Print Techniques

Soft Focus

Weaving

Shoot 4 - Straight Images

Shoot 4 - Contact Sheet

Shoot 3 - Straight Images

Shoot 3 - Contact Sheet

Print Techniques

Repetition

Selective Colour

Duo-Tone

Tom Hunter - Photographer Research

Tom Hunter is an east London photographer, born in Dorset, who uses natural lighting for all of his photos, he is quite good at setting a strong dramatic atmosphere within his photos.  His work is usually particular, but not exclusive, to his community and neighbourhood and most of his work is done to raise a specific controversial issue like his series 'persons unknown' which was about people receiving possession orders simply addressed to 'Persons unknown'.

 This photo is from Tom Hunter's 'Life and Death in Hackney' Series.  I like the strong directional light forming the 'god rays' (beams of light) I think that it really helps to create strong contrast within the image and focus attention onto the person in the centre of the image, who otherwise would likely blend into the background pretty easily.

 This photo is from his 'Ghetto' series.  This photo would appear to be taken using only natural light from the window and a reflector to bounce light into the room towards the girl sitting on the bed.  The camera angle used for this photo makes the room appear really small and cramped.  The title of the series implies that the person in the photo lives in a deprived area.

This photo is from the 'Travellers' series, it denotes a women sitting in the back of what appears to be a van, with a bed and fairly cramped conditions.  The connotations  of this is that this is where she lives/spends most of her time and that is is not particularly comfortable.

This final photo is from Tom Hunter's 'Persons Unknown' series and is titled 'Women reading a Possession Order', It denotes a women holding a piece of paper in front of a brightly lit window with a young child laying next to her.  The connotations of this are that something bad is happening as she looks quite upset/shocked, the title implying that she is going to be made homeless.  The directional lighting from the window really helps to emphasise both the child directly in front of it as well as the women's expression and the letter she is holding as it creates contrast between those areas and the rest of the photo.

I think that Tom Hunter has influenced me and the way that I work as his way of using natural light to help construct his composition and different atmosphere works really well and is something that I really like about his body of work.

Shoot 1 - Work Diary

This shoot was just an initial exploratory shoot on my chosen topic of 'dramatic images' based almost entirely off of what the exam paper says about it, using natural light.  I wanted to keep it quite simply as it was only an initial shoot I felt like trying to dive straight into some of my more complex ideas would have defeated the point of an exploratory shoot.  So for this I was using only natural light to take my photos in Epping forest without any kind of peripheral extras just my camera and two of my lens an 18-55 mm telephoto lens with image stabilisation and a 50mm Prime Mk II.  Below are some of the two unedited photos that I think are best, with the editing I only applied some basic technical retouching altering things like the exposure, contrast and saturation.

For this photo I my camera was set to 1/200 sec shutter speed, f/5.6 and ISO 200 at a focal length of 32mm.  I really like the dark mysterious quality of this photo and I think the contrast between the main part of the photo and the bright sky in the distance makes it seem like the person is wondering 'what could be out there?'

This particular photo is shot with 1/125 sec shutter speed, f/5.6 and ISO 800 at a focal length of 39mm.  I like this photo as it raises the questions of 'what is happening?' and 'where does the road go?'.  I think that the composition is really good within this photo with the subject within the first third of the photo with her face hidden.  I feel that this helps to draw the eye naturally across the subject, up the path and back to rest on the subject.

To progress from here I may try using different locations like more urban areas like around town or or larger urban areas such as London.  I might also experiment with different lighting techniques to create dramatic and/or high contrast photographs.  Some things that I have thought of trying are low key lighting to create high contrast images and using geometric patterns cut into paper/card to either create shadows on a subject or to take photos through.

Shoot 1 - Straight Images

Shoot 1 - Contact Sheet

Dramatic Images - Image Bank