Work Diary - Sixth Shoot - Camden (Day)

For this shoot, I shot Camden during the day. The reason why I decided on Camden is due to the fact that there are a diversity of cultures that can be found in that particular area. My original aim was to capture the market and compare it to the one in Southall so that the differences as well as similarities between the two are shown. However, I soon realised that cultures could be shown in other ways, like in Southall. When I got there, I decided to walk around for a while before beginning my shoot, this allowed me to figure out what I wanted to picture other than the market and I started getting ideas on how I was going to capture these images. The second time I walked around, I started shooting and by using a variety of angles, I found this to be a good way of making my pictures look very different from each other; almost like they were taken on different shoots on different locations. By doing this, I am able to produce unique pictures that are very different from each other. I also tried including more people in this shoot as I noticed that I have not really captured individuals in society for my previous shoots - this means I can show the viewer what kind of people go to the specific area that I am photographing and I can portray their emotions along with their feelings through facial expressions. It was fairly easy to capture people and I decided not to let them know at first so that my pictures can be a true snapshot of society at that particular time.

Personally, I really like this picture from my shoot. This is because of the element of light that has been portrayed through the lamp shades hanging from the ceiling; this also shows elements of pattern and repetition as the designs on each lamp shade is emphasised by the lights. I also like the use of colour - I angled the camera in such a way that I could capture the lights from the lamp shades but omit other light sources, hence why they are at the corner of the picture. When a viewer first look at the picture, they automatically focus on the lights, allowing them to explore the picture gradually, the lights act as a guide, forcing the viewer to focus on that bit of the image before moving on to another part.

I think this picture came out really well due to the lighting, I used a small aperture at around F12 in order to create this effect. However, I think I should have used a bigger aperture (around F8) so that the security guard can be seen a bit more - this will give more excitement to my picture and allow the scene to look slightly more dangerous. I could also have edited this image better on Photoshop and made the security guard brighter in that way, whilst keeping the rest of the image dark, further emphasising the danger of the area, making it look even more dodgy.

In the future, I would like to experiment more with aperture, before taking the picture I desire, I need to find the correct aperture so that the image can come out exactly like I want it to. By experimenting, I will also allow myself to gain a deeper knowledge on aperture and shutter speed, enabling me to produce a more variety of pictures.