Social Documentary - Graveyard Shoot

Last Saturday I managed to get out and take some more pictures.  The plan was to do two photo shoots, one in the centre of Aarschot next to the monument and another in the local grave yard.  As it happens the conditions were not right for the first, there was way too much light and I needed to set a really slow shutter speed.  I will have to return at a later date to that one.

 

In the graveyard I had more success and it was a good learning experience.  I had An wearing a black dress with a red scarf and holding some yellow flowers.  The sun was bright and casting some harsh shadows so it was going to be a bit of a challenge.  With me I had a stepladder, two tripods, my usual range of lenses, remote trigger and flash gun.  I metered the light and it was F20 at 1/125 at iso 200.  I wanted to capture the scale of the graveyard to indicate the number of people who were killed during the executions.  The graveyard was a separate area within the main public graveyard and it had the graves of Belgian soldiers on one side and civilians on the other.  The picture below captures the extent of the loss of life, all from the first world war.

I probably won't include this image because I think it is not particularly well composed or has any impact, or certainly not the kind I am looking for.  The Soldiers are buried on the left of this picture and the civilians on the right.  Between the trees is a large monument, which I wanted to photograph and Arthur's grave is in the shadows in the opposite quadrant.  Because the trees cast such a large shadow I did not have to contend with streaks of very bright sunshine when taking later pictures.  I did have to handle a rather harsh shadow across the main monument which is demonstrated in the photo below.

In the first image the shadow is cast across the top of the monument and I have set up the flash off camera, but it is lighting up the side rather than the face.  I had set the flash to give the same exposure as the rest of the ambient light.  With some adjustment I directed the flash to achieve the exposure for the second shot.  The only thing I am not too happy with is the slight glare of the flash that has caught the tree on the left hand side of the picture.  That said I decided to get closer to the model and frame a rather different shot which is shown below.

Again here the glare of the flash is caught on the left hand tree but the cross is nicely exposed.

 

I moved on to the tricky subject of photographing a shadow cast onto a gravestone.  I will cover this in another post but I would like to close on the next image.  I went behind the trees to where Arthur's grave was and measured the ambient light, it was F5 at 1/125 at iso 200.  I set up the flash on a tripod off camera and turned the power up so that I could cast a shadow.  I measured the light reading from the flash and it was F18 at 1/125 at iso 200.  I had failed to appreciate that I was about to under expose the background.  I did not achieve the aim of casting a shadow but I did get a rather good result when I made this mistake!

 

There is a shadow cast but it was not really the right height and set up.  I opted to get a lot closer to the grave stone but that will be shown in my next blog.  An was not really posing for this as I told her it was a test shot, I do like the way the colours have come out and the look she has.

 

That is all for now!

 

Social Documentary

One of my two portfolios is based upon a social documentary theme.  In my case I have chosen to remember an event from 19th August 1914.  The First World War had only just started and in the small town of Aarschot there was an incident where around 150 local people were executed in reprisal for the killing of a senior German Officer.  My mother-in-law's grandfather, Arthur Ryckmans, was one of the victims.

My aim is to mark the event, the link to the family and the idea that the family continues even though this terrible thing has happened.  I will post more details when I have researched them, but to start with I have this photograph of my mother-in-law's hands holding a picture of her grandfather.

Starting Out

Hi, I am just starting out with blogging and my aim is to chronicle the photo shoots that I do so that I can learn and pass on my experiences to other like minded people.

I have been into photography in one form or another since I was a child, but I only bought my first SLR camera back in 1997.  I am a Canon man, although this is not because I favour it over the Nikon or any other brand but that I have started with Canon and it would be far too expensive to give up my equipment now and change.  I have an EOS D50 and a range of lenses and other equipment.

Until recently I liked to avoid the use of flash, although I have had a Speedlite 550EX for some time, it has sat shamefully in the cupboard for most of the time that I have owned it.  That all changed when I attended a course at First Point Photography in Bournemouth.  Here I have learned how to use flash, both studio and on camera outdoors.  I quickly bought a light meter, which I now use all the time and a set of studio lighting.  I went a bit mad but then the possibilities are vast when you have the toys to play with.

I have to complete two portfolios for my course and so most of this blog will be about that to start with.  I do work full time too so keeping this up and doing the photography is quite a demand so here goes!