Paige Hassen: JRN

Before completing this assignment, it took me a while to get the hang of being creative with what I shoot. While I still have a far way to go in terms of creativity when making photographs, I think this assignment was a big push in the right direction.

The thing I was most excited for about this assignment was using the snoot. Most of the pictures I took utilized the snoot in some way, and I noticed I have a big love for using it to focus the light on different aspects of pictures.

In the photo above, of my subject Jodi in the library, I was very excited about how this turned out with use of the snoot. Since the Godox strobes have rectangular flashes, that is the shape in which I made the snoot. So, when working in the library to try to find an interesting idea, I thought “hey! let’s try to have the shape of the snoot be the shape of the subject in the picture!!” Jodi liked the idea, so we tried it, and I would like to think it came out great.

For this second picture, I really wanted to utilize the snoot again. We wanted to try shooting outside before it rained, and when I saw the arches outside of the library, I thought that they could play an interesting role in a shot. It was hard to eliminate the lines from the background from the subject’s head, and the ones in which eliminated those distracting lines were not as good of photos as the one you see above.

I think the control of the flash I used on this picture turned out really well, and the subject also did well to play into showing a little personality, which made the photo that much better.

For my second subject and third type of shot, I really wanted to do a picture in which I placed the snoot far away from the subject and at an angle that was completely away from the camera. When doing the in-class activity that was preparing us for this assignment, there were a few areas where I noticed I needed to improve. For example, I had the flash right next to the camera, so there wasn’t much contrast there.

In this shot, I really wanted to do something from farther up, like I did in my in-class work, but the lecture hall was smaller, so I stood on a chair to increase the angle and that’s about all I could do. I am also a sucker for symmetry, so of all the different angles I took with the subject sitting in this lecture hall, the one from the front (the one you see above) was the one I liked the most. I also just really like how the seats look in it. This is along the lines of the kind of photography that I like to do, so I liked that I could experiment a lot with the lighting and the snoot.

I thought about adding backlight to this shot, but overall, I think the way in which the snoot focused on the subject and made the shadows and contrast and chairs look, looks a lot better than it would have if backlight was added.

The last shot I did for this assignment was one that took the most for me to figure out the proper settings to use to get the best shot. I used the umbrella and a backlight for this shot, much similar to how we did our second in-class activity outside of Moore Hall with the umbrellas and backlight. I did not use a snoot for this one.

I tried to place the backlight in different areas of the hallway, but I ultimately decided on having it directly behind her so that the light was focused on her head. When editing via Lightroom, I darkened the background a little bit to really emphasize the light from the umbrella and showcase the light that outlines her head from the backlight.

Overall, I would like to say I am very happy with how my photographs turned out, and I really enjoyed shooting for this assignment. Being only the second out-of-class assignment, I am looking forward to seeing what else we will learn about in class for future assignments, and how I can complete those and make them even better and more creative with what new techniques we learn.