Lisa Amison Photography: 2010

Lecture

Joe Cornish came into college to give a presentation on his life and work on Wednesday 8/12/10. His presentation was inspiring and he discussed his whole ethos behind his work and the reasons he takes certain shots. Obviously a lot of his work is now done as a commercial job but some work he has done is just for pure enjoyment. All his work is based on art, craft and emotion which he tries to put into all of his work if he is taking shots for enjoyment or an assignment. Before the lecture I wasn't sure that I wanted to research him but after listening to Joe talk and seeing some of his images I have now decided to include him within my research on nature photography.

Research

Joe Cornish was born in exeter in 1958, he studied art at university where his passion for photography started and after graduating in 1980 he went on to work with studio and car photographers for a few years helping him to build on his skills in commercial photography.

This career path didn't happen following a meeting with Charlie Waite he inspired him to pursue his passion of the outdoors and undertake travel photography with much of his work featuring in travel books which led to a partnership with the national trust. To help progress his skills as a landscape photographer Joe moved to Yorkshire in 1993 and is now devoted to landscape photography especially in wild places.

Joe has been involved with a raft of books for the national trust and then his own books which include First Light, a Landscape photographers art and Scotland's coast.

My own work comparisons

After a conversation with Steve I said that I was struggling to understand shutter speed and how this will have an impact on the pictures I am taking. Steve suggested that I should go to a fireworks display and practice taking pictures and that this would help me to get some understanding of how shutter speed will affect my pictures.

I also decided to try taking some pictures of light writing using sparklers.

Equipment

Tripod

Nikon D60

Lens

Fireworks

I set my camera at 100 and 200 ISO so that it only picked up the light from the fireworks. There were two firework sessions on, the first at 6pm and the second one at 7.30pm. I set myself up at the back of the crowd near a fence so that I didn’t get knocked by anybody and then set the camera on the tripod. Once the fireworks began I then set my camera to bulb and then set it to a variety of F-Stops to see what difference they made to the pictures. I also tried setting the shutter speed on differing slow settings. Below is a selection of the different pictures I have taken:

ISO 100, F5.3, Shutter 1/5

ISO 200, F6.3, Shutter 1.2

ISO 200, F6.3, Shutter 1.3

ISO 200, F6.3, Shutter 5.6

ISO 200, F6.3, Shutter 4.1

ISO 200, F6.3, Shutter 4.3

ISO 200, F16, Shutter 3.1

ISO 200, F16, Shutter 3.7

ISO 200, F5.6, Shutter 3.4

ISO 200, F5.6, Shutter 1.9

ISO 200, F22, Shutter 2.4

ISO 200, F22, Shutter 1.8

ISO 200, F22, Shutter 4.2

ISO 200, F13, Shutter 1.8

ISO 200, Shutter F29, Shutter 5.7

ISO 200, F29, Shutter 5.7

ISO 200, F5.3, Shutter 5

ISO 200, F11, Shutter 5

ISO 200, F8, Shutter 4.7

ISO 200, F8, Shutter 3.7

ISO 200, F8, Shutter 6.8

ISO 100, F4.5, Shutter 2.4

ISO 100, F7.1, Shutter 2.8

ISO 100, F9, Shutter 5.9

ISO 100, F9, Shutter 8.8

ISO 100, F7.1, Shutter 10

ISO 100, F9, Shutter 4.6

IS0 100, F9, Shutter 3.2

Fairground Rides
I also decided to try and capture the light and movement of the different fairground rides at the event. Again I set the ISO at 100 and then varied the F-Stop and Bulb shutter speed at different lengths. I think these pictures came out very well capturing the colour and movement in the shots.