Assignment 5: People and Place, on Assignment

Brisbane Organic Growers Inc Annual Fair, Sunday 2^nd October, 2011

I have chosen to photograph a local fair run by the Brisbane Organic Growers Inc (BOGI). I chose the organising committee as my notional client and my brief was to photograph the fair in all it's parts. This would include setup before the actual fair, the stalls, cafe, vegetable growing competition and auction at the end of the day. This was to be prepared in a short photo essay which would be included in the November newsletter and thus had a deadline of two weeks after the fair.

Having not attended a BOGI fair before, I did some research as to what might happen on the day. I made a list of possible targets for photographing.

1. Preparation (both the day before and also the morning of the fair)
2. Cafe ( serving freshly prepared food and home made cakes)
3. Vegetable growing competition and judging (display?)
4. Stalls (selling produce, giving advice, demonstrations etc)
5. Auction of competition items
6. Tidying up at the end of a long day.

Photo 1. Preparation. Setup area for stalls

17-35mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/6.7, 17mm, 1/90sec, ISO 640, natural light.

Photo 2. Preparation. Menu

50mm f/1.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/4.5, 50mm, 1/90sec, ISO 640, bounce flash.

Photo 3. Preparation. Red check tablecloth

17-35mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/4.5, 17mm, 1/45sec, ISO 640, bounce flash.

Photo 4. Cafe. Preparing cupcakes in the kitchen

17-35mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/2.8, 19mm, 1/60sec, ISO 1000, diffuser on flash.

Photo 5. Cafe. The first punters arrive

17-35mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/4.5, 17mm, 1/45sec, ISO 1000, diffuser on flash.

Photo 6. Cafe. Choosing and Paying

17-35mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/6.7, 17mm, 1/45sec, ISO 1000, diffuser on flash.

Photo 7. Stalls. Forbidden Fruits Nursery

17-35mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/11, 17mm, 1/180sec, ISO 640, natural light.

Photo 8. Stalls. Tropical Fruits trio

17-35mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/5.6, 17mm, 1/90sec, ISO 640, diffuser on flash.

Photo 9. Stalls. Tea for sale

50mm f/1.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/5.6, 50mm, 1/250sec, ISO 500, natural light.

Photo 10. Competition. Viewing the entries

50mm f/1.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/2.8, 50mm, 1/90sec, ISO 500, natural light.

Photo 11. Competition. A young prizewinner

50mm f/1.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/5.6, 50mm, 1/60sec, ISO 640, diffuser on flash.

Photo 12. Auction. Graeme and Charlie call the auction

50mm f/1.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/3.5, 50mm, 1/60sec, ISO 640, diffuser on flash.

Photo 13. Auction. Bidding

50mm f/1.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/5.6, 70mm, 1/60sec, ISO 640, diffuser on flash.

Photo 14. Auction. A young bidder

70-200mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/6.7, 120mm, 1/60sec, ISO 640, diffuser on flash.

Photo 15. End of the day

70-200mm f/2.8 lens, Canon 30D, f/6.7, 125mm, 1/60sec, ISO 640, natural light.

From Penny, BOGI vice president: 'Your photo story depicts from setup to cleanup and so much of the colour in-between, really wonderful.' It's a pleasure being able to provide a great set of photos to a client.

Assignment 5: People and Place, on Assignment

I have taken photos for Assignment 5. A good opportunity came up in the form of the annual BOGI Fair (Brisbane Organic Growers Association). Being interested in organic gardening, I joined the club recently and heard about the fair. I decided to set myself the task of photographing it and making a short photo essay, perhaps for the clubs monthly magazine. The fair was held last weekend, and I went along on Saturday afternoon to meet the organising committee and take some photos of them setting up for the fair. I then went back on Sunday to photograph the stalls being set up, the punters arriving, the busy cafe, the vegetable growing competition and resulting auction, and the tidy up at the end of the day. It was a busy and tiring day for me and quite challenging photographically. I was the official 'BOGI' photographer for the day which helped when people were asking what I was doing and I found it often broke the ice when chatting to people, then stepping back to take their photo and then thank them afterwards. The light conditions were very challenging and definately made me realise the limitations of my (now getting a bit old!) Canon 30D in terms of low light / high ISO and resultant noise.

My brief that I set myself was to prepare a short photo essay (perhaps 12 to 15 photos) for the December BOGI magazine.  In addition I was asked to take one photo that says BOGI Fair... not sure it that is actually achievable but I will take a look through the photos! And they would also like a slideshow of photos for the December meeting. This means a large number of photos that I am happy to show which is not what I initially had in mind. So my first aim will be the photo essay and then I will try to process enough images to have a short (probably 100 photo) slideshow. It's been a great experience taking the photos and now I just need to spend the time working on them and trying to get rid of some noise in the worst images.

