For your "Person at Work" assignment, you'll spend at least two hours with a subject at their place of business. You are to turn in three photographs, including an overall, medium shot, and a detail. This is a chance for you to connect with the subject on a more personal level than just getting a portrait or mug shot.
On this assignment you need to be on the lookout for the three different type of shots and try to figure out what you are trying to convey with each one.
Make sure you have access to your person for those two hours, or more if you can. And you'll want to be there when they're working. Never accept a time when they're not busy. Because if they're not busy, they're not working. And that takes away from the "Person at Work" concept of this assignment.
And make sure you have a back-up person on stand-by if something happens to your primary person.
The baseline requirements for this assignment are the usual: properly composed, a good exposure, sharp focus, correct color balance. The rest of your grade depends on the items we talk about in class: communication points, accurate representation, well thought out idea or concept, creativity and those adjectives and adverbs that come across in the image.
Shoot with a purpose, always be editing and work that viewfinder from the outside in.
If you have any questions or need some guidance, feel free to contact me via email or cell. We'll be going over more information on the person at work assignment in class on Feb. 16.
The due date for this assignment is Feb. 23.
Below are examples of the three different types of images you need to complete the assignment.
Overall
The overall shot gives us the "where" information for the person. It offers some insight into the area or conditions a person works so the viewer can relate to the image or gain perspective.
Medium
The medium shot lets us see how the person works and a little idea of what it is. You want to include their face to offer identity and also show them using their tools or working with a little more tighter focus. This should give us some "what" and "how" information.
Detail
The detail shot shows us the tools a person uses or could be a close-up image of a person's hands working on their project. You can also get creative and use reflections in glasses or something like that to offer a cool visual element. Just ensure you can see what the tools are that are being used and what they are being used to do or crafting.
Jerome, your photos are always so amazingly sharp. I cannot seem to manage that nearly as reliably in mine. Granted, you have some of the best lenses available but mine are all well above kit level and are really rated pretty good overall by the pros. I try to use them a stop or two (or more) smaller than max aperture for optimal sharpness and that makes a huge difference, especially at the corners but I am quite baffled as to why your photos are so consistently sharper than mine. I have even set my camera to show me the focal point on image play back to make sure it is in the right spot.
ReplyDeleteDo you have any input?
I think part of the answer to your question might be that he shoots with a full-frame camera with a kick-ass sensor compared to most of our cameras. (Not sure what you shoot with Andreas). Also, These have definitely been post processed and probably sharpened two or three times. I think most photographers initially sharpen once to remove haze, a second time to sharpen the overall image, and a third time to sharpen for print or screen. I may be wrong, but I think it's a combination of these things, as well as excellent skills with a camera.
ReplyDeleteMike touched on part of the reason for the sharpness in the photos is because I do utilize sharpening within different steps of my processing routine.
ReplyDeleteSince I shoot RAW, I edge sharpen in Aperture. Then once in Photoshop I run Noise Ninja and a high-pass sharpening action. And my last step is an overall unsharp mask once I make the file CMYK for printing. This step makes it look way oversharpened on screen, but is needed for newsprint.
Lens do make a difference too. I have a 16-35 2.8, 50 1.4 and 70-200 2.8 IS. The newer versions of these are a lot sharper than mine. You go down a step below my lenses and the loss in sharpness is noticeable.
And on my Mark IV, it isn't full-frame like on the 5d Mark II. I wish it was. Hopefully with the Mark V they'll get there.
Interesting. I thought the mark iv was full frame. Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteMike, the Mark IV is a 1.3 crop factor. Lenses for non full frame cameras do not work on them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your input! I find this very frustrating and have to scrap lots of otherwise great photos because they are just not sharp enough. However, I have to also add that I am really impressed with the results Mike got with his Pentax. They look much sharper than many of my results with my Canon 7D. I think that alone makes a huge difference.
I actually bump the sharpness setting up in my camera as well as contrast just a little. There's mixed opinions on this, but I like the results out of the camera better that way. And I also shoot raw too.
ReplyDelete