Experimental photography

Here I tried to capture moment where sky is getting brighter but there is still no sun. Photo was taken in the middle of the field near the abandoned railway. I used to shoot nearly from the ground to better express the mood and show the railway, because I loke them.



This photo was taken on a random walk using Canon 550D and old Zenit 50mm lens. The keylight was the streetlight from the front and for the backlight I had to wait for the car to pass by and be lucky enough to press button on right moment. This was really hard, as after midnight there weren't many cars on the street.

The photo doesn't have perfect focus and composition as it was done in very dark enviroment and in great rush.

Camera height, angle, cropping

This photo was taken without looking at the viewfinder, as the camera was so low to the ground, and it was impossible to look at it at that angle. And surprisingly it didn't looked bad. I  used 18mm lens, f5.6, iso 400.


This photo shows, how I can use crop to provide decent results. I also tried to keep all the lines straight.



Low camera hight, wide angle. I was pretending to be taking photo of the cars nehind, while I was actually was waiting for bypassers. Unfortunately, the lady heard be pushing the button and faced the camera.




While capturing the photo I tried to make it as minimalistic as possible, and symmetrical as well.


This photo was taken from above my head without looking at the camera. It seems nice to me because of all randomness that happens in it.


Camera is facing the bell at 90° angle. I also tried to follow rule of third.

Photographic experiments

To achieve this effect, I had to shake my phone really fast, and due to rolling shutter I got this wavy effect.




I took a picture of me with a beard using fixed camera and light, then shaved, and took another picture. After that I combined both in photoshop.





Here I took many pictures of the beach during the snowstorm, and in Photoshop combined them into the big panorama.



Also a panoramic picture of a shore, but during calm weaher.



Photo taken in London. I found it interesting, how the big and the small car were looking together.




Working lightbulb shot on a 1/4000 exposure.




Photo manipulation. I used photo taken from my mobile phone on a background, and painted a raven in the foreground.








Some more photo manipulations with animals added. I had to perfectly transfer the lighting and color from the photos to the added piece, to make them match together.

LIFE IN A COUNTRYSIDE - LOCATION PHOTOSHOOT

My intentions for this location shoot was to visit one old man who, during the winter time, lives in a village far away from city, and capture some bits of his life.

As the air temperature was low enough, and I had to do most of the stuff outside, I had to consider wearing really warm clothes and gloves, to not get any health problems after.

As equipment I planned to use Nikon camera and a reflector for additional lighting.

I wanted to have reflector in this photoshoot, but it came out, that it wasn't possible to get one in exact time I wanted it, so I had to deal with natural light only. 

In my photos I tried to capture daily life of this old man and the enviroment he lives in.

He was happy to see someone and kindly showed me his property.

Photos were shot using Nikon camera with 50mm, f1.8 lens, and later were cropped and color-corrected in Photoshop.

The settings for most of them were - iso 400, f2, exposure - 1/2000, 1/1000 and 1/200.  I had to lower the shutter speed as it was getting darker, but I wanted to have same depth of field and I didn't wanted to increase ISO as it might cause greater noise. This caused some motion blur appearing on some photos, so I had to really concentrate on holding camera still, which wasn't easy because of negative air temperature.

Also some photos were not lucky enough because of the low air temperature, I used auto-focus and it didn't worked correctly in many cases.

I was invited for a cup of tea inside of man's house, and this sudden change of temperature caused camera lenses to sweat which made it impossible to use for a while, that is why I captured only one decent photo of the interior which you can see above.

Location Photography

Location photography which I did in Riga railway station.

I used Canon 550d camera with kit 18-55mm lens.

Only natural lighting were used, so it was important to place model in a right pose and shoot it from a proper angle to achieve good-loking photos.

I also followed the rule of thirds in composition, and did some photoshop editing such as cropping and color correction.

Studio photography

For this shoot I wanted to take pictures of girls that later can be used in magazines and advertising.

Safety tips for this shoot was to be careful with all studio equipment, watch out the wires on the floor and dont split any liquids on floor or equipment.

I am finding it difficult to achieve good lighting results using white background on the pictures, but here I tried my best, using 2 softboxes and a flashlight.

2 point lighting. One soft light from the left, another softlight from the right side.

 

Here I tried to use 3 point lighing setup. Keylight from the left side as a main light. Fill light from right side, little bit darker than keylight, to fill shadowed areas. And a backlight from behind, to get a nice shilouette around the hair. 

Here I cropped the picture that way to achieve abstract lines, that were made by backlight.

Here, I used simple 3 point light setup, but placed the backlight just away from behind the model, to get outline only on left side.

The good surprise for me was the lens flare, which was resulted by light facing directly to the lenses and reflecting inside of them.

Same photo, but without all stands being retouched.

For these photos I used Nikon D3000 camera and nearly all of them

were done using ISO 200, f/14 and 1/400 second exposure.

I edited them in Photoshop using many different technics including

curves, levels, working with channels and retouching them to remove unwanted artifacts.

EVALUATION

Looking back at what I did, I think I am able to achieve good results using 3 lights and black backdrop, but I find it rather difficult to achieve good results with white background. Although I think, that the darker skin tone looks better on lighter background, then light skin. Basicly because of the contrast.

Also surprisingly interesting results might been achieved by simple experiments, such as spectacular lighting effect.

HEALTH AND SAFETY.

While working in a studio I had to consider such dangerous things as

Wires on the floor, which should be carefuly watched, so noone would flip over.

All the lights and bulbs and stands - I should be carful, while moving them, as they might get broken.

Any liquids also should be watched, because of electric props all around.

Contact sheet:



Levitation photography

This was done using high shitter speed, about 1/200 to catch the moment without much motion blur.