Pop Culture

Pop Culture

Statement of Intent  27/10/12

It is my intention to create a 360 rotation for the Pop Culture part of the assignment, my idea is to have a teenager ( family member) sat on a turntable in the studio at college, and he will be holding an I-pad as if he is playing a game on it. To show how today's society including children are obsessed with technology, playing games are a massive part of the mobile media, and children from the age of 2 know how to use a mobile phone. I realise that things are not how they were when I was a child, and these days its not safe to let your children out on the streets, but there has to be more to life than playing on a mobile phone, I-pad,computer or X-box; or is there ???? 

One issue I have is the fact that these children ( if no parental controls are set) can access anything online, a scary thought..

In order to carry this out he will need to completely still for the length of time it will take to get the shots, (I'm not sure this is possible) but if there is slight movement it should be fine and will give a feel of movement in the finished rotation. Planning when I can do this is proving difficult due to the fact that he is in school, and the possibility of getting him to college is looking slim.

13/11/12

I have been giving second thoughts to what I am going to shoot for my pop culture, and one option I came up with was to do a stop motion movie, using the same principle as I had mentioned in my statement of intent of a child playing on an I-pad.

I have been researching videos on you tube and found some very inspiring work which mad me reconsider my original proposal, mainly because the child would need to come into the studio at college to do the 360 rotation shoot, my problem there is that the child will be in school at the same time I can have access to the studios, and without taking him out of school I can't seem to work around this problem, other than change my plan, to something which I am able to produce out of school times.

20/1/13

Due to the lack of time and availability of the child, because of school and my work I have decided to make a video with music, of him arriving home from school, going into the house and immediately picking up the I-pad (normal occurrence) going to his bedroom and starting to play on his X-box, after some time he picks up the laptop and at this point I am going to zoom into the laptop and have some x-rated website displayed, so that it looks as if he was accessing adult sites.

This example is to put a point across about how young children are able to access things on the Internet they shouldn't, very easily, especially if their parents/guardians are computer illiterate. Children are now taught at a very early age in school and at home how to use computers/I-pads/mobile phones which; if you can use one then you can work out the others too. It is amazing actually how many parents do not know how to use a computer, but buy them for their children because nowadays they HAVE to have one in order to complete their homework, sometimes they have to email their work in, this is not only making them computer reliant but unsocial and in some cases a recluse.

The finished video , you can also see it on this link.

http://youtu.be/V-4gaqZYnaw



Contemporary Cuisine

Contemporary Cuisine

Statement of Intent

30/11/12

It is my intention to create a shot which would be suitable for a cookery book or magazine publication, with the help of a workshop in the studios, involving the catering students from Huddersfield college.

We aim to discuss what food would be best for this shoot and the style as a group and carry this out by the the end of Jan, weather permitting.

The shoot

We have been put into groups to work with the catering students from Huddersfield college.
After having a brief chat with the catering students about what this part of the module requires, we then discussed what food would work best for our shoot.
Taking into consideration that a hot dish could prove difficult and possibly too challenging for our first shoot, due to the fact that we would need to show that the food was hot by having steam coming from the dish.

The student cooking for us is Rhys who specialises in pastry, so I thought that it would be a good idea to have some danish pastries made for the shoot which we could dress up with complimentary fruit depending on what Reece decides to use in the pastries.
There were lots of different ideas being thrown at Reece with varying ideas of what we would stand the prepared food on i.e. slate, wood, perspex or tablecloth for example.

We all agreed on having a rustic feel to the shoot, so we discussed what would work best with the food. A three course meal was the final decision ( I personally think this will be too much) however I will go with the rest of the team and try to make this work to the best of my ability.
The starter is to be a slice of melon, ( simple preparation and not hot) main course is to be a pasta dish with stir fry veg, this will hopefully keep its presentation throughout the shoot without much change, and will be alright to shoot cold although it depicts a warm dish. For the desert we decided on a mousse, Reece said he can make different flavours, giving us a choice on the day. Below is a scanned image taken from a M&S food magazine of the pasta dish we would like to shoot.

Now that we know the food plan we must decide on the finishing touches and set layout, Nyle and myself have been in touch on a regular basis but neither of us have had any contact from the other two people in our group other than the initial first meeting.
I am going to bring a white tablecloth, and also some tongue and groove pine wood which we are going to white wash with emulsion, my preference is the white wash wood, I think this would give a clean looking rustic country feel to the final shot.

23rd Jan 2013

Today Nyle and Reece agreed for us all to attend Huddersfield college and see how Reece went on with his practise for the shoot on Friday, unfortunately I was at work and couldn't attend, but asked Nyle to keep me informed on how things were going. Apparently it didn't go well, and Rhys agreed that a three course meal was too much for this shoot and so they both decided that we will just stick to one dish, this being a desert which will be a fruit flan, I personally think this is a good move and will make the shoot less complicated.
I think if we have a couple of options on the day we can try both out and see which works best and go with that.

Here are some researched images. Image 1 below, I would prefer not to shoot from above, this shot looks flat and not very interesting to the viewer, the dish needs to create interest as well as being a great shot. The fruit in this image looks like it has been thrown into the flan, and not had any attention paid to detail.                                 
                                                                        Image 1

Image 2.

I really like this shot apart from how central the image is with nothing else in the background to enhance this, I think a little more thought into using some tableware would make this a much better image.

Image 3.

Again, a good shot focused on the foreground, giving a nice depth of field to the background, I think this shot could maybe benefit from a different crop, showing one or two tarts in the background fully with a jug of cream.

Image 4.

Nice simple shot with the flan in the background, and a slice cut out and placed on a plate in the foreground, I think this could work for our shoot depending on the size of flan Reece makes. I also think the fruit in this shot could have been better placed on the slice in the foreground.

