Surreal

We took three photographs for the surreal element of the assignment. This photo mixes two different types of London's culture in a creative "surreal" way, I changed the picture to brown and white to make it even more urban. I used the lasso tool in Photoshop to trace around the edges of the man break dancing, this was difficult as he was in an awkward position. So the parts I couldn't get to I used the background eraser tool.
With the focus being off center, I think it makes a very strong image.

In this photo I combined a picture of a pigeon who was originally perching on a ledge, with a different angle to the London Eye that you usually see. This photo also mixes together two types of London Cultures and puts a less positive look on it. I particularly like the composition in this image, with the lamp on the left side which is wider and shorter than the London Eye, in a way its balanced out. 

Close Up Nature

We took these photographs around rural Cheshire, they all used a short depth of field sot the close up element of nature we were capturing was in focus and the backgrounds were not.

Nature and Landscapes - Bickerton

These Photographs were taken in and around Bickerton Hills in Cheshire, The main landscape ones were taken from the peak of Raw Head.  

London Dancers

We went into London to further experiment with photography and whist there we captured images of street dancers by the Thames. 

We had to concentrate on freezing moving in these images as the dancers were moving fast, unfortunatly in some of them the composition could be improved, although this is an outcome of the fast moving dancers.

Portsmouth

We both went to Portsmouth to in order to take photographs of subjects we do not usually get to experiment with. We were able to visit the docks and look around on HMS Victory, as well as view the docks from the water on a boat trip. We took many photos experimenting with different styles of photography, these are some examples of out experimentation:

In this first photograph we tried to capture the repetitive pattens which were inside HMS Victory, with the row of cannons and lights. The closest light we positioned on the top right third and, the cannon along the lower third line. It was tricky to get the correct exposure in this shot as it was dark inside the boat but there were windows all along the side. It took a few attempts to get the correct camera settings, but I think we managed to do it in the end. A narrow depth of field was used so that the background is slightly blurred and the subject is in focus.

This photograph is of a the gun deck on HMS Victory, we decided to make this photograph a dark sepia as it gave an effect that we felt captured the history of the ship and and how empty it is now compared to the days when it would have been full of sailors at sea and in battle. 

In this photograph you can see a fire bucket hanging on the gun deck of HMS Victory, we kept the bucket and gunpowder holder in focus and using a narrow depth of field blurred the background.

This row of buckets hang along the poop deck on HMS Victory, we experimented with the 'close up' photography that we have chosen to do for our assignment, although obviously this is not of nature. Again, this photograph has repetitive patterns and we used a short depth of field to capture the closest bucket in the right third in focus and to blur the other buckets and the rope fencing

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This photograph is of the navigation equipment the captains of HMS Victory would have used.

This was another example of experimenting with close up photography, again we used a short depth of field in order to capture the detail on the Victory hat, yet blur the background. We placed the hat in the lower left third of the photograph.

I particularly like this photograph because of the battered rustic boats in the background and the way the pigeon in perched on the railings. I think the composition  could have been improved by not capturing some of the left hand side of the image. However after attempting to crop it out we decided it looked better left in as the cropping would change the shape of the image in a negative way.

In this photograph you can see the old battered tied up by the docks, we chose to apply a sepia filter as it added to the old, abandoned feeling of the image.  

I really like the historic feeling in this image, in which you can see a battleship and also smaller boats in the foreground.  The black and white works really well, and we applied the rule of thirds when composing the image.

I particularly like the lighting in this image, and the old battered flag shows the history that is in the docks at Portsmouth, you can see the spinnaker tower on the left. I think the composition could have been improved, but we chose to show it in our blog because we liked the lighting.

We used the the rule of thirds when composing these three images and we like the overall outcome of the background scenery and and the boats.

We were experimenting with perspective in this photograph and we really like the overall outcome.

We used a short depth of field in this image to capture the life ring in focus and the background not, I think the composition could have been a little bit better but overall we were pleased with the image.

We both felt that we achieved a lot in Portsmouth and we managed the gain experience in many different aspects of photography, as well as these images we have taken some which we intend to use for our surreal images, after they have been edited.