Journal Entry # 7: The Photograph Log Process

Wednesday November 12th

Today was a little easy going in comparison to other days. Jenny and I were given a small list of furniture to photograph. We did them really quickly because we wanted to put all of our work so far up to their photography log. After the photos, we talked with Sheri and she gave us the green light to put everything onto the log. The purpose of the log is to keep track of what has already been photographed, what needs to be photograph, dimensions of the furniture, new/old, dates, file number, item number, etc. we had about 25 photos that were picked by Dyann herself. So those went into the log with all the information Jenny and I collected. We also had to put a shrunken size of the image in each entry for each item. Most of our day consisted of “the log process”.

Journal Entry # 8: Working with a new Graphic Design Intern

Thursday November 13

This is the day I got to work with Maggy, a graphic design intern/student. The day began with a little training for Maggy. I taught her how to upload the images to Fetch and how to use the images in fetch to place them onto the website. Maggy was a quick learner so after an hour we moved on to editing everything Jenny and I have completed in the last few days. We had about 25 images to work with. The editing process was to cut out the furniture from the background and placing them into a white background 1500×1500. After this was done it needed to be resized 3 times 600×600, 250×250, 140×140. These three sizes were for the website (thumbnails, details, close-up). We didn’t get a chance to upload, but all the editing was finished and were put into their respective folders in their system. We stayed organized as possible in terms of that because we were told the previous inters did a very bad job at storing their images.

Journal Entry # 9: Photographing Vignettes

Friday November 14

Today Jenny and I were given a task a little different from the usual furniture photographs. Dyann wanted what they call vignettes. Vignettes is putting all the pieces into what it would look like in a room. You have your love seats, coffee tables, lamps, etc. Since we aren’t set up in a proper studio and have a limited amount of space (it’s a big place, but there are vignettes everywhere) we had to put up some panels to hide the busy background. After doing this we set up our three continuous lights, which didn’t really help lighting up the vignette. Fortunately for us they had an old tripod and we did some long exposure shots. Long exposure means to slow down the speed your shutter closes at. This meant Jenny and I could drop down our ISO to 100 (less noise) and keep our F stop at f/11 to keep things in sharp focus. This method worked for us perfectly. After photographing the first vignette Dyann gave us some feedback and constructive criticism. We had a ton of mistakes in terms of where the furniture was and the angle. What Dyann taught us was some of the furniture needs to be moved forward so it doesn’t overlap with other furniture. She also mentioned that some furniture needs to be moved back to keep it in proportion with the smaller furniture. Dyann was happy with the lighting, but Jenny and I were still disappointed that we aren’t being properly guided through the process. We noticed that both of us being portrait photographers we like tight compositions. These vignettes are challenging us to think wider. Our tight composition thinking just won’t work on them. That whole day we only completed four vignettes and we were unsure the whole time weather they looked good or not. Dyann liked a few of the photographs, but there were still some mistakes in all of them. This could mean a re-shoot next time we meet.