Photo Portfolio

To support our Practice Portfolio grade in the production module, we had to complete a photographic portfolio showing our understanding and knowledge of composition, choice of lenses, control of aperture, ISO, shutter speed and the use of focus and how it works with lighting.

We had to think of a theme that linked all our images together, I chose the theme of 'Christmas Lights' as it was during the Christmas period when I was capturing all my photographs. In 20 photographs I needed to illustrate a concept or two from visual organisation, proportion, lens effects and aperture/shutter. Each concept had some themes within them and we had to make sure each of our 20 photos included at least one of each theme within the concepts. The themes that we had to fulfil were things like Frame within a Frame, The 'Sinuous S', Deep Focus, Under Exposure and so on.

At first I wanted to do the theme 'Urban' and capture images around the City of London of the main landmarks in London and the way people travel in London like the tubes, buses and taxi. I thought that theme was a bit too broad and it would have been hard to link the images together, so then I thought of the theme 'Lights', which was still a bit vague so I narrowed it down to 'Christmas Lights.' The theme of 'Christmas Lights' was a perfect theme because it was the right time of the year as it was Christmas and all the lights and decorations were put up, which gave me the chance to capture some beautiful images of the lights and whilst capturing my photos, I found that a few of my peers had also chosen the theme of lights and others Christmas but no one had done Christmas Lights I don't think.

We had a tutorial with Dale Wightman using the Canon EOS 7D's before going out to shoot with the cameras, so we got a rough idea of the how to work the controls on the 7D. The kit comes with 3 different types of lenses; a 28mm prime lens, 50mm prime lens and a 18 - 135mm zoom lens. I used all three of the lenses to suit each of the concepts as each of the lenses work in different ways, the prime lenses you can not change the vocal length where as the zoom lens you can vary the vocal length from 18mm - 135mm. This allows me to use the zoom lens to change the composition of the subject without having to move. The prime lenses are smaller and lighter to carry around, they also offer better light-gathering ability meaning a larger maximum aperture. I used the prime lenses mainly for the low lighting whilst I was shooting at night and to get the wider angle shots, so it does not cut off the edges.