COVID Test Shoot - 19th October 2021

This shoot, was spur of the moment. I had decided that some of my images were going to be shot in the living room, and because I had decided that I am not going to use artificial lighting. Because of the weather on this day and lack of natural light source these images are very dark. I will need to lighten these in Camera RAW. 

COVID SHOOT 1 - 20th October 2021

As I am living with COVID and I was including it within my book, I decided that I should shoot some test self-portraiture shots of myself. I did this with a wired remote so that I did not have to set a timer. This allowed to to get ready and pause as I took the images. This was I knew there was going to be less camera blur. When I reshoot I will shoot at the brightest point of the day for maximum light source. Because I wanted to use negative space to show the loneliness of isolation, I drew inspiration Daniel Reagans project, where he also uses negative space. So because I couldn't leave the house, I decided to shoot the negative space within the house. I am happy with how some of these turned out however, I had a problem with some of the lighting and grain.

COVID SHOOT 2 - 21st October 21

As I am living with COVID and I was including it within my book, I decided that I should shoot some test self-portraiture shots of myself. I did this with a wired remote so that I did not have to set a timer. This allowed to to get ready and pause as I took the images. This was I knew there was going to be less camera blur. When I reshoot I will shoot at the brightest point of the day for maximum light source. 

COVID SHOOT 3 - 05th November 2021

In this shoot I continued to shoot the negative space within my house. I decided to keep these images cleaner with less in the frame. However some of them were still to muddily. So before I shoot again, I am going to tidy up a little bit more and try to frame closer to each object but still leaving enough space surrounding. After further evaluation, I now realise that I have been a bit to focused om just the negative space and not enough on COVID itself. Next time I want to shoot more connected to COVID, like self-portraiture, portraiture of my mum, masks, hand sanitiser etc.

COVID SHOOT 4 - 10th November 2021

During this shoot I took on my own advise and tried to keep it more to the point of what is happening around me. I kept it real and shot around the house naturally. I am quite pleased with this shoot because I think I shot out of my comfort zone a little, by shooting inside and outside with a moving subject. I also got more shots of cleaning and masks. I did find after looking through all my images that maybe I could have spent a little more time on each image and taken less duplicates. 

COVID SHOOT 5 - 10th November 2021

This shoot was not planned. After my fist shot of the day my mum has decided to take a bath and she suggested that I could shoot her in the bath as I could show her pain of not being very well with COVID among her chronic pain illnesses. I thought this was a great idea so I decided to go for it. I was having lots of problems with lighting and my camera settings. I had set my ISO to 600 because it was so dark, however unknowingly my camera kept auto setting my ISO and some of my ISO's were in the thousands. After a conversation with Paul I discovered that my camera is not capable of shooting that high ISO without major pixilation and that I would need a different lens to avoid the grain at a higher ISO. I also discovered that my exposure compensation was +3 rather than 0. This also was not helping my overall image quality.

Once I seen them all on my laptop, it was too late and my mum was already getting out of the bath. I tried to save the images with noise reduction and turning them black and white. They certainly looked like film images however I just wasn't happy with the quality. 

Nik Feedback - Once Nik had seen the images he decided that I defiantly should shoot them again but also remove everything from around the bath to produce clean looking images. Nik also asked if I could shoot just without the bath panel too. Overall I was really happy with my feedback and was ready to take it on. 

COVID Shoot 6/6 B&W - 11th November 2021 

I decided to follow my mum, at this point she was still feeling okay so, she was cleaning and doing things around the house. As I was spending so much time in the living room I decided that it would be good to shoot some more in their. So I photographed her cleaning out the fire. After reviewing this shoot though I decided all though it contains some nice shots that they don't necessarily work into the project very well.

SJ Bath Shoot 1 & 2 - 18th November 2021

Because these images did not print very well, my mother decided to chose the images she didn't like digitally. The ones marked with a blue X are the ones she didn't like and the black ones are the ones she did like.

After my initial photographing in the bathroom, that came with many issues, I decided to plan ahead, go into the bathroom before my mum got in and set it up. Take all the products off the sides and move her towels. This was so the images were clean and not cluttered. I also had a play with my settings and made sure that my camera was not set to auto ISO! Once my mum was ready we began. This time it felt less natural because I had changed the bathroom a bit and my mum then found it hard not to pose. I was very pleased with this shoot however these images are quite dark. 

I printed all the images out from both shoots in colour and in black and white and then spread them across my bedroom floor to help decided which ones to get rid of and which ones worked well. It was quite difficult as I didn't quite have enough room.

SJ Bath Shoot 3 - 08th December 2021