Alessandro, Claire and I went to our first Studio session to try and do some practise with studio lights. Studio lighting can be intimidating, at first. The studio is big, the flashlights have many controls and I tried to remember all the safe health and safety rules the technician told us during the studio inductions. So many things can go wrong!

Anyway, we managed to use them quite easily. After trying different light modifiers on one flashlights, just to see the differences, we played with two or more lights. 

Initially, we wanted to recreate a portrait with plain white background so we placed one flashlights each side pointing at the white background. Then we placed the key light and took a light measure. After practicing a bit, we managed to achieve a perfectly white background by adding 1 stop light power to the background flashlights.

                      

We also tried black background (no lights on the background) and adding a soft halo behind Claire's head. 

NOTES

- We suffered very much because it was too warm inside the Studio, I think we left all modelling lights on Max instead of Rel.

- Music is important.

I approached this assignment without stressing too much. I just wanted to go out and enjoy taking photos in the streets with my two film cameras.

I went straight to Portobello on Saturday, shot two rolls of films and developed the same evening at home. I had not a particular idea about what to shoot, but walking and seeking for some in the street.

When I developed my films, I realised that my eye captured people faces close to faces in ads.

So I came back to Portobello the next morning with a clear idea of what I wanted to shoot.






The two images are not related to each other. In the first, I tried to create a narrative image, with Tatcher's and Queen's masks in the foreground, the Portobello sign and the flag.
In the second, I find interesting the portrait of a man close to the young face in the ad.
I think, as for every assignment, I get many ideas to develop in the future, if only I had time to develop now!


TECHNICALITIES
-The first development went wrong. I developed a 100 ISO film with 400 ISO times. I must be very careful next time.
-Also, I should buy a proper film can opener instead of using tweezers. I shut my fingers inside the pop up changing bag and I did not know if there was blood. Splatter negative development.