ABE SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY
Location Photography Unit 30.1
location photography is when a photographer goes and shoots at a location / scene without the environment, equipment or certainty that accompanies shooting in an indoor studio. Some genres that fall under location photography are fitness/sports, documentary photography, marine photography, street photography, and some portraiture and music photography. Also as the usage of mobile phones has increased many more company's and individuals are doing shoots on location using iPhone and android phone cameras. better low light imagery and built in camera functions are reducing the need for a studio, materials such as reflectors and diffusers are softening light like a studio lights soft box and as a very visually interactive generation grow the visual effects of a studio are slowly becoming boring to the modern generation, that is why in my opinion location photography will have a huge increase for demand. For example many high end fashion company's vogue are increasingly using outdoor locations shoots for front covers and advertising. For this unit I therefore decided to primarily do fitness/ health and sports photoshoots as is in my opinion this is where more of the real working photographers commissions are. This will impact my work as I have chosen to shoot on location in a gym with difficult lighting to deal with, I did this as the point of location photography is that there is not the luxury of controlled lighting, equipment or environment. to overcome this I had to use my instinct using of camera flash and very high ISO.
Mood Board
Plan for my shoots
In my opinion the majority of location photoshoots are orientated by health and fitness. I was also recently asked by a junior body builder to get some images for his social media accounts therefore I thought for this unit I would take fitness and health images of this body builder. to prepare for this shoot I decided to visit the gym with some class piers and get practice shots similar to my final ideas for my final shoot.
Final Shoot info
6/03/18
11am-2pm
Model : Joe Tunstall
bodybuilding shoot
At S.T.A gym
look at Ian Thraves sports work for inspiration
practice shoots
final images
Mitch James : I think the lighting adds definition to the models body by giving an overcast underneath his muscles
Morgan Baskerville: I like the window lighting as its subtle however still makes his arm stand out.
Brandon Thacker : i like the contrast and the blue tinge to the white balance it gives a feeling that the gym is cold
Meg Wyn : the lighting on the muscles makes them more defined. i also like the outfit as it matches the other components.
30.2 Evaluation
i chose the location of the gym as i thought it fit the themes of the photos seeing as they were fitness related photos, the problem was that the lighting and conditions of the gym were terrible. My practice shoots were not very successful as the models were not in as good a shape as my final shoots model, my final shoot was my favorite due to the location and model ; i got 298 images that i was happy enough the post in the future. In my final shoot i definitely felt prepared to create my desired images. however obviously in my practice shoots i didn't get the results i was looking for as in my practice shoots i only had the mood boards as a guide. During the final shoot my research came in handy as i ended up taking an image of my model with a truck tire which is one of the images i took inspiration from when on my shoot.
I was especial happy with the shots i got in my final shoot, the gym had a naturally cool temperature to the colors and the lighting was very shadowed which helped with the definition of the bodybuilders muscles. My model also spent about an hour working out before the shoot to get a pump on so that his veins and muscles grew and swelled. Due to the low light i used a high ISO and an apature of F1.8 this made it easier to expose the image in the dark environment and also gave a nice shallow depth of field in the images. I also used a lens of 35mm which gave a slightly wider angle and slightly distorted the body builders arms to make them appear larger. I also utilized the high iso standards of my new camera (Nikon D800) I also used an off camera flash half way through pointing onto the ceiling which bounced light down on the model from above which made the muscles look more defined.
In my practice shoot there were many things that i would change however in my final shoot with my model i was very happy with the results and loved the way the images turned out.