Photo by Holly Webb

 

Today I went down to the Climbing Works in Sheffield to take a few photos at the the gym. I got talking to a few people too which gave me a few more ideas for my piece.

I went without any solid ideas of what I would be doing, so it was very interesting to just spend as long as I liked there, and snap away freely without pressures of getting particular shots.

I didn’t go with the intention of using any of these shots in my piece, as I first wanted to just have a practice run and get a feel for the lighting and the set-up of the places so that I could think more about what photos I could end up using, however a few of my photos turned out pretty good and I’m excited to go back and capture some more. Once they’ve been edited, I might end up using a few of these shots in the piece.

I shot in manual mode so that I could not only get into more practice of using it, but also have more control over my images. I also shot in RAW so I will post soon with some edited images once I have gone through post-production edits in Photoshop.

Although I didn’t have a plan of specific shots I wanted to create today, I knew I wanted to practise candid photography. I tried to be very patient and wait around until I saw something I wanted to capture, instead of snapping at random. I had permission from both the Climbing Works (who I called in advance) and the people who ended up in the photos.

I have also reflected on this first shoot for my project, my reflection is at the bottom of this post.

For now, these are some of my favourite un-edited JPEGs from today:

Reflection:

WHAT I ENJOYED:

• I liked the freedom and pace of candid photography – I liked taking my time and not putting pressure on myself to get particular photos, I felt like I spent a lot of time looking with my eyes rather than through the camera

WHAT I DID WELL:

• Patience. Instead of walking around snapping at random, I would sometimes wait for almost an hour in one spot just to wait and catch the perfect moment. I liked this part of candid photography the best and think I have the patience which sometimes pulls off the best images
• I think the set up of some of my shots are good, as well as the composition (rule of thirds, head space etc.)
• I think I worked well using the manual settings on the camera. Although I didn’t experiment much with aperture and shutter speed to create specific images, I think I changed the settings enough that most of my images were well lit and the exposure was natural

WHAT I COULD IMPROVE:

• All of the photos are from far away – although I got permission from the people in the images, I seemed to be too shy to get up close and personal with some of the shots. While staying back can be effective for some shots, I think some closer images would add a great depth to the story
• Talk to more people – although I spoke to a few people at the gym, I think next time I go I will be more confident. Everyone I spoke to was very nice and they didn’t make me feel rude or like I was interrupting them

AIMS FOR THIS WEEK:

• Post-production practice – I want to start playing around with some of these images and experimenting with the editing software. I’m interested to start editing to see how the photos come out in colour vs. black and white
• Closer images – next time I go out for a shoot I want to try and get some closer shots
• Start interviewing people for the piece