Telling a short story through 5 photos for this photography assignment with the theme of success was not easy as I thought. I decided to create a new story instead of using my previous video’s idea because I believed I can challenge myself and played with techniques that I learnt in class to visualize my story through photos. I would like to reflect on my work in terms of techniques I used and what I achieved and did not in this assignment.
Brainstorming ideas
Firstly, I had to do some research to explore which idea I could apply some basic techniques such as exposer time, shutter speed, rule of thirds etc. Then, I chose the idea of putting the egg in the bottle because I thought it would allow me to play around with those techniques and create interesting photos.
Next, I also reviewed again the materials from my tutorial and it include online lecture slides, photomatter to learn about shooting with exposure time, light, depth of filed, focus and the photo essay article to build the attraction for my story.
Making process
I used my Canon EOS 600D with the EFS 18 – 55mm lens to capture all photos and the tripod when using slow shutter speed to avoid vibration. In this stage, I struggled with locations because I have not experienced many places in Melbourne yet due to the fact that I only live here in 2 months. Although I planned to shoot at the park’s playground during weekends, it had many people so I could not complete my shooting. Thus, I had to change to another the location, which is my friend’s university, and I could control this place because it was Sunday. My shooting also has another difficulty with time making because my friend who was my main actor had a busy schedule so I had to follow his time and tried to complete my shots in the limited time with good quality as I expected. Also, here is my making process for 5 photos. I did not use software to change the raw files because the raw quality was quite good.
- Photograph 1:
To catch the attention, I established this hook shot that I leant in my tutorial and used long shutter speed to make the egg freeze in the air and rule of thirds to structure the photo. Actually, I had to try many angles and ask my friend to do the action many times to capture the best shot of the egg. Also, the egg’s color was quite similar with the light so I also had to reduce the ISO to make it become clearer.
- Photograph 2:
For this shot, I used large aperture to create the large depth of field, slow shutter speed and frame in frame. Although I tried to set my camera to focus on the phone’s screen to capture the clear text, it was not clear enough and had some reflection of the tree on the phone’s screen. The other limitation was the sky’s light that I could not change because if I increased the shutter speed to make the sky darker, the text on the screen could not be visible.
- Photograph 3:
I applied the slow shutter speed to create the painting effect when the actor attempted to put the egg in the bottle. Again, this shot took me very long time to achieve the effect because I expected my photo could show a part of an egg for viewer to understand my story. Thus, I came up with the solution that was using multiple shooting to capture all moments and I could select the best one after that.
- Photograph 4:
I wanted to create the sharpness and make the egg and bottle stood out so I used the small depth of field to blur the background and the rule of thirds to structure the main objects. I had to keep the ISO as 100 and increase the shutter speed because the bottle’s color was so transparent and it was hard to see clearly through my lens.
- Photograph 5:
It was raining while I took this photo so I could not capture the little flame inside the bottle as I planned due to the cold weather and strong wind. Thus, I had to change to play with the rule of thirds and depth of field instead of using fast shutter speed to freeze the flame. In this shot, I did not capture the actor because I believed it would show that he decided to leave this idea and find different solutions. He did not stick with the challenge anymore after few tries.
You might ask why the story related to success theme although the man could not put the egg into the bottle? Due to the fact that I researched when exploring this idea, it would be really hard to put the egg into the bottle because the success of this challenge depends on the size of eggs, bottles as well as the temperature that you use to heat the atmosphere inside. You have to try different size of eggs and bottles to figure out which can fit each other. I believe this idea is the same with challenges we have to face with in life. Sometimes, I think we cannot try to achieve something we know exactly that we will fail when doing it. Thus, it likes the metaphor of egg and bottle. In order to have success, I believe we should try many ways or solutions if one does not work. We cannot stick with only one solution for every issue and learning how to leave it to find other way for problem solving is more important. In the story, the man’s egg could not fit in the bottle so he decided to not try anymore because he knew why it happened due to the scientific fact I have mentioned and he had to find another egg or bottle to continue doing this.
Overall, I feel satisfied with my final result. I believed I achieved most of basic techniques but need to improve more on finding angles and how to shot with every different light condition. This assignment was really interesting to me because it helped me to improve photography techniques to create a story that I have never tried before and I only used my camera for taking landscape photo or event. Also, it made me feel again my camera that I did not touch on during the last 6 months.
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