Contact Sheets

Contact Sheet 1
I'm relatively satisfied with my first set of contact sheets and the overall shoot met to my expectations. As I mentioned in previous posts, I sat down with my subject and briefly interviewed him so I could get to know a little more about him and assess the apartment for possible items that resembled his character. Obviously I was aware to keep track of the time so when it came to composing the shot I had to think on my feet and adopt a conscientious attitude when directing my subject, so I could get the best out of him in the valued time given to me.  I did however experience a few minor technical errors. As expected the 18-55mm was quite limiting. I found that I had to set the lens to the widest focal length and shoot a fair distance away from my subject  to include as much of the surrounding space as was possible. In an ideal situation I would of required a wider lens but seeing as I do not have one in my possession  I will have to compromise with the one that I have and use it to the best of my advantage. Another thing that I didn't  consider prior to shooting, was that the apartments have remarkable high ceilings, so bouncing the flash was little more complex than I imagined therefore in preparation for my next shooting session, I will fit a bounce card on the top of my flash gun and see whether this will give better results.

Contact Sheet 2 & 3

The next three photoshoot sessions took place over the one weekend due to the resisdents work commitments. Taking in and reflecting on everything that happened from my first shoot, I thoroughly prepared myself for this lengthy endeavour. I was still a little apprehensive about the issue surrounding the flash, however this time round  my thoughts were reassured as I was told that using a white card would certainly solve the problems when it came to bouncing the flash off of the high apartment ceilings.  Again I stuck to the same routine as I did on my first shoot, briefly interviewing the subjects, getting to know a bit about them and then connecting their individual character to the interiors. Having this structure run alongside shoots did indeed benefit me. Everything generally went according to plan and I also feel as if my subjects were appreciative on how I had organised the entire length of the session from start to finish. I'm also quite proud of myself in how forward I became with directing them. I will admit I initally thought the process was going to be a bit daunting. I'm fully confident with photographing strangers on the street and have a lot of experience in doing so. It was more the idea of being in  someone's actual living space that had me concerned. I was conscious about taking up too much of the residents time and as I had never visited the apartments before photographing my subjects, I had no visual expectations or pre-determined ideas about how I was going to compose them until it came to that exact stage so I just want to urge the fact that all of the images are recollections of  completely "in the moment" spontaneous decisions, to which i'm somewhat pleased with.