This is the last addition to my documentary.
The first girl, the pregnant girl, in my documentary was a very good friend of mine- Skye.
On Monday, just a week after shooting we found out that she had actually lost her little boy A’dyn at 37 weeks.
I really wasn’t sure if I should present my documentary or not. It just didn’t feel right.
I added a dedication slide and a beautiful poem to the beginning of the documentary with the song Small Bump by Ed Sheeran playing over the top.
I feel like I may have invaded her personal life still using her images. I hope I was really respectful in the way that I did it. It’s been really hard to work with this documentary since hearing the news and I just hope my documentary was emotionally pulling and didn’t portray her disrespectfully.
This photo is a pure embarrassment to be put on my blog. This photo is not a great environmental portrait at all. There’s a mess in the background, the depth of field is too shallow and it’s too dark and dull.
Environmental portrait 2
I’m not happy with this photo either as it doesn’t show the environment, and there’s a distracting line behind his head. Again, I’d like to reshoot when my subject and I are less rushed. This shoot definitely needed more thought and consideration.
Environmental portrait 1
I’m not happy with this image. I was too rushed when I was taking these photos and didn’t give myself the time to pose the subjects better,and didn’t even crop the photo nicely. If I get time i’d love to reshoot.
Dandenong Ranges- Sky High- Qantas Pitch- Photo 2
Dandenong Ranges Qantas Pitch Photo 1
Quantas In-flight Magazine
Attractions in the Dandenong Ranges, Melbourne
I would like to pitch a story idea for your magazine. One of the best places to go when travelling to Melbourne is the Dandenong Ranges. It’s located only 35km east of the city and offers a large variety of family oriented activities, gorgeous scenery, and wonderful B+Bs and other accommodation. The majority of the Ranges is national park, spread out over lowset mountains and filled with quirky villages. I love the dandenong ranges because it’s so close to everything, but it has the feel of being far away in the country. It can get quite cold during the winter months and is still nice and warm during summer. It even snows there for a few days each winter.
There are so many things to love about the Dandenong ranges. It has a charm like no other place on Earth! The villages are almost behind the time in some ways, but with the luxuries of classy modern dining, supermarkets, and all amenities you’d find in a city. The artistic culture of the hills is forever growing, they have a great variety of galleries and exhibitions.
If art doesn’t take your fancy, there’s plenty of adventure activities like treetop walks, mountain biking and Harley rides, around the winding mountain roads, and horse riding!
There’s activities for the children like Puffing Billy steam railway which will take you from Belgrave to Emerald with the option of dining on board. There’s gardens, arboretums and national parks everywhere you look so plenty of places to go on a nature walk, or sit back and enjoy the scenery! There’s also Emerald lake park which offers some great activities for the kids!
If you’re on a romantic weekend, there’s spas and resorts, B+Bs, and of course the beautiful view and dining, offered Sky High Mount Dandenong, where you can see the most breathtaking view of Melbourne.
I think I would be the perfect person to tell this tory and photograph this shoot. I lived in the Ranges for 7 years and know the area like the back of my hand. I’ve spent countless hours wandering the national parks, and dining in the village cafes.
I’ve shot a lot of photos here in the past, I know many wonderful sites and hidden locations to get the perfect shots.
Documentary Report
In this assessment I have chosen to demonstrate the positive side of teen parenthood. I feel that teen parenthood has not been correctly expressed and therefore is seen as only a negative thing in the public eye. I think this is good for the magazine The Big Issue because The Big Issues covers a lot of photo documentaries on Australian stories.
This is a brief story describing the lives of 3 teenage girls and their families. These girls were all in my class at high school. We were all friends, but lost contact after we all dropped out, until we reunited through our similar circumstances. Knowing these girls all through high school, I’ve really seen how much they’ve grown and changed since they entered motherhood. They were quite lost, and becoming parents so young has really changed who they are, they’ve blossomed into beautiful young women and have a new sense of direction and a whole new appreciation for life.
I’d like to show the world there are positive sides to the story. I feel that there’s a lot of negativity surrounding teen mothers. The minority has caused a stereotype and made it difficult for the decent mothers to be respected by the community.
