Photography – Reflections Off a Mirror

Category: Photography

Not so Good with Goodbyes – Week #12

May 26, 2016 / Sem / 0 Comments

This is pretty much the last week of teaching, lectures, tutorials, and, meeting people. As the clock reaches the last few minutes, students would line up around the classroom door to leave, and awkwardly looking at each other thinking of what to say as we all know we might not be seeing each other again next semester, particularly for school electives.

Personally, I would just smile and thank the tutor and carry on with my own way. If I do engaged with a conversation with a fellow course mate, would probably break into a conversation on how time passed so fast, and how the first semester of uni just flew by. When you’re actually in action while the semester is going on, you tend to wonder why does time pass so slowly and you can’t wait for the next break to happen so that you can enjoy your freedom, but when the last day of classes comes, you’ll think back and wonder where did all the time go and what have you managed to achieve over the period of the past few months.

I never felt more on top of the ball in this week’s lectorial, and for once I felt like I understood everything that the lecturer was saying. Only because, it was regarding the various studios that we will be attending next semester, and not something regarding media affordances with big words, theories, concepts and academic references. Don’t get me wrong, I try to understand and grasp the knowledge the lecturers are trying to convey to us during these weekly lectorials, but some times I find it a struggle to even just understand these theories and applying it into real life. I do question myself if I’ll ever apply this knowledge to my future job scope. Anyway, I digress, this week’s lectorial’s main focus was on the balloting and an extended announcement on attending a studio pitch that will be held on the 9th of June. I still have no clue what studios that I’ll be interested in, but I guess that studio pitching session should help ease my decision making when I come to it.

Come Wednesday, my weekly Media 1 workshop went on for the last time this semester. Our tutor was sweet enough to give out little bite sized candies like Maltesers and Sneakers. Just little gestures like this makes us, the students, feel like we actually matter and not just a body of people you come in to meet day in and day out. I would like to express my appreciation towards all the tutors, across all the courses I took this semester, and hope to see them again soon.

The End is Here, or issit? – Week #12

May 23, 2016 / Sem / 0 Comments

Today marks the end of Photography 101, a school elective that I’ve enrolled back in February. It has been a long time coming, starting out from not even knowing the 3 basic parameters on the camera that will determine your exposure (ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture), to actually getting my own DSLR from Gumtree, (funny story ’bout that, the guy who sold me the camera was a former student from the same Photography 101 in RMIT), to going out shooting and to find something really therapeutic about capturing moments, freezing motion, stopping time, all with a click of the shutter.

In today’s lecture, we were told that they are considering stopping this course for some reason, which kind of aches my heart to hear that. Personally, I always had a keen interest in photography, but haven’t gotten down to learning the ropes of doing so. Before enrolling to this course, I took pictures with my phone and posted them on social media, that’s as far as my photography skills go. After joining this course, it has taught me so much, and it is just another mode or avenue to express one’s self, much like music, paintings, or filmmaking, photography is another art form.

Where would I go from here? Well, I’ve already enrolled for Photojournalism as another school elective in Semester 2, so that’s that. But on a personal level, I am actually quite interested in joining some local photography competitions, which I might have to do some research on. Wouldn’t want to play ball with people who are way out of my league, therefore this requires some thought and help from peers or lecturers. One thing’s for sure though, you’re not going to find my camera in an ad on Gumtree, I can guarantee that.

Golden Opportunity for The Golden Hour – Week #11

May 18, 2016 / Sem / 0 Comments

In my earlier entries, I believe I mentioned about my final assessment for one of my electives, Photography 101. We were assigned to construct a final body of work of any theme of our choice and I picked to shoot my photos in the Golden Hour.

In photography as well as filmmaking, the Golden Hour is known as when the sun is about to rise or set to create a very warm and gold-ish hue over the landscape and subjects you plan to shoot, hence the name “Golden Hour”.

For the past few days, maybe weeks, the weather has not been on my side. Cloud cover, over cast, grey skies, strong winds, and stormy weather has been forecasted and pretty much came not proving the weathermen wrong. Therefore, it was a challenge shooting the golden hour when there wasn’t any to begin with. To make things interesting, we had to present our shots in this week’s Photography 101 workshop and trim it down to 8-10 photos to submit as our final body of work. So every opportunity I get with the sun peeping through the clouds would be a golden opportunity to shoot some pictures. I’d run out with my camera and start shooting away for certain limit of time before the sun sets or runs back behind the clouds till God knows how long before I can see it again.

Here are some of the golden hour pictures taken when I had the golden opportunity.

Golden Hour Photography – Week #8

April 30, 2016 / Sem / 0 Comments

Decided to head out to South Melbourne Beach with my DSLR to take some pictures during the sunset. As part of my assessment for Photography 101, we’re required to form a body of work consisting of 8-10 series of images. These are some rough ideas of taking pictures in the golden hour at the beach. Would probably head out for more golden hour opportunities. OR another idea would be just hitting the beach and taking pictures with anything relating to the beach since it’s such a primary destination for many activities such as fishing, sunbathing, chilling, walking the dog and more.

Enjoy.

Portraiture – Week #6

April 17, 2016 / Sem / 0 Comments

As mentioned in my previous post I recently taken up Photography 101 as a school elective and the following pictures are for a class assignment. They are basically portraitures of my mates at the Carlton Gardens Tennis Club and we were required to take 3 portraitures of any theme or series or not even have to be related. My approach was leaning towards sports photography taking after one of the most well known sports photographer, Clive Brunskill. We all know that I’m a tennis player myself and I my love for the sport began at the age of 6, and my interest in photography has always been a topic that I have not find the time or opportunity to scratch this itch until uni. Therefore, what more combining the 2 things I enjoy into pictures and portraits, and of course, the opportunity of socialising with people at a level of comfort for them to display their potential for the camera lens.

Walk in the Park – Week #3

For this semester I enrolled myself in the Photography 101 course as one of the school electives that we’re required to take. I have always been interested in taking photos and watch how they turn out in picture frames or photographs, and how you can capture an image and watch how various angles, lighting, depth of field, create a different perspective from the actual image. So decided to get down to the nitty gritty fundamentals of photography and see where I’d go from there.

Loaned a DSLR camera from the RMIT AV equipment department. I managed to get my hands on a Canon 5D Mk III and had no clue what I have just picked up, but after looking it up on the web, I soon found out that it costs over $2k for a shiny new one. Obviously having something of such paper value couldn’t be so bad right?

Took the camera to the nearby Carlton Gardens, just a 10 minutes walk from my apartment and started shooting away anything that might have caught my eye. Played around with the 3 main functions, ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture. Tried to getting used to how those 3 functions played hand in hand with one another, meaning, if you made some adjustments to one, you probably have to make adjustments to the others. It was quite a handful trying to shoot and adjust, shoot and adjust, shoot and adjust multiple times. But after getting a hang of it (or somewhat), I guess you slowly see the relationship within the 3 functions play together to form that “perfect” image. Unfortunately, due to my ignorance and being naive, I loaned a camera that has a set of lens that couldn’t. I found that was a huge handicap, as was having a hard time framing certain subjects and finding the right angle. Lesson learnt, always check the equipment before loaning.

After spending over 2 hours at the park, which I totally didn’t expect myself to (gave myself at least an hour before I got bored or was done playing around) but no, had a little more fun then I thought I would, like a kid with a new toy. Only driving factor for me to stop and return home was probably the fading light and stomach growls for food. Having said that, found that 2 hours really productive and to a certain extend, a little therapeutic.

Enough said, some pictures that I thought were “good” in my opinion are uploaded along with this post. Hope you enjoy it.