Skills Development 5th November

The skills that i have learnt in the lessons on taking photo's have being very helpful. I have learned lots of skills including about shutter speed, and how it controls the length of time that light can pass through the lens. We practised doing slow and fast shutter speed on the 5th of November which was very usefull and will help me with my final production. Another skill I learned is how to measure shutter speed. We did a practical on this and I found out that the bigger the number, the faster the shutter speed. Slow shutter speed can be used to capture movement into the image. For example, in our practical, we used flashing lights in the picture to capture all of the movement and span them around to create a better effect. At first we had the shutter speed at 1/80, which gave an effect like this,

But then, to make the picture better, this was took at a shutter speed of 1/60. We knew that a lower speed would make the picture and movement a lot better and effective. So I learned what is the best low shutter speed and an exposure time of about 8 seconds. Another skill which I learned in this lesson was how to use fast shutter speed. Using this speed captures a moving object or person, and freezes them in motion. To do this, I set the camera speed at 1/500 for a trial, this turned out to be the perfect one and therefore we didnt have to change it. It turned out like this,

The image is not perfect, which is the effect that we wanted. The whole body is still, apart from the arms, which adds a bit more effect towards the image and makes it more intersting. The disadvantage of this however, is that people might that that this was done accidently and that it was not wanted. All of the skills that I have learned, including the shutter speed, will benefit me when it comes to my unit 3 production, because i now know exactly which speeds I need to create the appropriate effects inside the image. I will have an idea of what movement in the image connotates and what stillness in the image creates. Global warming will include many images that are moving, which creates the effect it is having on the planet. For example, this maybe smoke coming from a factory. Skills that I need to develop further to progress even more, include how to work the camera buttons and effects better, as I was mostly just guessing what to do. Also I need to know other effects for the Unit 3 production.

Independant Learning

The tutorial that I decided to watch was about lighting photo's in photoshop, without using the dodge and burn tool. I learned how to duplicate easier, using CTRL and G. This will help in my practical work as it will be quicker and more efficient. After this, I learned how to make this layer, 50% grey, and then change the blending to overlay. Then just clicking on the dark areas with the brush, it brings everything out and makes it lighter. Another skill I learned within this clip was a quicker way to change the foreground and background colour around, by simply pressing X. All of this would benefit me during practical work as, the tutorial explained you can easily undo and redo with this technique and add and takeway different effects that you included.