Hello!

I was going to write this post earlier today but it’s 2.39am and my wonderful best friend Nikki just got back from what sounded like a really good night out and I’m awake now so I thought I’d write this! At least that means I can’t forget about it tomorrow.

I’ve mentioned a lot recently that I’ve had a really big photography assignment due and whilst at first I was nervous that if I posted the photos online they might be classed as plagiarism or effect my assignment in someway, but it seems a lot of the people on my course have been posting their photos online. I’m really proud of the work I did so I wanted to share it!

The assignment was broken down into two parts – one was for more location based shoots and one was for entirely studio based shoots. In the first part, I had to do ‘stock jobs’ – which is taking photos of generic things for a photo bank, in case anyone ever needs them on news day or for an article – and a location shoot inspired by a pre-existing magazine.

I did my location shoot to go in ‘Rock Sound’ magazine (if it were a real article, of course) so I took my boyfriend and my guitar down to the docks and made him pose looking all moody and sad. I was so pleased with how the photos came out.

These are some of the final 12 photos I submitted.

I edited this photo twice because I love the silhouette effect I’d created on the wider shot but I wanted to show I could edit a variety of things and without writing the whole feature that these photos would accompany, I don’t know which one would be more relevant.

That shoot was one of my favourites to conduct because music photography is something I’m passionately interested in – not only photographing live performances of artists on tour or at festivals but album shoots, magazine shoots; any shoot that involves musicians, sounds like an amazing career to me.

The second assessment was very different – we were given a selection of themes, told to conduct a studio shoot and off we went. This one I enjoyed more than the first assignment because there was more creative freedom and some of the shoots I did were really, really fun and inspired me to make more use of the photography studio while it’s at my disposal.

Theme 1 – ‘Life’. At first I struggled to be inspired by this theme – the other themes had ideas and prompts on the page but this one was literally four letters and it was too broad. However, after doing some research and watching the Michalak family vloggers (and Hannah’s incredible flat lays), I was inspired to try and capture my lifestyle, and arguably my life, at this moment in one picture.

So there’s make up, my phone (and Doctor Who case), pens, fairy lights, a memory stick, SD card and a camera – I absolutely adore this photo and it’s definitely my favourite of the five final ones I submitted. I’ll definitely be doing photos like this again.

Theme 2 – ‘Blue’. This one had a little more guidance than the first – there had to be an element of contrast in accordance to the colour wheel (so, yellow) and other than that there were no limitations. As soon as I saw the theme title I thought of the stuffed toy I had lying on my bed and when I was in my boyfriend’s bedroom I spotted his Pixar-esqe, yellow lamp on his desk and I borrow it for the shoot.

I gave a lot of deep, analytical evaluation in my assignment, but here I’ll just say that I really love Lilo and Stitch.

Theme 3 – ‘Still Life/Product Placement’. This theme counted as two – we had to choose still life or product placement. When being told about product placement, my teacher recommended that we’d have to photograph a product brand new, to show it off at it’s best, so we could buy a product, keep the receipt, take photos and take it back.

When he said this, I thought of my battered, eight year old pair of Converse in my room and what a wonderful comparison it would make to a new pair.

And they were 20% off the day I bought them!

Theme 4 – ‘Thirds’. I thought a photo in thirds would mean the focus of the photo was separated into three – the photo divided by three subjects but, in fact, it means that if a nine square grid was layered on top of a photo, the subject would lie either on one of the lines or on one of the cross sections (where two lines meet).

Researching this one was particularly interesting. I used my ukulele in the photo because I knew it had some more interesting features than just photographing the instrument as a whole, so I focused on the detailing around the sound hole.

Theme 5 – ‘Low Key’. The theme is actually high or low key but most of the photos I’d taken already also fell into the high key category. This one was challenging – balancing having enough light to make sure the subject is illuminated but little enough light that it’s still a low key photo was tricky. I compromised with the reflection on the bottle but I wanted to make sure all the label was in shot, so it was clear exactly what I was photographing.

And what student doesn’t have a spare bottle of cider in the fridge?

I’m still really proud of these photos and whilst those assignments broke me a little bit and from the deadline till now (over a week later!) I’ve still been recovering mentally from the stress, I’ve actually enjoyed writing about these photos.

Whilst a lot of people on my course didn’t enjoy photography, particularly the theme assignment really inspired me to do more.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx




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