Preliminary Photography Task - Trapped vs Freedom

Research - Task 7

For my preliminary photography I was put into a group with a boy in my class called Will, and we were assigned the theme trapped vs freedom. We did not have a very long time limit to capture all our photos so I will hopefully take some more within this week.

To the right you can see two of the photos Will and I captured for the trapped theme, where we positioned Will towards the left hand side of the frame against a black backdrop to represent darkness and loneliness, which are common connotations of being trapped. In the first photo we set the camera's aperture to f/10 as this allows less light into the lens, which created our dark and low-lit effect. We chose to not change the ISO setting on the camera as the aperture captured the effect we were hoping for, and we also left the shutter speed at the original level of 1/25 and used a tripod to ensure the photo didn't blur.
In our second photo we adjusted the aperture to f/3 to allow more light into the lens of the camera, and also adjusted the shutter speed to 1/125 and then changed the camera settings from a single photo to continuous shooting. During the continuous shooting we decided Will should move his head and arms around to create the appearance that he's trapped within himself. This worked out quite well, and although the overall photo is quite blurry we liked the aesthetic of having two versions of Will within the shot as it can suggest that he's mentally trapped rather than physically.

For both of these shots we attempted to follow the rule of thirds, however as we featured Will towards the left hand side of the camera frame rather than in the centre and his facial features are not clearly focused it does not quite match the rule of thirds.

In this photo on the left, we decided to try and capture another trapped photo but in a different location. We took the camera and tripod outside, and chose to position Will in the centre of this octagonal bench to show that he was physically trapped. We also decided to stick to the blurred theme to try and capture two versions of Will in one shot again, however this time it did not quite work as effectively as our first shot. The exposure on this photo was also too high, however we could not fix this no matter how many photos we took as the aperture didn't seem to have any effect no matter how many times we adjusted it. We left the shutter speed at the same level as the last photo (1/125) and set the camera into continuous shooting mode again.


In this photo we decided to capture a light hearted aspect of freedom in the form of an air jump, which symbolises that they're weightless and carefree. To ensure this shot came out as clearly as possible we set the camera into continuous shooting mode again, and set the shutter speed to 1/2000 to ensure the photo wouldn't blur.
We had to take this photo multiple times due to mistiming the jump, however after multiple attempts we achieved a shot that we were happy with.

Finally, we decided to capture 2 more shots for freedom and capture these by portraying this theme through nature. These wild flowers grow in the pond area which is now overgrown with grass and flowers, so we decided to photograph these as the flowers grow freely all across the drained pond.
We decided to adjust the depth of field to get a shallow focus in the first photograph, which highlighted the petals on the flower and the small insect crawling across it. This took a few attempts as the camera was slightly difficult to focus at first, however once we got the hang of it we were able to capture this photo on the right. Unfortunately, we forgot to note down the settings used for this last photograph as we were on a limited time schedule.