Photojournalism - Jonathan Farrow-White
I took a photograph of a bus shelter, I borrowed my Dad's ladder to capture the shot; I wanted to capture how bleak the bus stop is with using the street light as a spot light. I wanted to see the capabilities of the Canon 650D in low light circumstances. I used the shutter speed of 1/125 due to not capturing any movement with the photograph. However, I had to lower the ISO to 800 to gain the effect that I really wanted, otherwise using a higher ISO would leave the same effect. In result to using a high ISO, would have made the image seem clear and well lit. I wanted to make sure that just the bus stop was in-focus by using a smaller field of view. I found that f3.5 worked best to obtain the right effect I wanted. When editing the RAW photograph, I use the default settings for making the image black and white and added the filter “lens blur” to anchor the street light as a spot light.
I took a photograph of the water feature on campus; I wanted to capture a still of the water flowing into the pond. I wanted to see what it would look when the waterfall hit water. I used the highest shutter speed of the Canon 650D witch is 1/4000. However, I had to boost the ISO to 1600, when really if I was shooting at admiral shutter speed, I would of used a ISO of 100 to 200. I wanted to make sure that everything was in-focus by using a wide field of view. I played about with the f numbers and I found that f5 worked best to obtain the most amount of detail in the image. When editing the RAW image, I played with the colour balance to make out the only aspect of the photograph was the colour of the water.. However, I had no intentions when changing the colour balance with but I was best pleased with the mistake I made.
Javier Manzano
Javier Manzano is an award-winning Mexican photographer who is currently based in the United States. He is known for his coverage of the country’s drug wars, the war in Afghanistan and the Syrian Civil war. Manzano was born in Mexico but moved to the USA with his family when he was 18 years old. He worked as a journalist and photographer for advertising agencies and the Rocky Mountain News, until they closed down in 2009. After which he began working as a freelance photographer for the Associated Press and other news outlets.
Manzano has won multiple awards such as the World Press Photo Award twice in 2011 and again in 2013. However, Manzano’s Pulitzer-prize winning photograph was taken in the Karm-al Jabal district of Aleppo, Syria. Manzano is the first free lance photogrpher to win the Pulitzer-prize in over 17 years. The winning photograph shows two Free Syrian Army soldiers guarding a sniper’s nest as light streams through bullet holes in the wall behind them.
Narciso Contreras
Narciso Contreras is a freelance photographer born in Mexico City, found of exploring each encounter to precisely capture its most poignant moments. His work focuses in feature stories, reportage and documentary based on religious communities, human nature and conflicts, the later being his main focus for the past years. He studied philosophy and photography in university, conducted research for many years and has been a professional photographer for the last five years.
From looking at some of Contreras photographs from his time in Syria, it seems to be that he uses a lot of image sharpening. Contreras does this to anchor his point to capture as much detail as possible so the audience has a connection with the photograph. Narciso Contreras also uses colour saturation to set a darker tone in his images; in a way it reflects the situation of the image, for example the photograph of the innocent civilian man that has just been hit by a ricochet sniper bullet. I love his photograph of rebel soldier on the back of a truck shooting a mounted machine gun, yet again using image sharpening to capture as much detail as possible works well with the fast shutter speed capturing the burst of the bullet and the round flying out of the chamber. This image sums up what is going on in Syria in one photograph.
Darren Heath
I started to look at different aspects of photojournalism, such as sport photojournalism. One that I was drawn to was Darren Heath, who is a multi award-winning photographer that specializes in Formula One and the automotive industry. Darren won the 2005 The Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship as recognition of his excellence and evidence of distinguished ability in his chosen field.
Very similar to Contreras and Javier Manzano, Heath varies in different shutter speed and f-numbers to add a poetic look towards his images. However, capturing a fast moving object, such as a Formula One car, you would have to shoot at a high shutter speed to capture the full amount of detail. Although Heath uses a lot of image sharpening and vibrancy when editing his images, this adds the sense poetic view to his images .