Image 5.

Other than the angle of this shot there is nothing else interesting here,the tarts don't look appetising, and I have no idea what is going on in the background.. Too much fuss, and bad lighting, creating shadows.

Image 6.

Again the angle this was shot at doesn't compliment the dish,although it does work for some food shoots I don't think its the best choice for this particular dish. I can see why they shot it from this angle to show the whole of the flan, but personally I prefer to shoot from eye level, this will be determined on the day when we have a better idea of what we are working with.

Image 7

This shot is interesting, I like the dark background, but the cream on the plate seems to be lost on the white of the plate. We must take this into consideration when doing our shoot.

Here is a link to a You Tube video of Stephen Hamilton shooting a Cinnamon roll (danish pastry).

http://youtu.be/AaG4IkHuxkg

Another link on you tube showing tips for food photography.

http://youtu.be/VU7wQsx-QVE

Food Shoot

25/01/2013 Today we are doing our food shoot in the studios at college, after having communicated to Rhys the catering student preparing our desert for the shoot. Myself and Nyle arrived early in order to set up lighting and props ready for Reece arriving, so that we would have plenty of time to spend on getting the lights just right. This took a considerable amount of time, because we wanted to have the effect of natural light coming through a window, and the table setting was to have a country feel using whitewashed wood as the table top and having a small jug with some alstroemeria flowers cut really short so that they came just to the top of the jug, we cut the flowers short so that it would be easier to get them in the shot.

Studio Food Shoot





The day of the shoot we arrived early to give ourselves time to set up the lighting, table and check with the group that we had everything we needed. We had a choice of plates, cutlery, and a selection of  accessories to dress the food.

We were trying to achieve a country cottage look, by using white washed wood as a table top and adding the flowers to complete the look. The plates we had didn't replicate this style and had been supplied by the catering student, I should have brought my own plate had I known what was being brought, ( my mistake in not asking beforehand ). Reece the catering student who was making the food for the shoot, brought glass plates of different shapes, he also brought black and white dishes to diplay his work on. Having no other choice we made the best use out of what we had access to.

The lighting is the most important part of the shoot, and getting this just right can take a long time, doing test shots to see how the set looks and if any changes need to be done.

While we were setting up the lights, Rhys made the fruit tarts, using pastry cases he had prepared in college, which had a mound of mash potato in, to support the fruit and to cut costs, as we would need to use much less fruit this way.

Our set comprised of one large soft box light placed directly over the table, with two flash lamps on either side of the set, we had to make adjustments on both the camera and spot lights until it was exactly how we wanted it. We used a laptop which was sat on a tall stool and shot tethered, making it easier for us to view the images as we were working in a group and all needed to be able to make jugements on the lighting and placement of the set. below is a shot of our set as we were setting up the lighting.

A few images from the shoot.

Various crops trying to get the best angle.

I wasn't happy with the fruit arrangement, and quality of the fruit.

 This shot is too dark.

Out of all the shots on the day this was my favourite.

After the experience of shooting in the studio as a group, I set up another shoot at home using the Elinchrom lighting kit from college, and produced my own images as I wasn't entirely happy with the shots from our studio session. I thought the tart cases were too large and the fruit was not arranged in a photographic manner, there were fruits of similar colours and shape next to each other, they needed to be arranged in a way that the colours mingled. 

The quality of the fruit was also a problem, when zooming in 100% on the shots, I noticed damaged fruit/poor quality. For this kind of shoot, everything needs to be sharp and fresh, we added water droplets to the tarts by diluting some drops of glycerine into a little water bottle with a spray nozzle, when its sprayed on to the fruit the water stays as droplets for hours, a very good tip from JT. When fruit has water droplets it makes it look as if its just come out of a fridge and the warm air caused condensation (droplets).

Using the Elinchrom kit, a bottle of champagne, two strawberry tarts, kiwi, and a cut flower, I made an arrangement on a wooden board, after many attempts in different positions and setting the lighting up in  numerous ways, this is my final selected shot for this part of the project.

I used strawberry tarts, because that is what we were working with, with the catering students.

The addition of a cut kiwi and a single stem of an alstroemeria to add a natural touch, the green kiwi not only complements the shot because of the kiwi in the fruit tart but also with the champagne bottle. It was my intension to keep this as simple as possible, focussing on the tart in the foreground and having a soft background, producing an image that would be suitable for a cookery book or magazine article.

Here are some of the other shots taken 

Showing the full bottle and glass didn't appeal to me.

Nice apart from the shadow, this could be cropped out or re-touched in lightroom.

Here is a screen grab showing my camera settings used for taking the final shot.

CANON 5D MK2, ISO 100, F 4.5, 85MM LENS @ 1/200th a few slight adjustments, straightening and saturation for my final shot.

Second choice final image;

My final shot show in context.

Extra shots

In addition to the fruit tart shots I also took some shots at home during and after cooking a meal, which I thought would be possible to use for this project. I like the fact that they were very natural shots and not set up for this, it seems nowadays that the public prefer images showing food in the making or the ingredients used to prepare a meal, in their natural state, such as potatoes with soil on them, carrots still with the greenery, coffee beans before they are ground, or both next to each other, this shot is along those lines, having the gram flour in the background and preparing the food as opposed to its final presentation. Looking at this shot now, I think it would have been better had I cleaned the specks seen between the bowl and pan, other than the lighting to enhance the shot.

This shot of onion bhajis would be improved using better lighting on the subject, and re-arrangeing food on the main plate, it looks a little flat, I like the plate of salad in the foreground out of focus so as not to draw your eyes to that dish, it also adds a little colour.