FMP: Test shoot

As part of the plan for 14:00 I factored in time to take a few test shots and experiment with some basic post-processing techniques. Those shots, taken in my living room, have now been completed and processed.

The method was to take two or three shots from varying angles from behind the sofa, which would give the best overall view of the room. The next step was to apply a small number of post-processing techniques in Lightroom and Photoshop, in a variety of combinations. The final stage was to apply a large plain black border in Photoshop, but I did not proceed with this for two reasons:

a) Photoshop is very resource-hungry on my MacBook and became very slow and unresponsive to the point where it hung for several minutes at a time when trying to crop the images, thus slowing down my entire workflow

b) Once cropped, a large black border dominated the content of the image and skewed the composition somewhat

Because of these issues, I had to look for alternative methods of creating the border and so I experimented with Snapseed, a phone app. Snapseed has two distinct advantages over Photoshop, the first being that it is infinitely quicker and the second is that it has 23 different borders, the width of which can be customised.

Test 1

Test 1

1. Square crop

2. Desaturated colour

3. Angle of view: close up, rear of head = viewing over his shoulder

4. Black border

Test 2

Test 2

1. Square crop

2. Desaturated colour

3. Wider angle of view

4. Sharp white border with messy partial black stroke

Test 3

Test 3

1. Square crop

2. Black and white

3. Over the shoulder view

4. Vignette

5. Sharp white border with partial messy black stroke

Test 4

Test 4

1. Square crop

2. Photoshop photo filter

3. Over the shoulder view

4. Vignette

5. Sharp black border

Test 5

Test 5

1. Square crop

2. Desaturated

3. Wider, over the shoulder view

4. Vignette

5. Grain

6. Large black border

Test 6

Test 6

1. Square crop

2. Black and white

3. Slight view of window but can’t see outside

4. Vignette

5. Grain

6. Split toning

7. Slight messy black border

I have my preferred border and processing options in mind already, but after receiving feedback, I’ll determine how I want the final images to look.