos for tone and developed ideas such as taking images in a stdio and using a quick shutter speed for some of the freeze frame images. From the artist research I can see how natural and artificial lighting has effected each image so I will make sure to consider that factor when I take my own image intending to capture some similar to the artist own work.

Contact Sheet

(AO1: You must ensure that several of the visual ideas/inspirations within the image bank are pursued. )

The two images marked in red were slightly out of focus, I will need to ensure that my images are sharp during future shoots

Theory And Research On Tone

What is Tonal Range?

A rich range of tones in a colored, as well as a black and white, image is vital to its success. In digital photography, this is limited to the sensor's dynamic range and its ability to capture a wide enough distribution of tones that would be considered suitable for the purpose of the photo.

Factors that influence tonal range of the final image include subject reflectance as well as the lighting. A high reflectance subject accompanied by high lighting results in a long span of image tones that are probably beyond any sensor's capabilities.

Tone definition - the particular quality of brightness, deepness, or hue of a shade of a colour.

Tone in photography is the range of lightest to the darkest part of an image. This is very important element of a photograph and one must understand its value as well as its limitations. When we look at any object or a scene in nature, our eye scans the entire view.

My Best images;

Images that require improvement;

These images were selected as I feel that the angling is not right and it is slightly out of focus. For the first improvement image, I did not timing of the shoot correctly and the image seems to be slightly blurred. And with the second image I just feel as though it does not show the artists style very well and the image also turned out slightly blurry. If i were to reshoot these images again I would use a more accurate camera setting so that the image does not blur as much and use camera equipment to make sure the angling is handled better.

(AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress)

My idea for recording tone in my independence shoot was to photograph my classmates using motion elements as well as form and portraiture elements this way i could explore different ways tone is presented within those other elements such as the shadows and exposed curve elements shown within the images. I was inspired from my research of Runar Eilertsen images which highlights the use of form, tone and composition in his work. His use of movement gave me an idea to photograph peoples different expressions and their movements. The images came out as I expected, however I had to pay particular attention to getting the stutter speed settings correct for each of the images (movement and stand still images).

Referring To Best Image;

The first image was captured at a straight forwards angle and features mainly movement elements this was done so that the image would gain a somewhat surreal style and would show links towards the artist own work.

The second image is a close up of a face, i did this to try and highlight each curve and facial line when i go to edit the image to be black and white. Thankfully this also helps to link the image to the artists own work as they too use close-ups to portray tone elements.

The third image was a little more changeling to shoot as I decided to experiment with props and objects in my images, this made it a bit more difficult to angle my camera and make sure my artificial lighting is in the right place, in a way i think i could have done this better but i am still happy with how the image turned out.

For the last image I allowed the model to show different expressions and pose in a way that made them comfortable, thanks to this I was able to capture a unique image that I would not normally take, this also helped to link to the photographers work as they seem to focus on faces in their tone images.

With regards to some of the images that did not come out as I expected, I struggled to adapt my camera settings to each of the images as i used different backgrounds during the photo-shoot and had to change the settings when taking still images and image where freeze frame/ movement was important. Some images lacked focus. I believe I can overcome these issues through better time management during photo-shoots.

(AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops)

The images were photographed at an aperture range of between f4 and f8. I think moving on I will try to increase the aperture setting to as high as possible so that I might have sharper pictures with a wider depth of field, which hopefully will be beneficial due to using artificial lighting. During this photo-shoot I was able to experiment with my ISO settings. For some of the images I used a shutter speed around 1/15 s with an f stop of 7.1 but this changed sometimes during the photo-soot as I wanted to see what worked better with each image so therefore the camera settings were not consistent during the shoot. some of the images are slightly out of focus.

If I were to reshoot these images again I would try to use a tripod to hold the camera steady and use a camera with a higher f stop range so that I could make sure the image was sharper. To improve my images I decided to import some of them into Photoshop and use this to create black and white images with more contrast between the main subject and the background. (this is shown below)

The screen shoots selected show how Photoshop was used to create a high contrast black and white images. To do use this, I used the brightness and contrast image adjustment settings and the Black and White tool adjusting the colour sliders to get the desired hard contrast/shadowy effect.

(AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding)

The artist research was helpful as I realized that the theory on tone elements allowed me to understand the subject from a range of perspectives. My research of photographer helped me to focus on mainly on the tonal elements within my edited photos. This was helpful to me as it gave me opportunities to to explore different techniques and photograph different emotions on camera. The research on tone was very helpful to this study, however some of the shots did not match the same style as the photographers themselves this meant that not all aspect of research was useful.

(AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realizes intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements)

I believe that I have produced a strong series of images inspired by my research of tone from the images of Runar Eilertsen. The final images were produced by highlighting the contrast and converting them into black and white images.

Images that require improvement edits;

My Best images edits;