Test Shoot

First test shoot in Epping forest...

Anaglyph experiment

For the first shoot I was just testing out a possible location and using the images to experiment with making anaglyphs with. For this shoot I decided to check out Epping Forest, it was a location I meant to go to for a project last year but never got round to it, so I thought I'd try it out for this one.

As Epping Forest is quite large I only got see a small part, I chose to go to an area with a lake as I knew at the right time of day it would be a source of fog and mist, something I was looking for in my images since looking at Martin Vlach's atmospheric landscapes.

As shown in my contact images, it started off as a clear day, but as the sun began to go down the mist rose from the waters creating just the atmosphere I was looking for. The location was good but I didn't get the images I was hoping for, I think this was because I stuck quite close to the lake and path surrounding it so things all looked quite similar. I think I need more of a plan for the next shoot, have a better idea of what I want to shoot in terms of compositions etc, to give me more of an idea of what I'm looking for because on this shoot I realised I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to photograph, yes I knew it was forest landscapes but I found that it was too general, I need a clearer idea, perhaps sketches would help out.

In terms of aesthetics, this shoot is nothing like what I want to produce. I'm looking for more minimalistic scenes, with these images theres just way to much going on.

After finding the 'how to make a anaglyph' tutorial on Youtube I tried it out on one of my images from the shoot. The effect was successful but made me realise I need to think about the composition of the photographs more so that they suited the effect. The first time I used the effect on the tree I didn't include then ground and had the colour layers more offset, this mean it looked like a floating tree, which looked 3D, but the ground wasn't so it looked quite strange. After that I went back and included the ground into the effect to make it more believable. This helped but still didn't look right, I had reduce the offset to make the 3D effect this prominent, but it made the effect more convincing and removed the ghosting effect that started to occur. To solve these problems I need to shoot in such a way that the objects in the foreground appear from off frame, and not start in the middle of the image, or include the ground more to implement the 3D better.

Overall the shoot was successful, I found a location for future shoots and I found out the 3D anaglyph effect could work and could be reasonably feasible. I found out further steps I needed to take to get the desired images, the sketches.