Natasha Cantwell

Natasha Cantwell is a 2001 graduate from AUT with a Bachelor of Graphic Design and has been working as a freelance photographer and designer.
Natasha is a photographer, musician and video artist and is well known for her collaborations with Frankie and No magazines and fashion house, Madame Hawke.
She is published in numerous magazines such as Pavement, Staple and No magazines.

Fairfax Media

Fairfax Media is the largest rural and regional, magazine and digital media company in Australasia, with publications and websites in every State and the ACT in Australia, and throughout New Zealand.

Fairfax Media established its operation in New Zealand in 2003 following purchase of the publishing assets of Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL).

The company has established itself as an innovative, integrated multi-media business with strong brands across multiple platforms including newspapers, magazines and digital.

Fairfax Media has two national, nine daily and more than 60 community newspapers, 16+ magazines, market leading website stuff.co.nz and parenting website Essential Mums.

Fairfax Media has more than 21 different businesses based in New Zealand. These businesses include community, regional and national newspapers, magazine publishing, digital and print and distribution.

Form: creativity, quick thinking, your surroundings, whats already in front of you, your lighting situation

Context: News is delivered at every cost, your morals are severely tested, assignment are expected to be fulfilled.

Field Trip:

It was a great experience visiting the Fairfax Media Office seeing how things go and gaining more understanding of everything they do. Big office/company and organized.

Ilan Wittenberg

Ilan Wittenberg

Ilan Wittenberg is a free lance photographer. He was born in Israel and studied Engineering at university. He then graduated and work as a Engineer until he was made redundant in a few of his jobs as a engineer in Israel and when he moved from Israel here to New Zealand before he decided that he wanted to be a photographer.

We had the opportunity to have Ilan come into class and talk with us about his experiences as a free lance photographer. Ilan had no experiences in photography, it was just a hobby to him. He then thought that Photography was going to be his new career path. With support from his wife, he slowly began his journey into becoming the successful award winning photographer that he is today.

One thing that I learnt from his talk was that, if Photography is something you want to do for a living, with support from loved one's you'll achieve that goal and be successful. The beginning is always the hardest and there's always point where you'll fail, don't stop there, get back up and keep trying until you get there.

Research

Edith Amituanai

This is work done by Edith Amituanai. She is a fine art photographer. She photographs interiors of her living room and other places in her home like she is letting us into her world through lens and also a few community shots too. I have chosen her as one of the photographers I can relate to with my photographs. Although she is of a Samoan heritage and me being Tongan, we both take have photo's relating to our culture but with different meaning.

Community Photography

Genre: Community Photography

What do I see? In this photo I see a man ringing the church bell.

How does it relate to me? In Tonga, when someone rings the bell at church it means its a signal or a warning that it is almost time for church to start. This is the signal to let that specific community know that church is almost starting.

Form:

- The lines  e.g lines from the metal that hold the bell

- Texture

Community Photography

Genre: Community Photography

Experimentation.

Evaluation: It was a cloudy day and could hardly see the sun. I used no reflectors or flashes for this, it was all just natural light. This is because I wanted to use the natural light outside to see how the photograph will look like, also the other reason why I wanted to use natural light for this photograph was because it was cloudy and the sun was hardly out.

Context: this photo was taken outside after church on Mothers day one Sunday. It was in the parking lot beside the church where I took this photo with a few church members in the background chatting and getting in to their vehicles to leave.

Content: Bringing out the culture aspects of a tongan. As you can see they are both wearing mats which is part of the Tongan tradition when it comes to special days like Mothers day, Fathers day, White Sunday and so on.

Community Photography - Sunday Afternoon Church Service

Genre: Community Photography

Location: Free Church of Tonga - Haveluloto, Tongatapu

This image was taken during the Sunday afternoon service in Tonga.

Form:

- Lines on the tiles, the chairs, the two boys shirts and the windows

- The patterns on the windows

- Repetition of Red and Blue in the windows

- Depth of field

Content:

The idea of this image is to show that as a community, they gather together every Sunday and spend there Sunday together as a community at church for that church service as the Preacher preaches. In the Kingdom of Tonga, Sunday is the most important day of the week where no shops, dairies, supermarkets or any business' open. There's strictly no loud music, dancing, playing games of any sort. This is because Tongans believe that in the Bible, the 7th day of the week (Sunday) is the day God made for his people to rest and go to church and up until today, this is how Tongan's have lived in Tonga ever since. This also shows how important the religious belief is as a Tongan, not only in Tonga but for Tongan's around the world.

Tanu Gago

Tanu Gago

Born in Samoa and raised here in South Auckland, Tanu is part of a large family with diverse cultural background from around the Pacific. He studied performing arts at Unitec Institute of Technology and received a Bachelor of Arts in Performing Arts with a major in writing and directing for screening. Tanu's cultural background is one of the driving forces behind his artistic expression. He see's photography as a one shot opportunity to tell a story. In his most recent body of work Avanoa o Tama, 2012 Gago presented a series of photographs of Polynesian men which destabilise preconceived notions of gender and sexuality. Gago challenges the social and cultural expectations surrounding the representation of gender by concentrating on the ambiguous and performative nature of masculinity and sexual identity.

Kingsize Studio

Kingsize Studio - Visit

Kingsize Studio, a well known company for their studio's located in Grey Lynn, Auckland. At Kingsize, they have four different studio's suitable for your liking. They also have equipment which you can hire for your shoot. Each studio is different and are used for different reasons depending what kind of shoot you are planning to do. At Kingsize, they have great and friendly staff who are there to help you if you are unsure about anything and to answer any questions or anything you are concerned about.

Final Print

This was my final print that I chose to print and hang on the wall. When my final image was printed, it looked under exposed. The colors weren't exactly the same as how I had it on my computer screen. This was either because I didn't select the right image or because its from the printing quality i.e the printing paper or printer.

Next time if I had to shoot the same image again, I would shoot this at a ISO of 400 (or higher if needed) and have my white balance on shade. I would have my shutter speed probably at 1/50 or 1/40 and aperture of 4.0 or 5.6 so the picture won't turn out looking under exposed.

Studio Work 2 - Chiaroscuro Lighting

In the studio we played around with the lighting again. But this time, we were

learning about Chiaroscuro Lighting where the image is mostly made up of the light/light source

and darkness. Some images are in colour, most are in black and white.

Reference Photo's

Studio Work

In the studio, we looked at the three point lighting which

was Key light, Fill light and Backlighting to create a 3 Dimensional look. 

Flash - Research

Flash and Blur

Motion Runners, by Ernst Haas

Under and Over Exposed

Kolobrzeg, Poland, July 23 1992 by Rineke Dijkstra

Direct Flash

Vater und Sohn, Bubenreuth, 2005 by Juergen Teller

Line and Pattern - Research

Image by Paul Strand,

Sence, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, 1916, platinski tisk, San Francisco

Museum of Modern Art.

Image by Max Dupain,

Opera House and Harbour Bridge, circa 1973.

Flash Work - Class Task

Under & Over Exposed Flash

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Flash

ISO: 800

Shutter Speed: 1/60

f stop: 11.0

In this image, I bounced the flash off the side of the wall.

Flash & Blur

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Flash
ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1/8
f stop: 22.0

This image, the flash was direct and I moved my camera from one side to

the other side to have more blur to the image.

Bounced Flash

(using a reflector)

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Flash

ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1/60

f stop: 16.0

This bounced shot I used a reflector to bounce the light off it. I bounced the

light from the flash off the reflector because the ceiling was too high up and there was no

other way to bounce the light off so I used the white side of the reflector

for this image.

Diffused Flash

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Flash
ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1/60

f stop: 11.0

On this image I used a diffuser which covered the flash to take this shot.

Direct Flash

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Flash

ISO: 400
Shutter Speed: 1.60
f stop: 16.0

In this image, this is using direct flash where the flash is directly hitting

the subject when it goes off.

Natural Lighting - Class Task

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Daylight

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/60

f stop: 11

This is a diffused lighting except in this image, I didn't use the diffuser. Instead I used the tree's

which was blocking out the sun that gave me the look of diffused light.

In this image I also used composition (depth of field) as you can see where my

subject is in focus and my background is out of focus with another person walking away/out of

the passage/walkway.

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Daylight

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/60

f stop: 22

This is an example of direct sunlight on my subject. My subject is lying on the grass

because the grass represents texture.

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Daylight

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/125

f stop: 20

This image is my reflected image. Using the gold reflector to the right side of the

subjects face and body to fill in the shadows and to also give a warmth sort of look to the

subject. The subject is sitting on the wooden pole because the wooden

poles represents line.

Colour Images - Class Task

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Custom

ISO: 100

Shutter Speed: 1/250

f stop: 9.0

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Custom

ISO: 100

Shutter Speed: 1/100

f stop: 5.6

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Custom

ISO: 100

Shutter Speed: 1/200

f stop: 9.0

Camera Set on: Manual

White Balance: Custom

ISO: 400

Shutter Speed: 1/50

f stop: 4.5

Photomerge

Original Photo's

1

2

3

4

The four images above are the original photo's to the panorama

photo which is shown below. With the use of Photoshop I was able to merge

all four images to create my panorama.

Final Image - Panorama

Line and Pattern

Line and Pattern 1

- This was edited as it was a little over-exposed

Camera Set on: TV

Shutter Speed: 1/160

ISO: 100

White Balance: Daylight

F stop 7.1

In this image, we have the path as a line. Also imagining the trees as a line

and the continuos trees or the trees being in a line as an example

of pattern.

Line and Pattern 2

Camera Set on: TV

Shutter Speed: 1/250

ISO: 100

White Balance: Daylight

F stop 13

We have this as an example of line and pattern. The lines are the squares

and this also creates a zig-zag pattern on the concrete.

Line and Pattern 3

Camera Set on: TV

Shutter Speed: 1/250

ISO: 100

White Balance: Daylight

F stop 9.0

In this example for line and pattern. We have the wooden poles and also the yellow

lines on the side of the road and also the line that the curve creates. The

pattern in this image would be the poles as its continuos.

Line and Pattern 4

Camera Set on: TV

Shutter Speed: 1/250

ISO: 100

F stop 5.6

This is found in the shopping centre in Otara. It has a lot of lines

that creates patterns and shapes you can see like circles, triangles and rectangles.

Line and Pattern 5

Camera Set on: TV

Shutter Speed: 1/250

ISO: 100

White Balance: Daylight

F stop 7.1

These lines are also an example of line and patterns. Although the lines make a triangle

but also creates a pattern on this window.