PHOTOSHOOT 2: CALLUM.

After the success of Qetina's photo-shoot, I was feeling confident about Callum's. Before going off to do the shoot I spoke to my tutor John, who advised me on ways I could use the coloured cellophane when doing outside shooting, such as wrapping it around the lens. I gathered my materials and styled Callum before we left to walk to the park I wanted to shoot in. The walk is around 10 minutes, so it wasn't too much effort to get there. When arriving at the park my plans for going during the day when it'd be quiet were successful, as we only had to wait a short time for the round-a-bout to be free.

When I got around to shooting in the park it began to rain, which ruined my shoot only a little because it was hard to adjust the camera settings to get the lighting right due to the weather. I used the technique that John taught me, but it wasn't very successful, so I decided to scrap it and try again during the indoors shoot. I instead used the yellow plastic and placed it over the camera lens, so that all the photos had a yellow filter, because Callum describes the yellow of the round-a-bout as the main colour he associated with that memory. The photos came out mostly too saturated with light, but there were a few I could use in my zine, so I decided I'd put more effort into the indoor photo-shoot and we set home.

The indoor photo-shoot was a lot easier, both in terms of lighting and through instructing my model Callum. I could tell he felt more comfortable indoors, so the photos came out a lot less stiff and showed a bit more emotion. What also helped was having a conversation with him about the memory of almost setting fire to our grandmother's carpet, which was making us both laugh and so I got good shots of him being himself and laughing about the memory I was trying to portray in the photograph.

What worked about the inside shoot was the lighting, and also the techniques John told me about that didn't work previously outside. The photos where I used this technique came out with really nice, crisp lighting and had a really nice yellow glow around them, which made it look as if there was more colour gel lighting than there was. I really like this aesthetic and I tried it out with other colour plastics during the shoot.

What didn't work so well in the shoot was trying to get the same movement as I had in the shoot with Qetina. I can't quite put my finger on why I couldn't get the same effect with slow shutter speed, however I think I might have not had enough lighting to get a clear image with movement. I did get some which really work with the lighting and slow shutter speed as it made it look like a flare or a light leak, which has a really good aesthetic. The colours ended up being more saturated than originally planned, but I feel that the indoor photographs were a lot more successful than the outdoor ones, however I will still use some of the park shots in my zine to show variety.