Fourth Test Shoot

St Mary's Church - Maidenhead

This shoot was a test shoot but I may potentially use one or some of the images in my final piece. The images are of my sister, Sophie, in the church she attends. All of the images are inspired by Clare Hewitt's portraits, just like in my previous test shoots. I experimented with different angles, and wanted to see if the image looked more effective if there was more of the background in it, or more of Sophie. 

I told Sophie to look straight at the camera for some of the images, and to look into the distance absentmindedly for others. It took her a while to become comfortable around the camera, and this shows because some of the images look too posed, and in others she is laughing. However, I think that a few of the images have some potential, in particular the close-ups where she is looking absentmindedly towards and away from the camera.

I am focusing on the individuals in the images for my project, but what I learnt from my previous test shoots is that the background needs to be interesting to make it an all-over successful image. This in mind, I wanted to have something that was interesting and also related to Christianity in the background, behind Sophie. In the majority of the images, there is a large cross, a stain glass window and the procession stands with bibles in them. This makes the viewer immediately think of Christianity, and so will directly link to the quotes that will be next to the images. The cross and the stain glass window is also quite unique, and so if I get enough images of other churches, the images will not look too similar and dull.

I usually borrow the University's Nikon D800 camera for my projects, however as I was unable to book one for the Easter holidays, I have to use my own Canon 450. This camera is not of the same quality and so I had to try a lot harder to make the composition of the images look just as good. This is challenging but I am glad that I have to do it, as I feel like I was relying too much on the good quality camera to give me good quality images, and not using my own skills enough. Therefore, this project will test my photography skills more than the previous projects.

1

2

3

4

5