SING ALONG WITH RATCHET AND CLANK

SING ALONG WITH RATCHET AND CLANK

 

Stepping away from taking photographs of myself sitting in front my computer, I turned to my sister to do some modeling

SingStar

‘Singstar’ is a Playstation game played with microphones, a karaoke game in which you have to sing along to the chosen track and then given feedback on how well or bad your singing is, a fun party game.

I took many photographs of her as she sang along to the game, waiting for certain moments where she would get into the song. A couple of things I wanted to come across in this small shot was she is a girl, a variety of different ages and sexes play the same games and that there maybe certain games with appeal more to different sexes, at the end of the day both play a mixture of both.  Also another key element is the idea of immersion and how the player can get so devoted to a game.

The example of Singstar you’re required to become so immersed because you want to try your best at singing the songs. Other games would require a different level of immersion; this would be a key element to the rest of my project. 

My thoughts on the Singstar shoot are, I accomplished what I set out to do, which was to take photographs of a person playing this specific game. Again there are issues to do with composition and the fact that the shots were taken in my front room so the wallpapered walls are present. In a way this can relate to the different places you see game being played, street and in the home. I took many different angles and focal lengths, a good combination of close-ups and mid-shots. Something I will need to thing about when a take photographs like this again is the use of flash. In many of my shots shadows are present, over all that just don’t look right in the shot. The use of a external flash head and positioning of the flash will be key.

Long Exposure Ratchet and Clank.

Going back to the idea of long exposure and time. I took some long exposure shots of my sister playing in a different location from where I took my self-portraits. What interested me to take these shots was the small LED on the joy pad.  My idea was to capture the light stream as she moved her hands. The idea behind the hand movement is a joy pad only requires you to use your fingers and thumbs, but yet people begin to lean and move the controller with the movement of the game.

Throughout the shoot I tried many different angles and vantage points, giving the impression someone is watching you, rather than from the players perspective. Again these are a starting point so they have a very developmental fell to them, the main distraction being the background of the shots. This would be easy to fix, the simplest to prop a screen up against the wall behind the model. The colour of the background would depend on the person’s clothes, but would need to be developed on. Overall the content of the shot I am very happy with, the light trails have shown up nicely and slight blurring of the face gives me the impression of the unknown, something unnerving about a blurred face.  

 

 

 

 

 

LONG EXPOSURES TWO

45 minute exposure

32 minute exposure

LONG EXPOSURES TWO

 

Developing on from my first long exposure shot, I changed the positioning of the camera from in front to facing the back of my head and the monitor.

My aim for this shoot was to capture the idea of time this time from a different angle as if someone was looking over your shoulder. I also wanted the viewer of the shot to see what I was doing.

My first shot I set the aperture to f22 and the shutter speed of 45 minutes. As with my other long exposure shots I used a remote triggered release, allowing my to control the camera remotely.  Once the photograph was taken it then took over thirty minutes for the camera to process the file. I imagine it took a while longer because I was shooting in RAW and the file size is larger.  Over all I think the shot worked well, the shot gives the illusion that you can see right though my head. Some image is also present on the monitor, right in the center of the back of my head, I imagine this is because that was the one spot where my head did not move as much creating a perfect exposure over time.  Things that need developing on in this shot is the overall composition on the shot, because the PC tower is present in the shot and just distracts you from the focal points which is the head and the monitor. The exposure of the needs changing also, parts of the monitor have been completely bleached out.

“RAW files, these files are compressed "losslessly". The real advantage of using a RAW format file is that it has received almost no processing by the camera. No sharpening or White Balance will have been applied. What you have with a RAW file is essentially a digital camera's "negative" or original.”

My second shot, taking into consideration the exposure time. As for the composition of the shot I would need to move several items around just to get the right shot. As I’m only experimenting with techniques at this point I did not feel this was necessary, the use of cropping when editing my help to show what I’m trying to accomplish.  What I did change in this shot was the exposure time. My first shot was 45 minutes and this shot 32 minutes, I was expecting a tremendous change in the exposure of the shot. When it actually came to looking at the finished image this was not true. The exposure looks about the same overall, in some areas looks to be exposed more than the first. In this shot the monitor is completely bleached out, the only thing to explain this would be the movement of my head and that in he first shot I was just lucky to get some of the image present on the screen. This could also be the reason for the rest of the shot being more exposed than the first.

LONG EXPOSURES ONE

LONG EXPOSURES ONE.

I began my project looking at the idea of time, more specifically the amount of time players spend playing these games.

Time, a very broad subject to start of the project, but is a key element and a key issue to do with game. The idea gamers spend to long playing these ‘pointless’ games.  

The practice side to the project began with me taking several images of myself using long exposure to capture my movement while playing games. The point for taking the photographs was merely to just a start to represent the idea of time.

My first set of long exposure photographs consisted of me setting up a still camera next to my computer monitor then creating a remote trigger for the long exposure timing.  The reason for the remote trigger is because only allows an exposure of 60 seconds unless you use the bulb function.

Bulb, allows you hold open the shutter as long as the shutter release button is held down, the use of a shutter release cable will help tremendously, especially in very long exposures.

The camera was positioned just to right of the screen. During the shoot I tried a variety of different shots changing the height and slightly adjusting the position of the camera.  As these where my first pictures I wasn’t to worried about the background and perfect composition, I was more interested in the perfecting of the technique.

Each of my photographs were taken with a exposure of 10 – 15 minutes. The first positioned shot was a head shot, the problem with this shot is that the camera is paned up to far, there is to much space above my head and to the sides, to develop on the shot I would to need to zoom in closer.  The next shot I moved the camera in the opposite direction, pointing at the other side of my face. Again the shot was to far away and the focal point myself was not as strong as I would like. The final shot in this shoot, I took into consideration the mistakes with composition in the other shots. Although the background was quite busy the framing of myself in the shot was perfect.

The effect of long exposure on the shots is really interesting, The head and body are slightly blurred were a moved ever so slightly. Although a game that only requires you to move your hands, my idea of capturing time in a photograph worked out well.

Development on this technique would be to think about the background and to think about other positions other than straight in front of me.