Week 1
For this week, we were introduced to the module as well as gaining some mobile photography tips. As for the workshop task, I needed to do a Leeds news story and take photos for the story.
One of the producers, Wilfred, is based in Leeds and I know him through my friend. As we did the interview in his house and I expected the shots to be still, I chose to record the interview and take photos on my iPhone. We learnt how to take pictures with our mobile phones in week 1 so I thought it would be great to try the tips that we’ve got. Wilfred took me to his studio and showed me his work and instruments. I took photographs of his guitars, his computers, his workspace and him showing his albums.
I thought the images were great as they followed the rule of thirds, with an insert shot of the book that Wilfred loved reading. It is clear, and nicely framed since I remembered to clean the lens before shooting. All the photos were taken in landscape. I also like the photo of Wilfred holding his albums while looking into the camera as it delivered a sense of friendliness and engagement with the viewers.
There were not many weaknesses in the shooting process as well as the outcomes this week, but next time I definitely want to try using a DSLR camera for stories that contain a lot of movements.
Week 2
This week we learnt about different types of photojournalism. We also knew more about illustrative photography and how to have a mix of these two in a feature.
With photojournalism, we learnt about Documentary reportage such as Social, Industrial and Street/Candid. For illustrative photography, we had the chance to look at some interesting genres.
With all this knowledge, I began thinking about my project and decided to have a mix of candid and illustrative photography in my feature. I first looked at the history of candid photography and some well-known photographers paving the way for the genre to develop. For each photographer, I also found a photo of their work and I was fascinated by the way they took the images and how interesting they looked. The photos were all natural, capturing the very random but impactful moments of people in their daily lives.
When looking into the techniques and challenges of candid photography, I realised that it was vital to follow the scene and capture every moment. However, for what I wanted to do in my feature, ethics would be a problem since getting subjects’ consent before taking their picture presents a new obstacle to capturing unscripted moments. Therefore, mine might not be an exact practice of candid photography but an effort to make it the most genuine and natural.
Week 3
In week 3, our lecturer had a refresher session on image formats and introduced some new cropping tools and how to use Adobe Photoshop.
I found it very useful to have a lecture about image formats, and correct photo sizes for Journalism and digital publishing since quite many people, including me, forgot about having descriptive alt-text and embedding the images full size to make sure the photo is high-quality pre-published. We also had the chance to work with images online by practising in Photoshop to use the perspective crop to straighten an image. I had never used perspective crop in Photoshop before so this was eye-opening for me.
For the photo project pitch, I decided to write about things that Leeds Beckett University offers and why people drop out of the courses. I also proposed types of photojournalism I would include in my feature.
The university can offer people academic knowledge, fundamental skills for industry settings, and connections. Therefore, I want to provide an insight into some popular courses at Leeds Beckett, showing what people learn from the courses.
Besides, there have been students who decided to drop out. I also want to show the reasons behind their decisions. I believe this will help the university to improve and know more about the student’s perspective.
Week 4
In this workshop, we learnt about focus, aperture and depth of field.
This knowledge was new to me as I rarely used a DSLR camera to take photos. Therefore, I found it very useful and interesting to know about the way to focus on a subject, and how adjusting aperture would bring a difference to the result of an image. Not only did we use these things on a DSLR camera, but we could use them on our phones as well. I also liked how we changed the F-stop in different types of photojournalism to have the outcome we wanted.
For our workshop task, we needed to take three images of a person with different F-stops to see the differences. I found a guy who agreed to be in the photos. I took three images of him with three different F-stops which were F/5, F/18 and F/32.
I clearly saw how blurry the background changed in F/5 and F18, however, there was no change between F/18 and F/32. I then asked my lecturer about this and she explained that the low F-stop would be F/5 and below, the middle is between F/6 and F/10, and anything that was above F/10 is a high F-stop. I thought this was a really good technique I could consider using for my photo project.
Week 5
In week 5, we learnt about shutter speed and ISO, and how to emulate them.
Shutter speed and ISO are among the elements deciding the quality of a photo, along with aperture. As I had seen lots of interesting images created by the slow shutter speed, and sports journalists using the fast shutter speed to capture every moment of the match, I felt the lecture was very useful with an in-depth explanation of how the settings work and the techniques we use when we shoot in shutter speed mode. I also got to know how to emulate the shutter speed on an iPhone’s camera with the burst mode and live photo mode.
For the workshop tasks, I decided to take images of my friend while she was outside jumping in the air at a fast shutter speed. I did face difficulties at first in order to navigate what settings I needed to put. However, after some test shots to adjust the settings, I finally had a successful shot of my friend. For the slow shutter speed, I took a picture of my friend inside. I like the effects it created, however, I would improve the photo by increasing the F-stop level and using the tripod.
Overall, shooting in shutter speed mode was not as easy as I thought. Many factors need to be taken into consideration such as lighting, the F-stop aperture level, ISO and appropriate shutter speed setting. But it was definitely helpful as I gained new knowledge to use in my project and also photos taken in the future.
Week 6
This week I had a 1-to-1 tutorial with my lecturers. I presented my project ideas to my tutors and then they gave me useful feedback. My initial intention was to create an article about what Leeds Beckett University offers, and the reasons students dropped out with both candid and illustrative photography. However, my lecturer said it would be a better idea if I focused on the journey of the students to follow their dreams and tell their stories through photography. Therefore, I decided to mainly focus on the stories of the students and still include some thoughts from the university for authority.
My tutors also suggested I create a storyboard to know exactly what I want to achieve. Even though I will do candid and illustrative photography, it is still better to have a vision of what the compositions of the photos look like. Thus, I will create a storyboard after I finish writing my article so that I can have an overview of what the feature is and how to operate the camera.
Week 7
Today we learnt about light, colour correction and advanced cropping. We learnt to edit in Photoshop but also were provided with an alternative app on mobile devices which was Snapseed. I also knew more about how to white-balance my images on Snapseed. The app also had a Lens Blur effect which was new to me.
As I tried to do candid photography, everything needed to be captured fast and in burst mode. Therefore, it was quite challenging for me to hold my camera and take photos without being noticed. I put two test shots into Photoshop and edited them to make them look better. However, I did not get used to the perspective crop tool so I had to ask my lecturer for his help. He then showed me how to use it properly again and then gave me feedback about the photos. I then edited the images according to his comments and they definitely looked better than the original ones.
Week 8
For this week, we still looked at post-production. However, this lesson was more advanced with new image formats as well as shooting and image selection techniques.
As I had never heard of RAW images before, this was a new finding for me. The fact that the camera has its own RAW format was also interesting, as I used it to shoot photos but never noticed. Since shooting in RAW format can preserve the details and resolution of the images, I thought it would be a good idea to use it for my illustrative photographs in my project. However, with the ones of candid photography, it might take a longer time to process pictures, so I think shooting in JPEG will help save time when I shoot in fast action.
As the contrast and saturation levels of RAW photos are less than JPEG ones, while I was doing the workshop task, I had to make changes to the photo. The process of editing RAW images was quite similar to photos in other formats, however, I struggled a bit with the settings when I exported the image from Photoshop to my laptop. I then figured out the way and exported it in JPEG format.
As we also learnt about choosing images, I thought this was an ideal time to reflect on typical decisions I usually make when selecting photos. As I had a habit of taking multiple photos at once, I normally had to choose between one of them. This is a nice way to really have an overview of the way I usually worked and make improvements.
Photographic Journalism 