Week 45

 
On Thursday, my Dad and I headed to London, to go to a private viewing of the International Garden Photographer of the Year at Kew Gardens. It turned out I had won the young category with this image which I was incredibly happy with as I had never won a photography award before.

After having gone to the exhibition, I quickly went around Kew Gardens, looking for any photo opportunities as the sun was out. While walking around one of the lakes, I noticed this interesting reflection I wanted to document. I waited for a subject and luckily a swan came into the frame. After it had dipped its head in the water, I took the photograph, capturing the water dripping out the beak. I am quite pleased with the pose, however I was hoping to get a more abstract look which was less cliched.

In Photoshop, I reduced Highlights as the swan was overexposed. Through color balance, I increased blues to reduce the unattractive, green tinge to the water.

I was influenced by my favourite wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen who takes his shots in the vicinity of Water. He first came to my attention when he won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

This second image was also taken in Kew Gardens in the Palm House greenhouse where there were lots of unusual plant.

While walking around, I spotted this plant with distinctive lines and began photographing it. I set the aperture to f/14 to get as much in focus a possible so I could later crop it in Photoshop and I took the image from above to get different layers and an more of an aerial perspective.

When I got the photo onto the computer, I tried lots of different cropping formats so I could make the most of the lines and layers. Although it doesn’t really have much of a composition, I went with this as it was the most pleasing to look at. I then converted the image into black and white and boosted the contrast, while trying to retain some of the detail in the leaves.

I was influenced by this image by Robynne Limoges which was at the IGPOTY exhibition. I really liked the graphic quality in the image which I have tried to create in my photo.

 

These final images are a lot different from most of my images, but I have decided to include them anyway.

They were taken while in the Royal National Theatre and they are both of the very industrial staircase, which I was drawn to by the interesting light. As it was quite dark in there, I had to use a wide aperture which meant not everything was in focus. I composed the photographs using lots of diagonals to create more abstract photographs, especially with the one on the left.

In Photoshop, I played around with the tone curve adjustment, making both the photos slightly underexposed, which in this case I believe is better. In the left photo, I increased blues and reds and in the photo on the right I increased blues and green. Overall I am pleased with the results, but f I were to take the images again, I would have tried to retain some of the details in the darker areas.

I was influenced by the architectural photographer Hélène Binet for her artistic photographs where she has focused particularly on line and shape.

Barney

Week 30 – Trafalgar Square Fountain

 

We have now reached the 30th week of the competition so as usual here is my photo.

 

As my school half term was this week, my family spent the Wednesday in London. At the start of the day, we went to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year  exhibition at the Natural History Museum and although I am not into taking photographs of animals I really enjoyed looking through the different categories especially the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year. In the afternoon, I found that Edward Burtynsky had a exhibition on a series called Water which were large scale prints of water related landscapes.

 

For most of the day the sun did not appear, however just as we were walking through Trafalgar Square it came out and I found that the water in the fountains was highlighted by the sun light. I tried a few compositions to start off with, however after finding it did not look good  in the middle of the frame, I pushed the fountain just off centre which looked a lot more effective. Luckily it was quite windy which meant there was lots of spray from the water so I took the photo with a fast shutter speed to freeze the water drops. Also I found by making the aperature as small as possible this meant the suns rays were more visible and there was less glare.

 

To edit the image I immediately converted in to black and white and then I played around with the tone curve to almost black out everthing apart from the fountain and the sun rays. Overall, I am very pleased with how it has turned out as I like the minimal feel to it. Also, I like the way the buildings are just about visible, however I am a bit annoyed how there is it is a little grainy in the top right-hand corner.

 

I had originally planned on doing a little more street photography but I found it very difficult  as I was not quick enough most of the time. I had looked at photographs taken in London before we went so I could find good locations and the one photographer who stood out the most was Rupert Vandervell as I really like the simplicity and the brilliant use of light in all of his photographs.