Winter Wonderland

So in my Christmas break this year I shall be travelling up to the West Midlands for the festive celebrations, where it seems ridiculously cold compared to what is has been back down in Falmouth!

On Christmas day itself my grandmother and I went for a short walk (with my camera of course!) around where we were staying. Here are a couple of the images taken:

This particular image was taken on the road outside my Aunt's house who I was staying with at the time. I particularly like the way in which the light falls through the trees catching the other side of the road.

Being up in the West Midlands meant that I was near to Sutton Park in Sutton Coldfield and being up there with my camera, I couldn't resist but to go back and take some more images of the park with all the snow. Unfortunately, the day I went to the park, the snow was largely turning to slush and the whether was quite foggy. Despite this, I still took my camera out and, whilst getting rather wet in the process, managed to get what I thought were some good images:

I was especially pleased with the last of the images above and it will be most certainly used in my current Specialisms Project (The Book Project) and will likely also be put up for exhibtion when I manage to sort that one out!

Oops!... Deadline!

Well then, the first of our projects is due in tomorrow, not a big one admittedly, but still. Considering I hadn't realised it was due in so soon it suddenly became a big thing.

All it is, is the first part of our work based learning, so basically all that is needed is our photographers CV, our proposal and to make sure that we have an up-to-date portfolio of work on the internet.

Well, the letter is pretty much done, still a tad confused over the CV and well we have this blog and I am also looking at creating an online portfolio somewhere, some sort of website sort of thing so look out for that as I am hoping to get that started soon.

And as a final note:

Why were they trying to Catch The Pigeon??

Studio Shoot

So the other day our lecturer aranged for a model to come into the college so that we could all get some more experience in the studio. So at one o'clock on tuesday our model, Sarah, arrived and the college's make-up department worked their magic to make her camera ready.

Whist 'under the brush' we set up the studio using only one light with a beauty dish on it. We would have the model sat on a chair to begin with and have to black boards situated either side of her, which would cause a slight shadow downt the sides of her face to aid in defining it.

• Using a Canon 5D Mark II set at:
  ISO 100
• Exposure Time 1/125secs (sync speed for studio lighting)
• f/4.5

Unfortunately at this time, I cannot remeber which lens we were using..

Anyways, here are the first couple of images taken:

For the second of these images, the boards that we were using either side of Sarah's face we turned around so that the white sides were facing in towards Sarah. As can be seen, this means that the light reflects off the boards and illuminates more of her face. Also for this photograph, I had someone holding a reflector to cast some light underneith her chin and on her neck. I personally prefer the second image for the lighting which I think is a lot softer than that in the first image.

Also in these images we used another light which was positioned behind Sarah at an angle so not in the shot. Over this light we put a piece of pink coloured gel which, as can be seen, gives a slight pink tinge to the right-hand side (can especially be seen on her hair).

For our other shots we asked Sarah to stand near towards the back of the studio against our white back-drop. As Sarah was not only tall but also was wearing 4inch stilettos, we had to then direct her so that we were able to photograph her whole.

Although not a full-length image, this was my favourite image from this set of pictures:

A New Name..

You may have noticed a change of this page and that the page you're now looking at has a different name. Correct. The name Sally-Lou Photography was created for one of my project for college. The project was a website and blog unit and that was the name I chose to fulfil the purpose, however I have been increasingly disliking the name and so I decided that a change was in order.

Having what, in my opinion, is a rather common name, I decided to play around with my surname and came up with two possible names:

• And Photography
• And Photos

I have decided to go with 'And Photography', I think I just feel better about it. Unfortunately, someone on here has already taken the blogspot address andphotography AND and-photography, much to my annoyance, so the blogspot address is now http://www.and-photo.blogspot.com/ . Still takes you to the same page though so all is good again.

If you think you have any comments or suggestions around the name then by all means, feel free to leave me a message somewhere : )

Specialisms

One of our first projects this year is our specialisms project and basically what we have to do is create a book. Literally make a book...

This project, we were told, could be a continuation from a previous project or could be an entirely new project altogether. There was mixed reactions throughout our group which resulted in some continuing projects from last year and others starting a fresh project.

