All posts by Cara Logan

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Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is used to organize, store and edit images.

Importing Images

On Lightroom there is an import button in which you can import photos to store in Lightroom.

On Library mode, you can flag images and give them a rating out of 5 stars. This makes it easier to organize which images are the best or which images you want to edit.

Navigator Tool

Navigator tool gives you presets, which give you pre-made filters that you can add to your images.

Develop Mode

Develop mode lets you manually edit your images by adjusting the contrast, saturation ect.

Here is all my images in lightroom.

Here I made a folder for all my texture images, so my images are more organised and easier to access.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the speed in which the shutter of the camera closes.

Fast Shutter speed

  • Shorter exposure
  • Lets in less light
  • No motion blur
Fast shutter speed image

Slow Shutter speed

  • Longer exposure
  • Lets in more light
  • Motion blur
Slow shutter speed image- motion blur
The difference between fast and slow shutter speed

Eadward Muybridge- fast shutter speed

Eadweard Muybridge was a groundbreaking photographer who made a name for himself in the late 1800s with his studies of motion. His biggest achievement was using high-speed photography to capture how animals and people move, which was pretty revolutionary at the time.

One of his most iconic works is The Horse in Motion, where he documented a horse running through a sequence of images. This not only highlighted how the horse moved but also prompted fascinating questions about the nature of movement itself.

Muybridge’s techniques opened up new doors for photographers. He proved that photography wasn’t just about snapping still shots, it could also capture movement and explore how things actually move. His work also impacted sport science, biomechanics and animation.

In summary, Muybridge’s clever use of shutter speed and his technique of capturing movement in a series really shook things up in photography.

Harold Edgerton- fast shutter speed

Harold Edgerton was an American engineer and photographer famous for his groundbreaking work in high-speed photography. He created techniques and gear that let him capture super fast events, allowing him to freeze motion like never before.

Edgerton created the electronic flash, or strobe light, which let him produce a quick burst of light. This was key because it allowed him to freeze motion in an instant, making it possible to snap photos of fast-moving things like bullets, dancers, and falling objects.

He used super short exposure times to reduce motion blur. By syncing the strobe light with the camera’s shutter, he could get exposure times in the microsecond range. This allowed him to capture details that you wouldn’t normally see.

By mastering shutter speed and lighting tricks, Edgerton really took photography to the next level, showing off the beauty and intricacies of motion like never before. His work opened up new paths for both science and art.

Hiroshi Sugimoto- slow shutter speed

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a famous Japanese photographer and artist known for his awesome and thought-provoking work. He often explores cool themes like time, memory, and how we see things in his photos. One of his popular series is “Theatres,” where he takes long-exposure shots of old movie theatres, really capturing the vibe of light and shadow.

Hiroshi Sugimoto plays around with slow shutter speeds in his long-exposure photography. This technique lets him capture moving light and shadow over a longer time, giving his images a cool sense of time and movement all in one shot.

In his “Theatres” series, for example, he keeps the shutter open long enough to let the projector’s light hit the screen while the rest of the theatre stays dark. This creates dreamy images that mix stillness with a sense of motion, making you think about time and memory.

In his “Seascapes,” the slow shutter speeds smooth out the water, creating peaceful, almost abstract landscapes that feel really calm and timeless. Overall, his approach with slow shutter speeds adds a lot of depth and a unique vibe to his work.

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was an American photographer known for her haunting, dreamy black-and-white shots. She often used herself as the subject and explored themes like identity, femininity, and the passage of time. Her work really captures feelings of vulnerability and has a unique vibe.

Francesca Woodman often played with slow shutter speeds in her photos to create a sense of movement and a dreamy vibe. This technique let her blur parts of her body or the background, giving her images a magical quality. By capturing herself in motion, she highlighted fleeting moments and the passage of time, which really adds to the emotional punch of her work.

In a lot of her shots, the long exposure creates ghostly effects, since she’d move around or let the light linger in the frame. This not only brings attention to her presence but also adds a layer of vulnerability and depth. The mix of sharp and blurry elements in her photos makes you think about identity and existence, giving her work that haunting, personal touch.

