Erin Mckenna

HND1A photography blog

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Documents for People At Work

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People at work Research // Flower shop

I really want to show off little details around the shop as well as the flowers as it is decorated really beautifully. The shop has a quite rustic and cute style and I want to show that in my pictures for the brief.

I really like the image of the outside of the shop because of the composition of the sign on the window and all of the colours in the flowers. I like the other images also because they are showing off the flowers in their surroundings with in the shop and I want to do this too. 

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People at work Research // Flower shop

I like all of these images because they are quite bright and vibrant and they show off the workers as well as their surroundings. I think it will be important to clearly show the environment the people are working in for this project.

I like that the images all have a shallow depth of field because I think it makes you focus more on the person even though the background is quite bright and busy. 

I want to take some candid images of the girls in the flower shop doing their job as well as getting a portrait of them.

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Structure

For this brief I originally planned to photograph my high school because it is a brand new building and the architecture on the inside of the building is incredible. I went to the school to shoot and got a lot of images of the inside that I loved. The big silver pod was such an interesting subject to shoot because its so odd. There is wood underneath it and the rest of it looks like really big silver bricks. I found that all the colours around the school complimented each other really well too so these two images ended up working well on a canvas together. However the outside of the building was too boring and plain for my liking so I made a decision to shoot somewhere else for the outside. I went to braehead and took  some images from the car park across from Soar so I could fit in the whole building. Afterwards I went over to Soar and shot a lot of different images around the outside. I decided to go here because I knew that this building had a lot of interesting shapes on the outside as the building is like a big bowl but the entrance has pointed edges so I really wanted to capture shapes for my outside images. I went here on one of the first sunny days in a long time after college as I seen an opportunity to get a good sky in my pictures as I felt that was something I was struggling with in previous pictures taken for this brief. In the end I am happy with both sets of images. I think that on the out door canvas I could have swapped around the last two images and made the first ones sky slightly lighter so that all of the colours would match a bit more but other than that I am happy with all of the images for this brief.

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Illuminate

This is my final image for illuminate. When this project brief was released I knew I wanted to go to a forest near by and shoot some images of an old wooden bus. I soon came to realise that the sun wasn't going down until around 10 o'clock and the forest park closed around 5, so I decided to change my idea. I decided to Ingliston country club, I went in to ask for permission before shooting and took some test shots around the premises before shooting any illuminated pictures. There were quite a few areas around the building I could have shot so I experimented with some different subjects such as a horse made of horse shoes and a bench before I came across this band stand which I thought was perfect to shoot for this brief. I found this shoot to be one of the hardest ones to do from this block because on the night the sky was very cloudy and dull before turning dark blue and it did not stay like that for very long so I was pressed for time. The weather was also awful. It was raining and windy which kept ruining a lot of the pictures I liked. If I could change anything about this project it would have been to do a bit more research on the weather before going out. Regardless of the bad weather I am happy with how this picture turned out. I used around 4 torches and a couple of people to help me out for this picture. We lit up the ground around the band stand and some of the stand itself. I have not had much experience with painting with light before but I quite enjoyed trying this out and I am happy with my final image.

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The Unseen // High Speed Flash

This is my final image for The Unseen. I experimented with lots of different areas of photography during this brief which I enjoyed. I have other images to submit for the unseen but this is the image I have chosen to be printed. This is a high speed flash picture that was taken using two flashes with a make up brush and some powder. This picture was more of an accident as there was a purple gel on one of the lights but I had set the camera on to continuous to catch the powder coming off of the brush easier so I missed the light. I am very happy with how this picture has turned out as I wanted to do something with powder from the beginning of trying high speed flash photography.

