Skip to main content

Old Knobbly Shoot 1

Honestly, this shoot was a tragedy from the start. While I booked out the Nikon D810, I also booked out a 17-70mm lens, not realising it was a DX lens. Because I used a cropped lens with a full frame, you can see the edge of the lens in the images, which ultimately makes the images unusable. I wanted to use the lens for the wide angle, but I was stuck at 70mm because I wanted the images to have as little of the lens in the images as possible.

The camera was also set to the ideal sertings for filming rather than photography, so i reset all the settings so i could change them easily to my needs, but i forgot to change the format back to RAW and so they were all shot in JPEG, which is less than ideal.

shot at 18mm, can see the lens on the outside

The intention for this shoot was to shoot at dusk to give a more eerie feel, and use a long exposure using lights to almost show a ghostly look.
However, we arrived at the forest early and my boyfriend's phone was dead and mine died when we were there, meaning we had no lights use for the long exposures later. 
I tried to do some long exposures of 30 seconds at f29 and iso 100 but they still just came out white, as I had no filters to go over the lens and make it darker.



Then I changed the settings to have it only at 10 seconds, and while there is much more definition in the images it's still way too over exposed and you can't see me running through the woods.


So feeling a little disheartened, I then set the timer to two seconds, and my boyfriend, who was wearing a bright coloured jacket, walked directly in front of the camera and I actually really liked the outcome because it has that ghostly look to it.


So I moved the camera and framed Old Knobbly in the centre, to make it more about the history of the tree. I then used the colourful jacket to create those more ghostly long exposure looks.





4 FINAL IMAGES FROM THIS SHOOT: 



This image certainly hasn't got the best framing, but I do like the way the red isn't completely opaque, as it gives a look of traces of life, however I would have liked it to be more widespread. I would of course have liked this to be taken with a wide angle but that wasn't an option.
Red has connotations of blood, death and also lust, which I think is very relevant to the history of the place. The exposure is certainly not perfect, I would have liked a more even exposure but it didn't help how the sun was directly behind the tree. 


This image has a more stereotypical ghostly look; what you'd imagine when you think of ghost trails.
The blue's cool tone gives a very chilling mood, especially emphasised by the movement in the image. The framing is better than the image above, however it's still not great; i'd prefer it with the whole of tree visible. 
I think I prefer this colour to the red, because although the connotations work well with the history I think the cool tones have a bigger impact on the viewer because of that cold feeling. 



I really love how the long exposure of the jacket looks like it forms part of the trunk. It has a very mythical, otherworldly feel because of this mist looking formation. It sparks my imagination and makes me think that the tree itself holds some sort of magic or power when I look at this image. It could also represent the souls of the people hanged and drowned in this area, as it's said they found sanctuary in this tree. I like that the white/blue is stronger in this image than the one above, while still being able to see what's behind.


Again, I don't like the framing of this image. I should have moved further back but the lens was struggling to autofocus as it was.
the tree not being in the centre is really annoying and feels very uneven to the eye, and having no ground in the image doesn't give the location context needed; there's nothing to ground the image for the viewer.
In this image you can see the the more colourful aspects of the jacket used to create the mist/ghost affect, which I thought would show more life but I don't think it's as eerie as it should be for the theme. 


THOUGHTS FOR NEXT TIME:

  • Make a light stick - attach fairy lights or other lights to a stick to use during dusk
  • Shoot during blue hour
  • Don't use a DX lens
  • Remember to shoot in RAW
  • Use a wide angle lens

CONTACT SHEETS:











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Women Accused of Witchcraft were Treated

In 'East Anglian Witches, Ghosts and Strange Tales', the first chapter opens with how one widow, Agnes Fenn, 94, was harassed and punished in attempt to get her to confess to witchery. She was forced into a chamber with a diseased man and offered money to confess she bewitched him, to which she refused. By her own accounts she was further punished physically; pricked, pinched and prodded with daggers, stabbed in the face. She recalls how the witch hunters "cast gunpowder and flashed it in my face". She was also charged of bewitching a child to death. After a lot of time, she was cleared and allowed to go home, but she claimed people still tried to overthrow her for being a witch. 94 may seem like a silly age to try and prosecute a woman of witchcraft, but really any woman who acted oddly or had something 'wrong' with her body she could be prosecuted. Of course, whether the judge would actually accuse the 'witch' is a different story. However, as Agn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Diptychs

Traditionally, a Diptych refers to something that presented in twos that are connected using a hinge of some sort. The idea and use of diptychs have been around since the middle ages, where they were used to celebrate weddings, becoming a well respected roman, or for private use. Often, they came in the form of panel paintings, but ivory was also used more religious scenes. However, Diptychs also mean things that are presented in pairs, including photographs. They can be used to tell two parts of a story, or to simply show two images that relate to each other. It's often thought, however, that for a successful diptych the two images must be able to work as a single image alone and not rely on the other.  "The word diptych comes from the Greek root "dis", meaning "two," and "ptykhe," meaning "fold."" In this example by Jay Watson ( Faces ) the two presented images are not of the same subject, however they repr...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE TREE OF LIFE

The tree of life is a very well known and refereed to tree in mythology and religion, all having different significances depending on beliefs. In Celtic Times Celts were people who were very connected to the nature around them, they had a connection with the Earth. The Tree Of Life was a "tangible part of everyday existence." They created the 'Tree of Life Knot' - an image of a tree with branches and roots forming a circle around said tree. The circle makes the tree the centre of the depiction, as trees were the centre of their lives and all that happened. "Celts realised that the absence of greenery would be the absence of life itself." Celtic mythology then then progressed this into a more otherworldly meaning; the roots and the branches were no longer connected with the roots and instead were reaching up to the top of the diagram, reaching the realm of the gods. The roots grounded the tree the the human world. The tree being the centre is...
Post a Comment
Read more