Photography Lighting Workshop

On Friday last week, the course was lucky enough to be given a photography introduction. A technician came up to our studio and showed us the ins and outs of taking professional standard photographs with the equipment they've got. This is something I value as much as any other part of the design process.

You should never underestimate the power of good photography when it comes to presenting your work.

I'm really lucky actually, before I came to Leeds College of Art I studied Art & Design for three years at Carlisle College of the Arts. The photography facilities there were second to none, and I'm extremely grateful for that, as I was shown how to operate flash guns, continuous light, high end DSLR's, infinity boards & backdrops etc. from the age of 16. Since then I've tried to make it an inherent part of my design processes.

Here's a quick look at some of the photography experimentation I used to get up to:

(Remember these were between two and four years ago, so don't judge too much...)

This is a bit of trickery I did with montaging and editing to give the impression I could float. I promise no wires were involved, which is more than what Dynamo could say...

I 100% convinced loads of my mates I had a twin brother with this one...

Again, on Friday we were told about the advantages of using high end flash guns to produce high quality photographs that could be captured with an extremely high shutter speed (perfect for modelling) where a moving subject is often used. This is a great example of this advantage.

You'll notice that digital photo-montaging was something I was heavily into at one point. Here's my best mate Joe (not looking too happy) modelling for me to show how with the right equipment, you can successfully replicate subjects within a scene.

As you can see I got up to quite a lot with the camera, and I'm fairly clued up on how to use one. However, Friday was brilliant for refreshing everything I'd previously learned, and because of my previous experience I was able to show others how to set up. I really enjoyed the day, there was a brilliant buzz in the studio where everybody was contributing towards something. But the most important thing I learned that day was that I've stopped doing as much photography as I'd like to, and right now it should be a super important part of my process. I'll reiterate on what I said earlier: 

It's great making the best piece of design you can that stretches the limits of your creativity, but if it's presented as though it's been photographed with a f***king potato then really what's the point?

So building on that, the point being that I'd like to be photographing my work more often and to a more professional standard, what am I going to do about it? Well I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I'm considering setting up an infinity board in our house somewhere so I'd have access to some kind of photography opportunities. However I'm starting to think this may be unnecessary what with the equipment from college being able to hire out whenever I want. So, I was talking to our student reps and mentioned that it could be massively beneficial if as a course we all borrowed the equipment together and set up our design studio as a make shift photography studio on a regular basis, I initially said perhaps every month, but on reflection I think it would be better if we all agreed to hire the equipment a few days leading up to every brief hand in.

Good stuff. That's that. I actually experimented a little bit by making a couple of time lapses and videos of us guys in the studio on Friday, here's the YouTube video that shows us setting up in the studio: