Youtube Video [Click Here]
At the start of the month I went for a small shoot at my local industrial estate, Shotgate industrial, I shot specifically an abandoned factory / warehouse style building. With me I took my 700D, 16-35mm, 50mm alongside my new tripod / mono-pod.
During December I wasn’t able to go out and perform shoots due to work circumstances and Christmas, but by the start of the new year I was feeling rather restless and felt the need to de-rust some of my skills as a photographer and try something different.
I believe to be of great importance to constantly challenge yourself as a photographer and try new things, with this short and sweet shoot I aimed to experiment in a multitude of aspects. Firstly trying a new subject matter such as ‘urban exploration’, also known as ‘urban expo’ for short, I had walked past this area countless times before hand never having either the right equipment or any at hand, which has left me dreaming of shooting this for a while. With the start of January being a very quiet time of year for business and society at large it was an ideal time to strike with little to no people about, especially if you are bending the rules a bit.
This leads me on to my next challenge, using a tripod and longer exposures. Usually I prefer to free hand my photography, as I often find it cumbersome carrying so much equipment and often find myself not using especially when shooting outside in public environments thus bumping up my ISO to compensate.
However with my new tripod it can be dismantled and then reconstructed into a mono-pod which eliminates a large quantity of weight and gives no room for excuses to not having something at hand to use. Alongside this, I really want to focus more on the elements of my photographs especially in a digital format, what Ive founded with my film photography is that there is a desired focus on the elements and perfection, mainly down to the extortionate cost to shoot on film to begin with thus focusing the photographer and in turn making them less ‘trigger happy’. So I hope using a tripod and mono-pod more often will help install the idea of setting up and composing shots in a more professional manner.
Finally I tried something relativity new, that being filming parts of this shoot for a video. It was spur of the moment idea but I thought it would great to contrast my stills work in a creative fashion as well illustrate my work in a different way. Filming, editing and posting to YouTube where all apart of the welcomed challenge and I hope to continue curating videos through out this year. If you wish to see what I made, click here.
Overall, I think the photos achieved turned out great and definitely couldn’t be achieved free hand as a long exposure was definitely required for these low light situations. The black and white filters applied in post definitely give a moody and cold feeling that illustrates the weather and baron feeling of the building well, however I have left some images in colour as it makes for nice contrast not only in my work but between the array of subjects within the shot overall, colour as a rule is something I tend to avoid as I believe it doesn’t always add to an image, but of course there are always exceptions to the matter.
Ryan Fayers Photography 