Here is one example of the fair, taken on Sunday morning.

f/4, 1/90, ISO 640, 35mm, flash with diffuser

Hair Salon

I decided to challenge myself by asking to take some photos at the local hair salon. I had planned initially to use this for one of the projects but decided to just go and take the best set of photos I could to capture the feeling of the salon.  I like it because the area is bright and fresh feeling, and the chairs and decor is clean and modern. I had some ideas about what I would shoot (I was not going to include customers as the owner didn't want that), mostly thinking about what the features of the salon were, and perhaps what would be required if I was asked to capture the feeling of the space for a client for example.

I went before work one morning, and had about half an hour to photograph, which was ample time as I was only using one camera and lens, my normal 24-70mm f2.8 which covers most situations, and was not going to use any artificial lighting. I started by taking some photos of product with the salon out of focus in the background, but felt these didn't work that well - perhaps I should have decreased my aperture? I forgot how much less light there is in artificially lit buildings than outside! Most of my work lately has been outside with only the odd shoot inside. Anyway, I set my ISO to 400 and used relatively large apertures which worked well with some images more so than others. I like using a smallish depth of field to focus on areas of interest and I quite like the blurring effect that this gives.

I tried getting down low and found this to be quite effective in changing how things looked. I also shot along the chairs which worked well, and tried shooting almost straight down on the scene, though I'm not very tall this also changed how things looked. I liked the idea of shooting into the mirrors reflecting other mirrors creating the 'endless' kind of view. An interesting idea photographically which I have used before (for example in Assignment 1: Photo 4).

I also photographed the owner as he spoke on the phone at the front desk - he is quite blurred in the background, and the bright lights behind him are blown out but the focus is still on the chairs in front. I also needed a couple of overview shots - I thought it was important to get the name of the salon included in a photo, and also have a more zoomed out view of the whole area.

The shoot itself went well - I didn't take too long and didn't get in the way of the owner and workers setting up, which was important to me as it was a favour of sorts (which might have been hard to refuse given I am a client!). I managed to get a good variety of photographs which I am pleased with. I remembered to shoot key photos both horizontally and vertically to give me good choice in the post-processing to see what works best.

Post-processing was somewhat of a challenge. I shot all the photos with sunlight white balance, thinking that I could easily correct in post. However my skills are not great with correcting white balance - a couple of shots were great but others were harder to correct. This is an area I need to improve on, and I suspect my next course will be the Digital photography 1 course so I can force myself to learn some more skills.

Anyway, here are the photos, I am pleased to have a set of 5 photos to show for my efforts and will be providing these to the owner for use under Creative Commons licensing.

Womadelaide

Womad was on last weekend and as a result I finally got around to shooting my event for Assignment 2, People & Places. Here are a few grabs from the (pleasantly large) pile of good photos I captured. I know I've been in the UK too long... I forgot to take a polariser with me!!

From Womadelaide_2011

From Womadelaide_2011

From Womadelaide_2011

From Womadelaide_2011

The greatest festival in the world for fabulous world music, dance, food and fun set in a beautiful environment in Botanic Park, Adelaide. What a great weekend. More photos to come ;)

Exercise 16: Exploring Function

The task of this project was to start looking at spaces/rooms/buildings with a view to their use. How will a person/people use this space, what is the purpose of the room? I chose to photograph the yoga studio where I studied in Edinburgh(see my previous post regarding this exercise).
I found this exercise harder than it first appeared. I went there thinking that I had to take a series of photos of the studio, which was relatively easy. Upon rereading the task, I actually should have gone with the aim of taking _one_ photograph of the area to reflect it's purpose/use. In hindsight this makes sense - we need to have the skills to capture the use of a room in its totality, not to seperate it out into chunks (which was a fun process too). Anyhow, I did take one photo which I feel captures the space (or part of it at least) though is perhaps not the best one I could have taken if I had the opportunity again. I will try this exercise again with another room... In the meantime, here is the photo which I feel captures the lightness and fresh feeling in the studio.

From Yoga_Room

Study of a Yoga Studio

For 'People & Place' I went to photograph at the Yoga Studio I studied at in Edinburgh, called 'The Yoga Room' (link here). I took a series of portraits of Rowena doing her yoga practice, and also took a kind of a portrait of the studio itself. It consists of 3 main areas - the lovely, light filled yoga studio itself, the changing areas/bathrooms, and the entrance area for sitting and relaxing before & after class.

I feel like I have managed reasonably well to capture the essence of the studio in this set of photos. I found over exposing the photos slightly helped to capture the light airy feel of the studio, and I really enjoyed capturing some shadowy images - I was very lucky on the day of the shoot to have a bright sunny day. If I was still in Edinbugh it would be great to go back in winter and photograph the studio as it changes a lot; Rowena puts up fairy lights and obviously it is much darker outside when we are practicing.

First, the entrance area:

From Yoga_Room

From Yoga_Room

Next, the main studio area:

From Yoga_Room

From Yoga_Room

From Yoga_Room

From Yoga_Room

And finally the bathroom/change area:

From Yoga_Room

From Yoga_Room

From Yoga_Room

It was interesting to take photos of this room which is quite familiar to me, and also now (more than 6 months later) to look back and still 'feel' the essence of the lovely practice area. I hope you also can get this feeling from my set of photographs.

Thankyou to Rowena for letting me take these photos.