Development on photography skills

The purpose of this task was for me to try out and experiment with my photography techniques. This was for me to see any key areas that I have to consider while taking the final shots which will appear on my school magazine. Due to classroom conditions I had to take these pictures using my phone for practice purposes only, however on the final photos for the magazine I will be using a DSLR camera to obtain the best quality of the images. Throughout this task I have learned that facial expressions, lighting and camera angle are the most valuable aspects to capture the perfect shot.

Here we can see the collection of my photography attempts. I have experimented with many angles and body positions of the model to see the effect this composition has. By having a high angle shot we are allowed to see more of the students body, showing his/hers body language. We can see that I have placed the models before a plain background so that the attention would be dragged to the person himself. Furthermore I have also used props such as a school folder. This is because I believe that by the use of props which link to the "school" image I make the images easier to understand by the viewer. From the various images I have picked one which I have put for further development.

This is my chosen image out of the pictures which I have taken. On the left we can see the original. We can tell that it has been taken in classroom conditions as of the chairs in the background however the overall background has not been very effective to show the school theme. Therefore I have searched in google for a better background which as a result is the image in the centre. An image of a lecture room in my opinion has been far more effective than the original. As a results of that, I have used Photoshop to edit the image. I have used tools such as the polygonal lasso tool or picture adjustments such as brightness & contrast to achieve the results which I have been most happy with. Concluding, I have came up with the image that we can see on the right hand side. I am happy with the final results as it shows far more "school" theme than the original image as it presents more education environment. When I will be taking images to be used in my magazine I will choose them to be placed in a really good background to represent my theme or have them placed on a plain background for me to photoshop. By both ways I believe that I can get the same result.