Documentary-Town

Contact Sheet-

Evaluation-

This shoot was the third shoot for my December project, i travelled the Colchester to take the shoot because i thought that Colchester was quite an interesting town. I would have preferred to have done this shoot in London city or North London as i thought that it would have more contrast to Great yarmouth and the beach type of landscape, as London is very busy place and it would have been better for capturing built up city life. However as i done my shoot in Colchester it was more of an  historical village type of town so i wanted to try and photograph the historical side of it like the castle. Because of the time that i had arrived to colchester it was around 4/5 so the sun was already  setting so some of the photos have quite a dark tone to it which has created a variation of tones but i would've preferred it to be lighter so that i would've had more time to take the photos in the actual town it self, because by the time i had walked to the town throughout the park it was just too dark. I would go back to Colchester as an earlier time and take photos in the town to show the shops and how busy the town was around christmas time because of the sales, then i would've shown in contrast how quite and peaceful the park was and take photos the lake to show the animals and nature of the park. Furthermore, i would've liked to have gone inside the castle so that i could capture the view   of the town and the park from inside of the castle, so i would have a greater range of perspectives and angles in this shoot as in the other shoots i have more variation of different angles but with this shoot i only have one photo that differentiates from all the other photos.

Straight photos-

Photos that need improving-

For this photo i wanted to try and capture the silhouette of the trees and the houses alongside with the sunset so that i could just have two different levels in the photos, the sunset and then just the bottom level of trees. However i did create this two level contrast, but not how i wanted to be. The bottom level is just too dark and so it morphs all of the trees into one dark section and having a few of the larger trees visible, but i wanted all of the trees outlines to visible but still dark. So the photo would look better if all of the individual trees were visible and maybe had different tones in them, so the larger or closer trees were slightly more visible than the smaller one. Also the photo is slightly out of focus so this is making the bottom appear more grouped together as there was nothing of the lens to clearly focus on because of the lighting. I still think that how the sun is setting adds a good effect to the photo as the sky has different tones of the colour of the sun, so it starts off blue with the white clouds over it then just gradually fades into the orange and light. On photoshop i would edit the sky section so that the colours are more visible and saturated so theres more contrast between the sky and the ground. Also i would try and lighten the bottom half of the photo so that some individual trees outlines can be seen more clearly.

This is a photo of colchester castle, i tried to get quite a few photos of colchester castle from different perspectives because i wanted to show the history of colchester. With this photo i wanted to try and capture the side of the castle and get the majority of it in as well as having the sunset in the windows.  However the trees were blocking the sun from the angle i took the photo from and the composition of the photo hasn't been executed as well as it could have been. Also the lighting of the the sky is too bright so the clouds and the section thats brighter just looks too exposed, there also seems to be no main point of focus and so the bench looks out of focus and it takes attention away from the castle as its just right in the middle of the photo. So to improve this photo i would try and make the sky less exposed and around the same tone all over but i would try and keep it light because it breaks away from the castle. I would crop the bottom section of the photo so that the bench is no longer visible and it would just make the photo look more professional. As there are already reflections of the trees and the sunset i enhance them so that they're more predominate, this would then add effect of reflections to the photo.

   

Edited photos-

For this edit i wanted to try and improve this photo in general because i thought that the photo needed to be improved by making the silhouettes of the trees more visible and less clumped together as one. When i did try to improve the darkness of the photo what became visible just made the photo looks unprofessional and just randomly placed objects, as there was a hedge down the middle of the photo. So i decided to lighten the photo by a touch which i did by using levels so the outline of the trees are a bit more visible but the area is still very dark, i then selected the section of sky and used hue/saturation to vary the colour of the sky which is now a pink/blue. I choose that colour because i thought it still looked natural but obviously different to the original, at first the colour was very saturated so i lowered the saturation to about -50 which made it natural and not so contrasting with the bottom half which is pure black. I then cropped it so that i could have a rule of thirds with the sun   and i cropped the bottom so that the black area wasn't so big, but i still wanted some in the photo as it breaks up from the sky, otherwise it would just be a photo of the sky and a small bit of tree tops, it also just made the photo look more appealing and properly edited. 

(First edit)

(Second edit)

For this photo, i didn't really know what i wanted to do with it, as i just really liked the photo in general because of the reflections in the river and how it had many colours and tones in it because of the sunset. Also i liked the composition of the whole photo because it has the river at the bottom then the trees just lead upwards from the river and even thug the trees take up quite a lot f the frame you can still see the background of the photo, so the sky and the grass. So with edit i dint really want to do anything experimental or change the photo that much, so at first i wanted to try and add a boat on the river but it just dint look right, so i turned the photo black and white which then brought out the trees a lot more which i then noticed the leafs at the top of the photo, which i liked as they kind of add framing to the photo, it would've looked better if the leafs went all the way around the framing of the trees so that it looked like the camera was looking through another trees leafs or a bush. After i had turned the image black and white and adjusted the colours that were darker than others, i liked how it looked but it just looked to plain so i used the filter gallery and chose to use the grain filter and type horizontal so that the grains would then travel in a horizontal line, this then added an eery type of effect to the photo as the photo is slightly darker and just the lines mixed with the trees looks off.