Shoot Plan
Working forward from the feed back I have received from the crit, I am doing a location reshoot in an effort to get a series of more portrait and studio like images. In an effort to get the darker backgrounds in the images, I plan to do this shoot at Drusillas Zoo. This will help because the animals are each in brightly and naturally lit enclosures with most having darker and shaded walls, providing a well lit animal subject in front of a dark background. The use of a zoom lens will also create a much smaller depth of field, blurring the background and adding focus onto the animal and improving the quality of the image, but will also mean I have to pay especially close attention to the focus of the image. However, the use of enclosed animals gives the added advantage of the animal not leaving the area of the shoot, though I will still have to be patient as to the animals being in the correct place and pose for the shots to be portrait like and of a high quality.
Equipment: Canon 80D, 75-300 lens, macro attachment, Photoshop. Location(s): Drusillas Zoo Health and Safety: Appropriate clothing/footwear. Ensure I am taking images in permitted areas. Ensure a safe distance from open enclosures (e.g. not leaning over fences into enclosure) |
Contact Sheet
Final Edits
For these edits, I have only edited the brightness/contrast and colour balance of the images.
Shoot Evaluation
This shoot has been a extremely successful, producing a much more professional looking shots than the previous location shoot or my last zoo shoot. Many of the images were taken with a well lit animal on a darker background with the animal either looking at the camera or "posing" for it, creating a very strong studio like appearance in the images, much improved from the last location shoot. I also made sure to use a range of zoom in my images, ensuring I had a mixture of compositions and foci for the shoot, giving me a much greater range of shots to work with in post. However, there are still areas in which I could improve these shots. For the lemur images, I focused solely on the face rather than any body shots, causing me to have a consistent problem with focusing on the image. Also, many of the shots were taken from above or below, causing the animals to have to look down/up from a strange angle, often causing shading and an odd looking "pose" for them. |