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The Unseen // Contact Sheet

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Illuminate // Contact Sheet

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Structure // Contact Sheet

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Little Things

This is my final set of images for little things. We shot images on all of the floors in college one afternoon to give us an idea of what the project was all about. I didn’t love any of the pictures that I took that day so I wanted to try again. We went down to the florence street campus to shoot more. When I was looking for subjects to shoot for this project I was on the look out for things like scratches or anything you could tell had been well loved over time. I shot a lot of old tools and paint marks on old desks etc. When I was editing through my photographs I found that I had been taking a lot of pictures that were very simple. Mostly with one subject and a white or plain background. I have been taking a lot of minimalistic pictures throughout this year as I feel like that has begun to appeal to me the most and I think this showed when I was looking through the images I had taken this day. I like all three of these images individually but I think they work well together because they have all been lit naturally and they are all quite minimal. I like the image with the wheels at the end of the desk as I can just imagine a student colouring it in when their mind was wondering as it is something I’ve done many times. I’m glad I shot this with a shallow depth of field because I like that the main focus of the image is the wheels and the pen marks inside it. The chalks had been left of a shelf and looked like they hadn't been touched for a while but you could tell that they had been well loved as they were all different sizes. I think this image works well in the middle as it has a pop of colour to draw you in. I like my last image because of the composition of the black bar across the image and the scratches on the table. Again it is a very simple image but still shows something that has been used over time.

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Little Things // Contact Sheet

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Little Things Research

These images are all of old/used/abandoned objects. The little things brief requires us to photograph subjects from around the college that have been well loved and used over the years of being in the buildings. We had to visit florence street and take pictures in the North Hanover campus as well to find these sorts of subjects. These images have given me some ideas and inspiration for this project to look for things that are no longer in use but you can tell that they have been used over the years.

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Structure // Interior

These were taken at my old school which is a brand new building that opened in 2015. When this brief was first opened I thought that the inside of the school would be a good place to photograph because there are plenty of interesting shapes and all of the colours around the school compliment each other. 

The tones in the colours of these pictures all compliment each other because of the wood and the silver tones in the pod, the floor and the stairs and the whites of the lights and the walls. So there is a limited colour pallet in the building which worked in my favour. 

I wanted one of my final images to be of the silver pod because I think its a really interesting part of the building. There are a lot of shapes and lines surrounding it with the poles and the walk ways above, as well as the curved wall on the right side. Though I think the main focus that my eye is drawn to is the bottom of the pod because of the lighting and the lines in the wood. 

All of the lighting in these images are natural, there are large windows all over the building so that helped with lighting the darker areas, e.g. the wood underneath the pod. Overall I am happy with the final images from this shoot as interiors and architecture are two things I have never tried before and I like the images that I have taken.

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Structure

For this project we are to photograph 3 images of the outside of a building and 2 interior images, including a full shot of the building. 

When I first started shooting for this project I chose a different building, I tried different techniques and tried shooting from different angels but the building was just boring on the outside. I also was having trouble with getting to the building on a nice day so the lighting was very flat and dull. In the end, I got quite a few interior shots that I like and plan on using, but I decided to change my approach for the outside images.

This is Soar at braehead. I tried shooting from different angles and focal points to capture different shapes. Also the building is quite silver but changes colours slightly in the sunlight so I wanted to be able to show that in these pictures because I think it makes the building look quite interesting, along with its curved shape and the angles at the entrance. I decided to make the colours quite vibrant in these pictures because the sky was a really vibrant blue colour and I think the clouds and the colour of the building work well together. I adjusted the hue on photoshop slightly so that the sky was a more green/blue shade. I felt like this worked better than what it looked like previously. 

Overall I am quite happy with how these pictures turned out. The one I am most disappointed in is the full image of the building. Everywhere I would take a picture either had lampposts or cars in front that could not be avoided. I think the image I ended up choosing could have been better if I could have found a better way to fit the whole building in and avoid distracting objects. 

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The Unseen

Cross polarisation shows the weaknesses/stress areas in plastic. 

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The Unseen

Infrared 

These pictures appeal to me because of the subject in each image. I have never previously tried infrared photography so this is something I had never seen before. I think the way the greenery in the pictures turns white is really interesting.

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The Unseen

High Speed Flash is another part of photography I have never previously tried. We have been experimenting with different things in class and these are some images that gave me inspiration for what I want to do. I have been using powder instead of paint and I tried out some images with water droplets. We also used a speaker with some liquid in it which turned out to be quite interesting, the pictures looked similar to the last image I have uploaded.