Fifth Shoot

My fifth and final shoot completes my five-image series for my Exam Unit "Relationships." Although it isn't my most favourite shoot, I am still pleased with its turn out. The reason I didn't feel this shoot was my best is because I didn't manage to get a great connection between me and my subject, who is in fact my brother. As opposed to my previous shoots, the subject isn't a stranger to me, and that is why I feel the connection was lost between him and the camera lens. This I feel has affected my fifth shoot, I believe I could have achieved a much greater photo had the subject been a stranger to me, and I feel this way I would have managed to connect a lot more with him as I could imagine a storyline for the subject, as I have done with the four prior shoots. However having said that, I'm not completely unhappy with my shoot. I managed to capture some form of emotion - which is what I was intending, right? I am glad I have a more happy emotion to end my series on, as the rest of the images are all rather melancholic in my opinion.

Sadly in this image, the subject's eyes aren't sharp, they are slightly unfocused. Truth be told I was having a few minor difficulties with my new lens, lack of practice with it meant I didn't know how to configure it or my camera to work in harmony so they could capture a fantastically sharp image, thus impeding me from capturing anything greater than this. But hey, blaming my paraphernalia doesn't make this shoot any better. Although I am usually quite pedantic about having sharp eyes in my images, I let this one slip and now I'm complaining about it. So the moral of this little anecdote is to ALWAYS check the images before shouting "That's a wrap!" to your impatient brother so he could go and have his long-awaited (now semi-cold) cup of tea. 

The second shoot for my series is better, though still somewhat disappointing in my eyes.  The connection between the subject and my cat isn't as strong as I had wanted, and I don't feel it seems natural as the cat isn't really willing to cooperate in this shot, she was forcefully clamped down for the purpose of an image, which makes the image too staged in my opinion. Although, I do like how the cat and my brother are looking at each other. Working with animals is hard, especially photographing them. I do wish I had made my brother wear a different jumper, as the cat's fur blends in with it too much. Next time I do a shoot I will think of the subject's wardrobe in advance, providing I have control over that factor, which I may not depending on who my subject is. 

The Edited Images:

Unlike my previous four shoots, I have edited these images differently. Instead of using my trusty Picasa 3 and GIMP, I used Photoshop CS4  for all my editing. My editing involved using the Spot Healing Brush tool to fix up any blemishes on my subject's face such as some scars on forehead and a few spots on the chin. Then after having duplicated the layer, I changed the image to Black and White and toggled with the different hues. Once I was happy with the different hues and I managed to find a good balance between them, I cropped my image to the same ratio as the original file. This is exactly what I did to my second image, however I encountered a small problem when cropping. I had managed to crop it in a slightly different ratio than intended, which I was not happy about. This meant that when I went to change the aspect ratio of the image, I had to compress it, so now my subject looks ever so slightly squeezed in. I don't feel it is too much of a problem as I believe I can easily get away with this flaw in my image, but I would rather the subject looked slightly compressed than having to fiddle with the aspect ratio later on when it comes to printing out my final pieces. 

Here are the contact sheets for my final shoot:

My editing was the same as the rest of my images, due to the fact I want some form of continuity in my series. I was influenced by Colbert's technique of showing the relationship between man and animal, rather than being influenced by his editing techniques. 
Despite me picking out every possible flaw in this shoot, I am however pleased with the outcome. I feel this shoot rounds up nicely my ten-image series. It maintains continuity, and is by far the happiest shoot of them all. I felt that I needed a more upbeat (for lack of a better adjective) shoot as the rest are all a little bit melancholic. This defeated the purpose of showing different emotions if all I was showing was similar sad emotions.