My experiments with shutter speed:

Studio

Outside

Fixing The Shadows

Origins of Photography

Camera Obscura

Camera obscura is a dark room with a hole in one wall. When it’s light outside, light shines into the hole and projects an upside-down image of the outside world onto the wall. The image is projected upside down due to light travelling in a straight line through the hole. 

Camera obscura built the groundwork for light and optics used in photography. Due to it being a natural phenomenon it makes it hard to pinpoint the exact origins of photography.

Henry Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot was made the British inventor of photography. Photogenic drawing paper was invented by Henry Fox Talbot in 1834. Silver Nitrate and Sodium Chloride were used to make the light-sensitive Silver Chloride. Before he got into using small wooden cameras, nicknamed mouse-traps by his wife, he made images using plants (he studied plants). Unless it was fixed, the image would fade as fast as it was created. He used Sodium Chloride, Potassium Iodide, and Potassium Bromide for his early fixers. His Early images are very rare and priceless.

Daguerreotype

Daguerreotypes are direct positives, made from copper plated with silver without needing a negative.

The Daguerreotype was not as successful as Talbot’s system because it had serious limitations, the mirror like surface of the image could only be viewed from a narrow angle and the process produced a one of a kind image that did not permit printing duplicates.

George Eastman

George Eastman was born on July 12th 1854. He was an American entrepreneur who introduced the first Kodak camera.

He formed the company Kodak by spending decades developing a camera that was much smaller in size and accessible for everyone to use. He publicly launched the first successful roll-filled hand camera in 1888. Which was known as the Kodak camera.

Kodak (Brownie)

The Brownie was a series of cameras first released in 1900 which were developed by Eastman Kodak. These cameras were so significant as they were the first to allow average middle class people to buy and use them. People would take photographs then return them to Kodak where the images were developed and printed. Kodak would re-fill the film and return the images and camera back to the owner. This created a sustainable system for the general public to create their own images.

Digital Photography

The first digital image was created by Russell Kirsch in 1957.

First digitally scanned image of Walden Kirsch.

The image was of Kirsch’s son Walden, the image only measured 176 pixels on a side and was just 5 cm by 5 cm.

The foundation for digital photography was built in 1969 by the Eastman Kodak team. Engineer William Boyle and Physicist George E. Smith created the charge-coupled device (CCD). This enabled electronic images to be captured.

In 1975, Steve Sasson invented the world’s first self- contained digital camera for Kodak, which changed the future of photography. He made the camera using a movie camera lens, a handful of Motorola parts, 16 batteries and some electronic sensors.

William Collie

In Jersey, William Collie was most likely the first to use Fox Talbot’s calotype process. He was from Scotland but had business in Jersey in Belmont road and Bath street from before 1850 to 1878. He held an important position in Britain’s early development of photography but sadly, he isn’t well known and very few of his images are available.

Focus Control & Aperture

Different ways of focusing on a camera 

Manual Focus– close ups and fine detail ( use the focus ring on the end of the lens and adjust for each shot) 

Auto Focus– general focus 

What is focal length? 

The focal length of a lens is the optical distance (usually measured in mm) from the point where the light meets inside the lens to the camera’s sensor. 

When light enters the lens, the light gathers at the focal point. Light travels in a straight ray whereas, when it travels through a lens it refracts.
 

What is Aperture? 

Aperture is the opening in a lens which light passes through.  

Aperture is like the “pupil” for your camera system, it can open and close to change the amount of light that passes through. 

What is Depth of field?

depth of field is how much of your image is in focus. Its the distance in an image where objects are acceptably in focus.

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter was a photographer who used abstract expressionism. He started out as a painter and he was influenced by shapes and colours. He used photography to create his own visions using reality.

He used depth of field in order to have different parts of his image in focus and others out of focus.

Here are some examples:

Lots of his images use large amounts of out of focus areas, drawing our eye to a particular detail or splash of colour.

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.

Saul Leiter

Images I took

My Contact Sheet: Outside

Edited Photos

Inspired by Ralph Eugene Meatyard