Live on Location - Witley Court and Gardens

The Brief and the Client ....

The client -English Heritage.  

The Brief - shooting a rang of photographs that will suit the brand of English Heritage and the public audience. 

English Heritage... 

To reshoot the company's brand of English Heritage, the client wanted between 20 to 30 photos to appeal to the target audience. The image had to fit to both the audience and the client's brief, to capture the attention and draw in the public. 

The logo brand of the company, has its own simplicity, clear lines, that stand out to the sharpness of the red, the shape of a castle tower. This effective design has allowed itself to be recognised country wide. 

English Heritage is all about preserving history, allowing all ages to engage with past life, The brand allows you to walk through history, allows you to remember it. Therefore it is important to avoid exaggerating the appearance of both the Ruins and the Gardens.

To help with the branding of the company of English Heritage, I have researched into their company itself, to help with the styling and to visual understand how they promote the Historic places around the country.

Their website is promptly laid out into sections, simple and easy to navigate. The images will need to very similar to their own branding images. By researching into their website and how they promote the historic places to visit, this will help me into photographing the images they require to keep the contemporary style for their target audience.

Plan for the shoot 

Client:
English Heritage.
Audience:
contemporary 30 something Audience
Theme: re-lauch images for the branding of the company and younger audience

Location: 
Witley Court and Gardens.

Lighting:
Natural light, cloud over head, outbreaks of sun towards later afternoon.

Time of day:
Mid-day/Afternoon. this could affect my images as this is the time to attract the local visitors, although the atmosphere will help create a fun scene, I will also need their permission to use any images with them in it, this then will require model release forms.

Equipment:
Nikon D3000, tripod, kit lens 18-55mm, 50mm,
graduated neutral density filters.
UV filter.

I have decided to use my DLSR camera, this will allow me to work quickly against the weather of the outbreaks of sun but also gives me the ability to check the images and evaluate against the brief. I decided to use two different lenses mainly because of subject view and these two lenses fit perfectly with my filters.

Exposure:
Due to the light changes, I had to frequently change exposure to avoid overexposing the images. The exposure setting used for the day e.g 1/100 1/125 1/400, I studied my exposure against the changes of the weather, to make the correct changes.

Contact sheet 
 

analysis of contact sheet 

overviewing the images to fit the project brief of the client, my images show various styles, with minor mistakes that can easily be solved by measuring the exposure against the weather and making the relevant changes. There is room for further improvement into photographing more of the ruins of the house, to show how historic it is, to bring in the target audience. 

The  images show various compositions, some fit into what i was aiming to photography however some images could do with more thought into composition, to show more rather than less. 

To help the images furthermore, I could have produced from research a quick sketch or notes into how the images should look to keep to the style of how English Heritage have created. depending to the subject matter in the image, a quicker decision in aperture and composition to avoid losing detail from what could be seen as a really strong image into something that just needed more. 

selected 6 images

Evaluation on the images

Going through the project as a whole and analysing the images to what might fit the project brief given, I am satisfied by the end result. as this was my first time shooting architecture but learnt how to adapted my skills in photography, I found it rather impressive to pick up new techniques into carefully been at the right spot for each shot to where the sun was siting, this allowed me to capture contrasted images in natural daylight, giving a more natural feel to the images. 

Going over the original images, there was minor work to be done, little editing techniques into bringing back the more natural feel to the images. I used photoshop for my editing. with a quick edit in camera raw, I as able to correct any lens mistakes, such as white balance. 

The selected six images, had little editing done to them to avoid losing detail to the landscape and the buildings. 

all the images, have had the same editing applied to keep things looking the same and so they fit together, instead of looking out of place from each other. 

overall, I am feeling content to how the images turned out. I feel proud into achieving something out of my comfort zone and hope to put the practice to some use in future work.