My initial idea was to follow on from my last project, which was exhibited in the foyer of the Fal building at Truro College, which was to do with the idea of how space can instil fear within a person. However, this idea has slowly changed an evolved into the idea of places which people may not ever go to, what people don't see.

The inital first title of this book was 'Around the Corner', which is still currently the working title and here is the image from which inspired the name in the first place:

And here are some of the images which I am planning to use in my project, although I still need to decide upon what order to put them in within the book. Most of these are new images, however there is the odd one which I used last year:

Starting A New Year

Having sucessfully completed and passed my first year, I am back in Cornwall and ready to start my second year. Having had moments of uncertainty within the first year I am ready for my second and determined to be more organised and to be more motivated.

I passed my first year with just one distinction, which was in my Website and Blog project and this year I hope to achieve more at this higher level.

During our break we have been set a little summer project which was to take a set of 12 images revolving around/ responding to one of a few given themes/ words. These were:

• Red
• Smoke
• Beginning
• Slow
• Summer Sun
• Corrupted
• Love

We were to then present these images on a disc with all the correct file names and metadata etc. My first inital thoughts were of the summer sun option, however, with a little inspiration from my boyfriend, I decided to do the project around the idea; Slow. The idea here revolved around the idea of using a long shutter speed and a long exposure - a slow processing. This would mean experimenting with night photography as a long exposure during the day would surely not turn out as i'd plan.

Unfortunately I was not very enthused with the project and only did a small amount of experimenting with the camera. My best images came from the Bristol Balloon Fiesta, where there was a Balloon Glow on one of the nights.

With this idea not going to plan, I decided to go with the option Red. Here decided to take the literal meaning of red as in the colour of the objects or something with red in the title. Here are a few of these images:

St. Michael's Mount

As I promised, a separate post for my day out in Penzance and onto St. Michael's Mount. Here I discovered how much I enjoyed taking aesthetically pleasing images, especially when on the mount itself looking back at the mainland.

I was thoroughly pleased with the weather on the day, which resulted in having beautiful sunshine with barely any clouds to be seen, which provided a look of something in the mediterranean rather than the south of Cornwall.

Here I shall provide just a small number of images as I managed to take a surprising number over the two days at the Eden Project and at St Michael's Mount. These images were also taken on my Canon 450D with the standard 18-55mm lens:

A Trip to the South

Around this time last year I spent a week in Newquay with my family and from here I travelled to both St. Michaels Mount in Penzance and the Eden Project near St. Austell for the opportunity to take some photographs.

I shall let St. Michaels Mount have its own post and here I shall upload a few of my images from the Eden Project:

I took these images on my Canon 450D with the standard 18-55mm lens which came with the camera and once again, I would have used the auto function on the camera or the preset functions that are available.

Here I discovered that I enjoyed taking macro images, which I soon learned is that the image taken is a close up of the object being photographed.

Considering I did only have my standard lens, I am quite pleased even now with the results I managed to get that day.

I am also glad that my camera came out working after we went into our first of the domes, which was the rainforest dome. ...warm, sticky and no breeze to cool down in. The lens fogged up when we first stepped in!



The First Images

After a busy weekend and a couple of days in college, I figure I should actually keep my word and start updating this blog...

Just over a year ago I bought my first digital SLR camera - a Canon 450D. A pretty standard and common model but it was recommended, cheaper and just what I needed to set me going in photography.

Having played around with my new 'toy' inside my home, I went down to the beach at sundown to start practicing my image taking. Admittedly then I took the shots using the Auto function - hey I hadnt had it long...

A First Time For Everything

Considering I work on both saturdays and sundays, this weekend isnt really the best to start a blog.. Especially now I got myself into working bank holiday monday too.... :/ However, I shall try to update as much as I can over this long weekend.

One thing I will ask is please be patient with me.. as the title suggests, this is the first blog I have created and so I may take a while to get used to what I am doing. (Basically, future apologies for any changes in layout, posts etc.)

For now I shall leave you with one of the images I included in my portfolio when applying for my course at Truro College. This was before I got my DigitalSLR so considering this was taken on a Fujifilm Finepix Z10fd (that one which came in many different colours) compact digital camera I am quite pleased with the results: