I have just completed the Exercise 1 (Part One) of the Digital Photographic Practice module and found the whole process very helpful. The purpose of the exercise was to design a workflow and I chose to practice on an indoor still life studio photo session.
Still life photography is part of my regular practice. I enjoy photographing plants and flowers indoors using natural daylight and applying diffusers and reflectors where necessary. For the purpose of this exercise I designed a workflow that covered all stages of my indoor photographic session from ‘the day before’ preparations to a finished product.
My reflections on using the workflow follow the process stage by stage and I will start with…
‘The Day Before' preparations
Visualising was the key part of my preparation. Having a mental picture of my session made it easy and straightforward to complete the rest of ‘the day before’ tasks. I will definitely use it in my regular practice.
I then planned the entire session, starting with aims and also looked at my location and timing.
Generally, it was helpful to follow the workflow at the planning stage: it encouraged me to think through the details and set clear and achievable goals for my session. The most challenging task was to decide what it is I want to do and why, i.e. to define the aims of my photo session. As soon as the aims were established, the rest of the plan fell into place. I was surprised how easy it was then to decide on the number of images, time, location etc.
My aims: This session was about photographing some garden flowers that I picked on the day. The aim was to capture the distinct shape and bright attractive colours, and also to convey the qualities that these flowers evoked in me: gentleness, purity and natural harmony.
Number of images: I aimed to have 2 to 5 images as my final selection. I expected the total number of frames to be 40 to 50 including bracketed shots.
How long: I planned to have 30 min for this session.
Where (location): The location for this session was a room with plenty of space for my equipment and for moving around.
When: The session was planned to take place between 10 and 2 pm on the next day.
Checking equipment is a part of my usual routine and I find it easy and straight forward.
Having a checklist at hand helped to save time. I checked my cameras, lenses, tripods and tripod heads. I also recharged batteries and cleared memory cards. I checked some lighting equipment in case of bad weather. I dusted and cleaned all lenses and screens.Checking camera settings is a part of my usual routine and is really so simple! I ‘ve learnt from my own experience that skipping this stage might lead to devastating outcomes.
Finally, I spent some more time visualising the whole session. I saw this as a very important step and did not find it repetitive. I found that my mental image of my photographic session has gained detail and I was now really looking forward to getting my camera out and doing some work.
Going through the planning process made me realise that:
- Simple, ideally natural lighting suited my subject and the aims of my session very well
- I did not need to use complicated lights for my session so there was no need to draw a picture of the set.
