Thursday, May 5, 2011

Gavin Blue

I wasn't there for this workshop, however I did attend the workshop last year, and the blog post can be found here: http://josieindustry.blogspot.com/2010/09/gavin-blue.html

I do like Gavin Blue's use of speedlights, and he is very skilled in creating big effects out of such small devices. The main use for speedlights in my work however is light painting, as I generally only use natural light on location. Speedlights are useful for fill if the subject is backlit, but as I photograph people very rarely I only need my speedlight at night for creating effects.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Alexia Sinclair

The workshop with Alexia Sinclair was amazing, and I think I will find it the best workshop of the entire course. I really admire Alexia's work and I find her style and techniques are particularly relevant to what I intend to do for my folio.
I already knew a fair bit about her work, but it was nice of her to go into detail of her planning process, shooting techniques and post production. It was really nice getting to know her as a person as well.

She explained a lot about the industry, and how it is very difficult to break into, and even when you do you have to fight tooth and nail to stay in it, which is quite worrying really, and it is quite surprising how she explained that fashion pays very poorly, but crappy advertisement jobs of 'coffee and cars' pay very well, but you dont get the exposure that you would from a fashion shoot. As she said, the fashion shoots help get you the recognition for the advertisement jobs.

Locking down the camera is a good technique she talked about where you can take multiple images of moving or separate objects and people and then mask them out, this way the lighting stays the same.

One thing I found particularly interesting was her use of mood boards in her planning process. I always do a lot of research to help build my composite ideas, but I never thought of creating a photo collage to help portray the style I am looking for, so I will definitely adopt this technique.



I wrote more about her work in my other blog: http://josieresearchstage5.blogspot.com/2011/02/alexia-sinclair.html