These girls are all wonderful mothers who entirely defy the stereotype. Their children come first in every way and I think this shows the beautiful bond they have with their children. You can see in my photos that they live differently to older mothers. There houses might not be as clean or as nice, they dress differently and act differently, but none of these things change the beautiful relationships they have with their children.
I feel that this would fit in very well with The Big Issue. I’ve seen similar human stories in this magazine and I think the black and white photos is quite expressive, The Big Issue has a lot of this too. I find the stories in The Big Issue really interesting but for me, they’re not all very relatable. Teenage parenthood is on the rise and is becoming extremely common. It would just be nice for young people in similar situation to see people who have overcome the hardships, and still have a wonderful life with their children. I don’t wish to encourage teen pregnancy , I don’t think becoming a parent is a smart thing to do when you’re not financially independent or emotionally mature, but these days it just happens to a lot of people and it would be nice to show them that they will be okay and they can get through it.
I was only 15 when I fell pregnant. I didn’t know anyone else who has children and I would have loved to have some kind of positive role models in this situation to aspire to, rather than the usual, unrealistic, nasty stuff you see on MTV.
I feel that some of my equipment was fairly inadequate. I’m about to upgrade my camera equipment and I wish I had that earlier for shooting this documentary. I think it would have been good to have a full frame camera that can cope with higher ISO. My newborn photo shoot came out darker than I wanted, purely because I couldn’t use a speedlite on her while she was feeding, sleeping, just starting to open her eyes etc. The window light was beautiful but it would have been much better to shoot on a higher ISO and capture it. I shot this whole documentary with only a Canon EOS 550D. I’m upgrading to a 6D next week which will also improve my workflow, as it has wifi with automatic photo transfer.
I would have also preferred a high quality lens. I began my shoots using a 50mm 1.8 and I loved that! I thought that was fantastic as it had such a low aperture and I could get in close, but that lens broke before my final shoot and I was restricted to my wide angle lens. I’m also about to purchase a 24-70mm F2.8 lens which would have been perfect.
Other than that, I used a speedlite for my other 2 shoots. The speedlite was fantastic! It saved my last shoot completely, if I didn’t have that the photos would have been very dark and dull.
I had a lot of difficulties with this shoot. I found that a lot of families were really keen to get involved and have their stories told, but when it came down to it, they all cancelled, they were too busy and just wanted to reschedule. I really wanted to include 2 photos from 6 different families, or even 1 for each slide. I wanted to do as many shoots as possible and decide on what photos and stories worked out best, but in the end, I was only able to capture the 3 girls from my high school and tell their stories, which fortunately were very interesting! I would have loved more time on this shoot so I could get more people involved.
I’m happy with how I handled each shoot when I was doing them. I was lucky I already knew these girls before so just spent a day with them chatting and playing with their kids. It meant by the time I got my camera out they were very comfortable to be themselves and just get on with their day which made for a lot of natural photos.
From this project, I’ve learnt how to interact with the subjects and I’ve learnt the importance of bonding with them and making them comfortable around me. I’m an extremely shy and awkward person, I’d love to learn how to be more confident and comfortable in situations photographing people I don’t know. It’s such a strange situation for me to be in, my interactions with strangers has been pretty minimal my whole life but I think it’s important to meet new people and be comfortable to approach them. This is something I’d like to learn to do before shooting my next documentary as I think it would make all the difference.
Event photography Q+A
Names: Sarah Colborne
Group: AM (Morning)
Brief: Working in groups of two, consider and reflect on some of these common challenges facing event photographers:
What are the essential skills for success as an event photographer?
- Good camera gear
- Approachable personality
- Knows how to work with crowds and capture the right shots
- Experience
- Good workflow
- Knowledge about the event
- Follows directions
What are some essential questions you will need to ask the client before the event?
Who are the important people attending?
What do I need to capture?
Are any other photographers covering the event?
How long do I have to do this?
Is the location well lit?
What are some of the technical considerations of shooting in a large, crowded and often dark space?
