Visiting Speaker - Caroline Molloy.

Today we had Caroline Molloy give a lecture about herself and her work.  Caroline works as a professional portrait photographer.  She has worked for Glamour magazine, Marie Clare, Good House Keeping, Prima, and many others.  Caroline didn't have enough time to go into more detail about her commercial work, which was a shame, as I would have liked to hear more about it.  Caroline has worked on a few personal projects, such as Age 20 Isreal 95, Troubled thoughts, and a project on identical twins, which I forget the name of.

Age 20 Isreal 95 was a project about the Isreali army.  The Isreali army conscripts both men and women, and Caroline chose to focus on the women in the army.  Caroline spoke of a feeling of 'family', and that the women feel that they have to serve for their family.

Troubled thoughts was a project on the troubles in Ireland.  Caroline is a Catholic, and although she wasn't affected directly by the troubles, she wanted to document how it affected others, and tell their stories.  Caroline used still images as well as moving images in her project, and used the transcript from the video as an art piece in its own right.

The identical twins project started as a result of Caroline starting to notice twins everywhere.  When she started photographing the twins, she didn't know what the project would become, and didn't know what direction she would take with it.  This project would eventually help to get commissions for commercial work.

...

Following my introduction to 5x4 cameras, I have swiftly come to the conclusion that it is imperative to my survival that I acquire one.  That is all.

First Test Shoot....

Today I had my first test shoot.  After getting my times mixed up (again), I finally managed to rent two Flash Heads, stands, soft boxes and a Beauty dish.  I think the shoot went well, I have the image that I am going to use for the digital Visualisation for the interim crit.  I was clear on my idea; I wanted to use cross lighting, with one light, and a black background.  I also had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the subject to be.

First, I used a long rectangular soft box, positioned vertically, to the right of the subject.

This is the setup for the above photo.

It took a few tries to get the light in the right place to get a highlight in both eyes.  I like the shadows on the face, but wanted to try and lessen the shadow on the chin.

  Next I tried using a square soft box, to see what the difference would be.  Here is the result.  

This is the setup for the above photo.  

As you can see, there is less light spilling vertically from the soft box, which allowed me to concentrate the light more on the subjects face.  however, because the light is more concentrated, it gives harsher shadows on the fee, which I did not want.  

I finally settled on the beauty dish. 

This is the setup for the above photo.  

 The beauty dish gives a much wider spread of light, which gives softer shadows (By soft, I mean the transition of light to dark).  I still need to work on the composition and position of the light, as well as the amount of light from the flash.  

Overall, I think todays shoot was successful, I am now more clear on my idea, and how I should go about shooting it.