Exercises 2 and 4 Digital Photographic Practice

I combined these two exercises using the workflow practice to plan the shoot and the editing exercise to select the shots that I had taken. I will use this blog to set out the workflow up to the point where I download the images to the computer. The following blog will recount the work from that point to the final selection of the final two.

Workflow


Objective: Photograph the Christmas Fayre in Bury St Edmunds both during daylight and evening. Images should catch the essential elements of the fayre.

Output: Selection of an unspecified number of images to be shown to fellow members of  the Phototalk Club (we had planned a club outing for the evening/nighttime shots) and compare with there images. Select final two for inclusion in Blog for Exercise 4.

Location: Bury St Edmunds town centre.

Equipment:  
          
        Lighting:  Available light. I considered both using flash attached to the camera and off camera flash. The latter was unwise as currently I use a wire connection between the camera and the flash unit and I envisioned strangling some poor innocent passer by. I discarded the first option because I felt that it would destroy the different types of light (tungsten, fluorescent and halogen) that would be in use during the evening shots. I therefore chose to use very high ISO settings on the camera being aware of the presence of noise in the images.
        
       Camera: Canon 5D Mk II. I took both lens (24 - 70mm & 70 - 300mm).

       Colour Checker: I decided against this as experience suggests that street scenes present short-lived opportunities to get a good image and there would be many changes of available lighting. The chance to take a test shot and then the desired image would be highly unlikely.

       Checks: I carried out all the checks as listed in the blog on Exercise 1. Found that a battery needed re-charging. I also ensured that I had appropriate clothing as the forecast was for very cold but dry weather.

Shoot

       Location: I found that the fayre was set up in several different locations around the town centre. Fortunately Bury St Edmunds is a very compact town and all parts are easy to get to in a relatively short period of time. However I felt that my decision to only use available lighting was justified because three of the locations were indoors, one in the cloisters of the cathedral and the remainder outdoors.

I took one or more test shots in each of the locations to establish a reasonable trade off between a good shutter speed for hand held shots and noise in the final image. The daytime shots presented few problems as the light was consistent but the shots taken during the evening produced every combination of artificial light. I had considered using a tripod or monopod so that I could use a low ISO and whatever shutter speed was required but as the vast majority of the shots would include moving people, fairground rides in motion and flashing lights the use of a low shutter speed (say below 1/125) was unlikely to work. I therefore decided not to use a tripod.

It is impossible to check the noise level using the picture on the LCD of the camera and the histogram only shows the tonal range of the image. The latter does allow a judgement as to whether the shot is under or over exposed which is useful and allows a second bite of the cherry.

The remainder of the workflow will be discussed in the following blog which will deal with the process from downloading the images to the final selection.

The workflow up to the time of shooting was useful and acted as a reminder of the things that needed to be done initially. At least I was not presented with problems during the actual shoot that could have been prevented by proper preparation. For the shoot itself I was obviously limited by the decisions I had taken earlier. I did not feel that these limitations were a nuisance although during the evening shoot two of my colleagues used monopods so it will be interesting to compare results. The decision to take photographs during the daytime allowed me to review what had been decided and whether to change anything for the evening shoot. In the end I felt that they were worth pursuing.

Whilst acknowledging the value of a workflow process during the initial planning stages I remain less convinced of its value during the actual shoot. The whole process of getting an images requires at the basic level a series of unavoidable steps that have to be followed in sequence. For serious photographers,
particularly professionals, they become second nature because they provide the foundation that allows the creative element to be successful. Following the shoot again the basics require fairly close adherence to a set sequence and only at the margins (when to add metadata for example) is there room for individual differences.