Carmen McNally's Art

  Using Light room to edit my photos Lightroom is proving to be very difficult and stressful to use. I have watched several YouTube videos on how to use Lightroom for beginners. I believe that with time using it, I will get used to the software. I just need to familiarise myself on what each command does.  I will be using this software to edit more photos that I have. This photo has got the grittiness and contrast I want with good detail but its not quite the finish look I was after so I will keep practising.

My First Portrait Photoshoot Today I worked with my tutor Julian, helping the level one students to create their own front cover of a magazine. This was a great opportunity to get experience handling flash lighting connected to my Canon camera and most importantly connecting with all the sitters. The thought of asking someone if I could take their photo made me feel nervous. Not because I'm not confident talking to people, it's because I don't fully understand the settings on my DLSR. For example having the correct ISO, shutter speed and depth of field set. I didn't want to be getting flustered trying to get these things right in front of someone I was trying to get a portrait of. Having my camera connected via a sensor with flash lighting definitely helped me get a much more crisp shot. This photoshoot gave me time to get more familiar with the camera and the lighting. I felt more confident taking the student's photos and asked them if I could take photos for my ow...

Phil Sharp Photographer I really like the way Sharp uses light and shadow in his portraits. they create an interesting feel and depth to his photos.  Something I noticed when looking through Sharp’s photos is that the majority of the people in the portraits have a serious and standoffish face. They all have piercing eye contact as though they are looking through you. The composition seems to be all about the sitter. There's no sense of place or context. It seems as though the portraits could be an actor's headshot for a serious role in a TV Drama. I really like the emotion portrayed through expression. When taking my photos, this is something I have been thinking about. Connection through the eyes. The photos below are taken from Phil Sharps's Instagram.      

Editing Portraits   Using my phone software I changed the portrait into black and white, the contrast and exposure which made my image stronger and have a more rough and grungy look. This got the desired effect however it took out a lot of the detail I wanted for example in the hair and the contrast was too strong in most areas. Next time, I want to use Adobe Lightroom software to isolate the different parts using the layer mask tool and to add a background. I'm hoping that by using the Lightroom software it will give my photos that professional look I wish to achieve. Moving forward I really need to learn the settings to get a real good crisp photo.

Photographing student and staff Today I took some photos of students and staff in the studio. In this day and age, people like to see themselves in a filter, they don't like to see the raw and grungy look of themselves, so I already felt the pressure of wanting to please them and felt it to be a bit of a challenge. I told each person before taking the photo that I would like them to think of something that makes them feel vulnerable and to keep it in mind whilst I took their photo. I thought this would help with portraying emotion through the eyes as I photographed them. This wasn't my only set back, as I'm a beginner with adjusting the settings of a camera whilst working in manual to take a portrait.  These were the photos that I took which have not been edited yet. My lack of knowledge of the settings shows that my photos were not in focus and some of them came out dark.   I think moving forward I want to set up another photoshoot with flash lighting and a plain backgroun...

Portraits of the Homeless Lee Jeffries The way Jeffries captures his subjects is so emotive. This is a type of photography that I like and had in mind for my own idea to capture expression and emotion.  Jeffries is known as a spiritual photographer. He uses his passion for photography to spread awareness of homelessness and connects with each person that he is photographing. They're not just a hidden identity, they all have their own journey. Jeffries says it's important for him to do this as many other photographers exploit and take advantage of homeless people because they are vulnerable and easy targets.                               From reading up on how Jeffries takes his photos he uses a wide lens and he gets up really close to take his photos. I don't have a wide lens for my camera but I'm gonna try and achieve this effect with my DLSR Camera. He also uses Lightroom software to adjust the exposure, h...

  Ideas Today I thought of a concept of hiding emotions with this charcoal and pastel drawing today. It's a broken down colourful brick wall looking into a void, dark space.  It's not something I wanted to take any further, It was just a quick speed during that I wanted to see how it would turn out.