INTRODUCTION

INTERPRETATION OF THE TASK

The assignment this time was to produce two photographs for a fictional adver-tising campaign promoting technical clothing for an outdoor sport. The photo-graph were to be taken outdoors with natural light with optional flash as second-ary lighting. One photo was to capture motion blur and the other freeze motion.

STRATEGIC DESIGN

So, what is technical clothing? One definition I found which kind of sums up all other descriptions I read is this: “Technical clothing is any garment that, through advanced fabric, treatment, cut, or construction, provides a function beyond hiding nudity.” That is from a reddit forum and by no means official, but as I said it sums it up. So with this in mind my final chosen technical clothing ended up being football (soccer) keeper gloves.

RESEARCH AND WORK PROCESS

CREATIVE METHODS/INSPIRATION METHODS

The first problem was to choose the clothing. First I tried the inspirational links in the assignments. None of them worked, but as at least one of them was from a norwegian photographer so I can imagine that they were for some kind of goretex clothing either for skiing ot hiking. As I have just moved to Brazil none of this would have helped me much anyway. So I started thinking about what sports were poplar and needed technical clothing here. My first thought was surfing. My husband actually has a wetsuit back home and he almost brought it, but in the end it was the wetsuit he would hardly need here or the waffel iron. Surfing still was my best idea initially but I realised that to take good pictures of someone surfing I would need a glass with more zoom than my 18-105mm. Renting a Nikon glass ende up being much more difficult than anticipated.

My second idea was better: Photographing someone practicing capoeira. They have a special white wide pair of trouser that they use that could hopefully be called technical. Their jumping and saltos would be great basis for some move-ment shots. With sun as backlight and some blue skye and beach background and a reflector this could be great. Problem was that all capoeira “rodas” (when they walk around the city showing their sport.) was the weekend after deadline.

report futebal.indd 1 1/29/2016 1:12:23 PM

I actually went down to the beach with a slight hope of finding someone doing capoeira. When it got dark and I had given up a man in the typical capoeira trouser showed up. I arranged to meet him the next day, which was my final day to shoot. The man did not answer my calls the next and final shoot day. So finally I went for my plan B which was football glowes on the football field of my neigh-bourhood. Of course when you have little time for a shoot it starts raining. So the shots ended up being shot with me holding an umbrella to protect the equipment while shooting, and my model and my little helper who shot the balls got soaking wet. Allthough many photography books will tell you that a cloudy day gives you the best soft light I personaly like a sunny day with blue skies and a reflecter a lot more. I personally think there is a lot more punch in sunny day photos, and espe-cially for advertising it is normally to prefer.

Paralell with trying to choose a clothing I prepared for the freeze motion and motion blur effects. Allthough I have tried these techniques before it has been a long time, so I did some refreshing on the internet. It kind of confirmed the set-tings I remembered but gave some extra input on the freezemotion. Allthough the settings are pretty obvious - as fast as you can with as low ISO as possible - there is also the element of shooting a photo that could not be shot without motion. Something fighting the laws of gravity is a good choice.

For motionblur I decided to use panning, a technique i have studied and tried before. Done right it gives a very good feeling of motion and still maintains a relatively sharp object. An object just moving before a slow shutter just blurs all. I was afraid my capoeira dancer would not move enough for panning so a plan B was slow sync flash with rear curtain. Allthough as I suspected, and comfirmed after some testing, this would need a bit darker ambient and could be difficult on a sunny day even with a narrow aperture. My footbal keeper luckily gave enough movement for panning.

I did not draw any sketches or storyboard as I had my shots pretty clear in my head: The surfer background would be pretty given on a wave, reflector or flash would be impossible with my equipment, so frontal sun would have to do it. With such an unpredictable sport the framing would have to be trial and error.

The capoeira option I already described. If the sunangle did not give me what I wanted (I checked the angle on suncalc.net and saw that sun only shines from the sea e few houres in the morning and it also quicly gets high. making backlight sun difficult) I also liked to try backlighting with flash to get a “commercial rim”.

For my final keeper shot the background was also set and I wanted the goal more or less centered. Here too I tried backlighting with the flash. What I forgot was that my radio and camera max syncspeed is 200 and Idid not get sharp enough photos before 400.

report futebal.indd 2 1/29/2016 1:12:23 PM

As for editing I just did basic RAW editing and some curving in photoshop.In the motion blur version I did remove som holes on the fingers of the glowes though. I also remove a very disturbing orange trashbin behind the goal. There was no way of avoiding it in the shot. The other goal on the field had a lot more “visual noise” behind.

ANALYZIS

I only had a week for this assignment because of an operation my mother did had left me a week after schedule. I have learned that idealy I should take test shots at location at the time of wanted sun angle. Have a B plan for lighing. Make shure transport to location is planned and cant fail. Plan the shoot for many days before deadline in case your model wont show or because you can bet it will rain on your planned day no matter what early forecasts say. Equipment backup is obvious. Finally I learned that focusing actually was harder than expected with motion photography. I even tried manually focusing for where my object would be but I have never gotten the hand of manual focus. It also demands a calibrated wiefinder.

report futebal.indd 3 1/29/2016 1:12:23 PM

RAWS

RAWS

report futebal.indd 4 1/29/2016 1:12:23 PM

DESIGN

STYLE/GENRE

Commercial photography with natural lighting. Motion blur and freeze motion photography. I would have liked some backlights but equipment and weather did not allow it this time. The freeze motion effect I think worked ok. I shot at 400. I was already pushing my ISO/noise limit so faster would not do.

CAMERA SETTINGSCamera: Nikon D5100Glass: Nikor 18-105mm

Freeze motion: 18mmIso: 640Shutter speed:1/400Aperture: F 7,1

Motion blur28mmIso: 100Shutter speed:1/20Aperture: F 8Speedlight with small softbox Flash fill

COLOR

I am sorry to say that I did not have much control of colour this time. The back-ground colors were given, the glowes colors were given, I only tried to dress the rest of the model in something a bit neutral to not take the focus away from the glowes

report futebal.indd 5 1/29/2016 1:12:23 PM

COMPOSITION, LAYOUT, GRID

I wanted the goal pretty centered in the composition to give the scene a famil-iar place of belonging. Initially I wanted to glowes at the 1/3 point discovered that the head was probably better for the 1/3. I instructed the keeper to start at one side of the goal to catch him streched more or less in the middle. The freeze motion may have a little too much empty space on the left but it also tells a little about where he is coming from and as such brings even more movement to the picture.

I tried to make the keeper as big as possible without making distortion and still keeping the goal in the picture. The goal is slightly angled to give more motion.

SOURCES AND REFERENCES

BOOKSOff-Camera Flash: Techniques for Digital Photographers by Neil van NiekerkCaptured by the Light by David A Ziser

LINKShttp://suncalc.nethttps://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/2eja8x/what_exactly_are_tech_clothes/http://www.rio.com/practical-rio/capoeira-classeshttp://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/index2.htmlhttp://www.famalia.com.br/?p=7382http://www.exposureguide.com/slow-sync-flash.htmhttp://www.lightstalking.com/how-to-freeze-motion-and-capture-shots-that-pop/

report futebal.indd 6 1/29/2016 1:12:23 PM