White Balance

White balance controls the colour temperature within a photo by adjusting the levels of red, blue and green to create the most realistic light (given the situation). Darker, shaded areas are normally made up of more blue light, meaning the blue needs to be turned down and more red needs to be substituted by the camera to create white light. Artificial lights use more red light so the same has to happen, except by swapping the colours around. A good way of adjusting the temperatures is to use various gray cards as they act as a neutral reference and they are portable so you can quickly adjust the camera's balancing while in various locations.
 Most cameras come with an auto white balance feature, but the images produced do not match the same quality as those who adjust the colours manually as you can be a lot more precise with the colour mixing. Although you can set your own white balance, modern DLSRs come with many different pre-set white balance setting that can work for a variety of different lighting situations.

(http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2014/01/31/white-balance-explained-how-your-camera-corrects-the-colour-of-different-kinds-of-lighting)/

	Auto White Balance
	Custom
	Kelvin
	Tungsten
	Fluorescent
	Daylight
	Flash
	Cloudy
	Shade

Examples of bad White Balance

Good Examples of White Balance:

When it comes to white balance I feel as if I need to practice under more artifical lights as I have spent more time focusing on darker, bluer lighting situations.

Composition

Rule of Thirds

(http://amyshealthybaking.com/blog/2013/04/26/food-photo-composition-rule-of-thirds/)

 The 'Rule of Thirds' is a standard rule when it comes to most visual media (e.g. film, photography, art, etc.). It breaks into the image into nine different sections and gives a basic idea on the composition of important elements within a shot, saying that the focal point should be place within the centre thirds. It also states that the human eye is gravitated towards the four intersecting points of the grid as we seem to find it more aesthetically pleasing.

Golden Spiral

(http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-565161.html)

The 'Golden Spiral' is based on the ratio of 1 to 1.618 (often refereed to the perfect number) and is a naturally occurring found in most plant life and natural structures creating a predetermined line for the eye to follow. Some argue that because it is such a natural pattern, it is very appealing to the human eye and that we find it very harmonising. It's impact is so strong that it has been used throughout history dating all the way back to the classical Greek architecture (when some say the rule was first unearthed), to Divinci;s "Mona Lisa", to modern day construction.

http://www.apogeephoto.com/may2014/how-to-use-the-golden-ratio-to-improve-your-photography.shtml
https://photographyicon.com/goldenratio/

Leading Lines

Leading lines create a natural pathway within an image for the eyes to follow. Mostly created from the environment within a location, their main functions are to both exaggerate length and add a perception of depth. Typical examples of this include roads, fences, paths/walkways, rocks, etc.

Depth of Field

Depth of field refers to how much of a potential image is or is not in focus. This is important as it not only helps to guild a persons interest to particular elements of an image, but it can also have symbolic meaning (e.g. a short depth of field could imply isolation or paranoia). To alter depth of field you have to adjust the aperture on the lens accordingly (a wider aperture means a shorter amount is in focus, visa versa).

To help work out depth of field you look at your lens' focal length and this should give you the rough idea on how much should be in focus at one given time.

Focal Length (mm)	Focus Distance (m)	Depth of Field (m)
10	0.5	0.482
20	1.0	0.421
50	2.5	0.406
100	5.0	0.404
200	10	0.404
400	20	0.404

(http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm)

Examples of Short Depth of Field

Examples of a Longer Depth of Field

Photoshop Tutorial

We were given the task of editing an image to give it another feel or match it's atmosphere to a specific genre. For mine I wanted to give it a more Gothic/Horror/Thriller feel to it and did this by playing around with the colouring (e.g. turn up the blue and turn down the greens). After adjusting the exposure and lighting I found certain areas were way too dark and lost a lot of detail; to fix this I erased the first layer to reveal the background and hopefully brighten parts of the image (the top especially). To a certain extent this worked, but the bricks still appeared very dark and I could not do too much else without altering the rest of the image. Also as a result of editing the image gained a pre-rendered look to it as the lighting looks almost too warm and added in afterwards. This allows me to be a lot more creative in post production and artistically create an atmosphere or specific look artificially.

Before:

After:

Three-Point Lighting Workshop

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-point_lighting)

In this workshop we learnt how to set up and how to use standard "three-point lighting". This is compared of three different lights, each with their own specific function:

• Key light: This is the hardest light and is used to illuminate the set/actor.
• Fill light: This is a soft light and is mainly designed to eliminate the shadows created by the key light.  You can do this by either diffusing the light or shining it off of a reflector 
• Back light: This is shone on the back of the set/actor and is meant to separate them from the background so they stand out a lot more.

Although this is a very common way of lighting a set; it does not mean it is essential and can be altered to fit the given situation. A way we did this was to re-position the lights in order to create a film noir shot/atmosphere. To do this we cut kept alternating turning off the soft and harsh lights to create a variety of different shadows across the face. We found that the back light was important as it stopped the target from blending too much into the background but it wasn't needed, depending on the distance the set.

Flags Workshop

In this worshop we were given the task of creating various lighting set ups using only one light and two flags (boards used to both block and control lighting in order to create layers and depth). Our main task was to be able to use the boards to manipulate both foreground and background shadows to see what kind of styles we could come up with. Our group decided to focus on film noir again as we wanted to see how we could do things differently. Although it proved quite difficult in the beginning, we did manage to get organised and noticed the how careful you had to be as one small move of the boards could drastically alter the look of the scene.

Camera Basics

Aperture (often called "f numbers") refers to the amount of light being collected by the camera and can serious affect the the look of a photo or moving image. The smaller the f number (e.g. 1.6mm) the wider the lens opens and the more light can be collected. This is mostly for use at night or dark environments. The opposite applies when it comes to larger f numbers, the higher the number the smaller the lens becomes meaning this is more applicable in daytime shooting.

ISO affects how sensitive the camera is to surrounding light. The higher the ISO, the less time the camera has to gather available light (e.g. an ISO of 3200 takes around 1/32 of a second to capture the image, while an ISO of 100 takes only a second). One problem with a higher number is that the image may come across blurry or grainy decreasing the overall quality. Lower ISO's are used in areas where there is a lot of light however does not capture motion that well due to the longer exposure time needed. Higher numbers are more suited for darker environment where there isn't enough light for the camera to quickly take an image most. It's more commonly used however to take past paced, action shots (such as athletes, cars, etc.).

Shutter speed is very similar to how ISO works however there are some key differences. While a longer speed allows more light to be collected, a shorter one doesn't create the grainy and blurry effect. However the longer you leave the shutter open, the more chance of an image blurring and a tripod will be required (the slowest speed that can be held by the human hand and still produce quality image is roughly 1/125 of a second).

All of these elements combined control an images aperture. This means the amount of light that is collected when the image is captured and is essential to producing high quality images, Exposure that is too low is dark and can lead to detail being lost in the final image, while aperture that is too high creates a white image that makes key areas almost impossible to tell from one another.

Bad examples of exposure:

Good Examples of Exposure:

After a short time, these different elements seem to come naturally. Some things I can improve on however are using slower shutter speeds (that involve using a tripod) and also noting down my settings during every shoot so I know what to do if a similar situation occurs.

https://photographylife.com/what-is-iso-in-photography
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-exposure.htm