Work Record Monday 17th March 2014

Preparation; 
The aim for this shoot is to show various different animals, getting natural images of them in a studio setting.

To prepare I need to; 

• Decide what lighting I am going to use 
• Decide what colour background will work best 
• Decide on any props to use 

What I hope to achieve;
I hope to achieve a studio shoot showing different animals that you would not normally encounter, while showing them naturally rather than in a false, composed way.

What I actually achieved; 
I am really happy with what I achieved, and I got a wide range of images showing various different animals in different positions and showing different compositions. This was probably the hardest shoot I have done as it relied a lot on where the animals wanted to go and what they wanted to do, which although this was what I wanted to capture, it did make it hard if they were avoiding the camera. To overcome this I did use a variety of props such as twigs, wood and food to keep them entertained. The images that I feel turned out best were of the frogs as their colourings stood out vividly against the white background and brown wood, which emphasised their exotic nature. When editing, I wanted to keep the images natural but make the colours stand out more so I just worked on contrast and brightening the colours, making them more vivid.

 This is my favourite image from the shoot. What I like is most is how the greens, blues and golds stand out so well, showing how tropical, exciting and different to ordinary garden frogs they are. I also really like their positioning, which shows them both together, which is fairly rare. The composition is also good, with them right in the middle. When editing I just used levels and curves to make the colours stronger.

This is another image from the shoot I really like. What I like most about this image is all the texture that is shown is the wood, slug and its shell which creates a very natural image. I also like how the snail is seemingly coming towards the camera and is looking straight on. When editing, I wanted to make the snail appear a more golden colour so the image did not look too brown so I worked on brightening the snail and bringing out the yellow tones more as well as increasing contrast.



What I am going to do next; 
I am really happy with how this shoot went, and I got a range of good images so I am going to look into another idea.