min·i·mal·ismMinimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most funda-

mental features.

Steve Jobs:“Minimalism is simple, boring and easy”

Foreword

By Dimitri Baltzopoulos

Welcome one and all to my portfolio. I am a photographer from a very

small town called Winterley consisting of about 100 people, it features

on the BBC weather broadcast every Christmas due to the fame in the

name. My love for being involved in the creative arts started in the first

year of A-level where I started at Sir John Deane’s college in Northwich. I

was doing A-levels in Maths, Physics, Product Design and Photography.

By far my favourite subject was photography which is why a bought my-

self a Canon 500D, I was none the wiser that this DSLR also did video so I

was also started making edits of my friends bmxing. I did all my editing on

Mac which is why I was also very interested in Graphic deign to do with

logos, branding, the image of companies and how I could expand upon

them to use in my work and certain techniques like minimalism to best

express my work. I hope that this portfolio will be visually very success-

ful, it was designed using InDesign. The aim of this book is to present my

work in to way that most illustrates what I have done for this unit and will

demonstrate this in the best way. Throughout this unit I have been doing

the brief of weather however a have organised and tailored my work to fit

into that categories of the seasons; spring, summer, autumn and winter.

There will be some shoot that aren’t directly related to weather however

they will relate to the season like fireworks aren’t particularly weather re-

lated however they are typically associated with autumn and wrapping

up warm. Most of my shoots have taken place in and around my town

because for weather and macro photography you don’t really need to

stray far to find a dramatic scene. Sating this however there are a number

of my shoots that have come from France and America so there will be a

mixture of cultures to find lurking in these shots.

Autumn

Fireworks

Fireworks

InspirationRichard Kempton

This photo conveys a sense of the autumn

feel because we associate fireworks and

bonfire night with the cold and wrapping up

warm. There is no rule of thirds or any other

compositional techniques incorporated in

this photo. The firework takes up most of

the frame in this shot. It is probably 2 or 3

fireworks that are actually in this shot but the

will have exploded in the same spot so that

Richard would be able to put them all in the

same final image which would give the im-

pression or illusion that it was one very large

firework. I think that he used a long expo-

sure time of a round 20-30 seconds and an

ISO of about 3200 so that the entire mo-

tion of the fireworks would be captured and

they would be well lit with the sky being pith

black instead of stitching together 3 different

photos in Photoshop. In my opinion this was

a very successful shot because of its raw

simplicity and the very rich colour contrasting

with the deep blacks of the sky.

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Outcome

Self ReviewSubject matter:

I feel that I achieved very well the feeling of autumn in this final shot because I decided to use a wide-angle lens so that I

could capture the people in the foreground watching the fireworks with hats and scarves on which conveys a sense of

cold to the shot. It also shows the amount of people that are watching the fireworks display.

Formal elements:

In this shot I tried to use the compositional technique of the rule of thirds even though the photographer in my inspiration

section didn’t, I just felt that it made the shot more appealing because it shows that I have thought about how the com-

position will work with the final edited image. I think that my compositional efforts paid off. There is a slight orange tone in

the corner of the image, which was from the bonfire that was happening at the same time as the fireworks. Admittedly it

does look a bit out of place and does contrast with the cold feeling that was intended for the image. If I where to go out

and do this shot again I would definitely not make this mistake again and I would do this by using a slightly narrower lens

to just get the fireworks in or just go somewhere that wasn’t having a bonfire. The colours in this image came out very

well even before editing which I was very pleased about because I was expecting to have to have the sky slightly lit in

order to get the full colour of the fireworks. The sparkles where another surprise, I didn’t think that they would show up at

all which they didn’t very much before editing but they came out well after editing, I was a bout cautious not to over do it

on the editing to make the sparkles show but I think it was very subtle.

Process:

In the end I didn’t stitch any photos together in Photoshop, the fireworks where perfectly the light intensity so that I could

have an exposure time of 30 seconds but still be able to keep an ISO of 3200 so that the fireworks came out very well.

there is no depth of field in this shot because I was shooting at F/11 just to balance the exposure and ISO but unfortu-

nately his meant that I wasn’t able to achieve any depth of field. I didn’t find this to be a big problem because at an expo-

sure of 30 seconds the people in the foreground where always moving so you wouldn’t notice any depth of field.

Autumn

Sprakers

Sparklers

InspirationJo Neville

There is a particular part of this photo that interests me; it’s the actual sparks coming from the sparkler. I think that these

look very interesting and can show up very well in photos. This photo from Jo Neville is very well exposed and very well

focused which will probably be the hardest part of achieving a very high-quality sparkler photo. The only thing that I prob-

ably will not incorporate in my photo.

Thumbnails

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Outcom

e

Self ReviewSubject matter:

I feel that I achieved very well the feeling of autumn in this final shot because I decided to use a wide-angle lens so that I

could capture the people in the foreground watching the fireworks with hats and scarves on which conveys a sense of

cold to the shot. It also shows the amount of people that are watching the fireworks display.

Formal elements:

In this shot I tried to use the compositional technique of the rule of thirds even though the photographer in my inspiration

section didn’t, I just felt that it made the shot more appealing because it shows that I have thought about how the com-

position will work with the final edited image. I think that my compositional efforts paid off. There is a slight orange tone in

the corner of the image, which was from the bonfire that was happening at the same time as the fireworks. Admittedly it

does look a bit out of place and does contrast with the cold feeling that was intended for the image. If I where to go out

and do this shot again I would definitely not make this mistake again and I would do this by using a slightly narrower lens

to just get the fireworks in or just go somewhere that wasn’t having a bonfire. The colours in this image came out very

well even before editing which I was very pleased about because I was expecting to have to have the sky slightly lit in or-

der to get the full colour of the fireworks. The sparkles where another surprise, I didn’t think that they would show up at all

which they didn’t very much before editing but they came out well after editing, I was a bout cautious not to over do it on

the editing to make the sparkles show but I think it was very subtle.

Process:

In the end I didn’t stitch any photos together in Photoshop, the fireworks where perfectly the light intensity so that I could

have an exposure time of 30 seconds but still be able to keep an ISO of 3200 so that the fireworks came out very well.

there is no depth of field in this shot because I was shooting at F/11 just to balance the exposure and ISO but unfortu-

nately his meant that I wasn’t able to achieve any depth of field. I didn’t find this to be a big problem because at an expo-

sure of 30 seconds the people in the foreground where always moving so you wouldn’t notice any depth of field.