– Wide angle lens
– Speedlite
– Ability to chat to people and get them to move around to capture the photo
– OHS responsibilities
– Being careful of the people around you and your own equipment
–
One business model for event photographers is to not charge a fee to the event organisers to shoot, but rather sell images directly to the guests who attend the event (sometimes with a percentage of the sales going back to the organisers).
What are some of the advantages to this approach?
Possibility of making more money selling to individuals
You get your name out there and have more people viewing your website, than if the photos were just sent to guests or put up on the events page
What are the disadvantages?
May make less money
May not sell many photos
Consider your workflow that would allow you to sell images directly to guests.
Have a website or Facebook page with all your images
Give people business cards with your details
Sell different packages so anyone can purchase and you can still make money
Fast turn around is often the major prerequisite for clients when commissioning an event photographer.
What are two reasons a client might request images before or immediately after the event has finished?
To promote the event
Photos may be needed for publication immediately
Consider the workflow you would need to implement to enable you to deliver final images prior to, or immediately after the conclusion of the event?
Could use a camera with wifi and automatically send the photos to them
Upload photos as you go
Bring a large USB and your computer so you can hand them all the photos after.
When shooting for the social pages – as well as for many other events – it is essential that the photographer records the names – and correct spellings – of everyone they photograph.
Consider a strategy to ensure all this information is efficiently and accurately recorded for every image.
Ask them to write down their names after each photo, or put it in your ipad or phone.
If it’s a sporting event it’s important to know the players
Without yours or your client’s knowledge another photographer has also been booked by another organisation taking part in the event. The other photographer is clearly unhappy you are there.
What are the reasons you think they might be unhappy?
Because they might feel uncomfortable
They might be concerned you’ll steal their shots
They wanted all the work for themselves to sell the maximum
Consider some strategies for dealing with this situation.
Discussing it with them
Organising set areas to photograph
Talking about why you’re there.. You may be there for different reasons
Now you have considered some of the challenges of event photography, consider the minimum equipment requirements for success in this field.
Great camera, lenses and speedlite
Spare camera batteries
Spare speedlite batteries
Spare high speed memory cards
business cards
back up equipment in case something goes wrong
A good DAM workflow and storage system
Digital processes
All these images were shot as RAW files except for the first shoot which unfortunately was JPEG.The first shoot was done at the very beginning of the course and I really had minimal technical knowledge. The first shoot was done using a speedlite for most images.
The next shoot, I shot RAW and tried to use natural window light but that would have been better with a a fill flash. This shoot involved a newborn baby who was premature, and neither of us wanted to have a flash going off in her face all day while she fed, slept etc.
The rest of the shoots were shot RAW using a combination of natural light and bounce flash.
After the photos are shot I immediately upload them to Lightroom with my card reader. Once in Lightroom the first thing I do is add all my metadata which at this point includes my name, city and copyright details. I don’t want to add my contact details just yet for any photos as I don’t have a business set up and don’t want to be contacted.
I add as many keywords as I can think of such as “CATC, Media and Documentary, *Names of subjects*, *location of shoot*, etc. Not too much detail!
After this I rename them using my name preset which is SC_dd/month/yy_001
Once that’s all done I export them to my harddrive and save them into a folder, which is named after them. For example “Kara and Ada” “T, Waz, Cody” “Skye and Dejai”. When all the photos are saved in there, I go through them and select a few to open in Photoshop and play around with them for a while. The reason this documentary became black and white is because I took and photo of one family on my first shoot, it didn’t look great in colour so I changed it to black and white and absolutely fell in love with it! It turned out from that point that most looked great black and white anyway so I stuck with it.
When editing in black and white I always do it through the “convert to black and white” rather than just desaturating, and I play with the slider bars til Im happy, or just set it to “strongest white” or “strongest black”. Once I’ve done that I mess with the curves a bit to make it perfect, Sometimes I have to use masks and lightly brush some areas a little bit lighter or darker to either emphasise or minimise. My last step is always add a warming filter! I was doing it the same amount to each photo but realised the photos with stronger whites come out warmer than the ones with more blacks, so I try to do it manually and match them up as best I can!
Media and Documentary 