Jonathan Williams

As the clouds rolled in and the fog settled, an eerie atmosphere rested upon the city, giving off an ethereal vibe that sent shivers down the spines of those wandering the night.

But as creepy as the fog was, it did present a unique photographic opportunity. The fog did a wonderful job of diffusing light. This combined with the soft reflections of the wet floor proved to be extraordnarily cinematic, for example:

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Take a drink every time I say "I guess." In the presentation I didn't say much of what I wrote down/planned to write... oops. I was also pretty nervous, probably because I was overthinking stuff when I should have let it be natural more natural.

 I should also speak up (sorry Megan).

But overall I got some very positive feedback from my tutors. I have been told that I have a "very distinct graphic identity" a "perfectly chosen theme" and that I have "shown awareness of the environment around me." Apparently...

My research needs to be more obvious in my blog. I need to show my inspirations so I can develop more as a creative person.


JOKE

I hate russian nest dolls. they are so full of themselves #madbanter

With Deadline Day rapidly approaching, DFSA grows anxious. Rapid photoshoots and quickfire tutorials are the order of the day. Everyone is desperate for feedback and uneasy about the outcome of their hard work.

The photo above is probably going to be my final submission. I feel like it represents the outburst of creative expression, and how creative expression is intrinsically linked to personal identity (or at least, that's how I am going to explain it).

OTHER ATTEMPTS:

What's shaki... no shut it we aren't cool enough to pull that off (not that it's ever stopped you before amiright).

Everything is going well at the moment. The skybridge is making progress and the engineers tell me it is progressing ahead of schedule and that it should be ready within 3 weeks at the most (I don''t believe them).

As to what we do now, you mostly stay in film. You collaborate with so many interesting people and you may or may not be a highly recognised cinematographer. Well, that's where we are at the moment. But it's not so much about the destination, it's the journey. And trust me, you do NOT want to skip the journey.

Regards,
You

P.S. Jamie came to visit the other day with his pirate buddies. Turns out the former captain is actually KSIolajidebt's father, who has allowed Jamie to post on KSI's (R.I.P.) YouTube account, which will be the first post since his (KSI's) banishment.

Jamie won't shut up about it

Well? Have you?

Hey again.

The engineers told me the skybridge is still a couple months off of completion, which means I've got some down time which means I can write you more and more letters and freak you out about your future and encourage you to keep on going.

I know by now you are wondering if you get married or have kids or something like that. But I don't wanna spoil it for you. I'm sure you'd understand. The only thing I'll tell you is it'll come around, don't you worry.

Anyway, since I've got loads of time to write these letters I'd thought I would give you an update on your friends. Jamie is now the chief of the Somalian pirates. He didn't tell me exactly how he managed to do it, but now I just imagine a bunch of cockney speaking Somalian Pirates. Classic Jamie.

Ahh dang it there is some kerfuffle down at the food court. I have to go sort that out. I'll talk to you next time. Hopefully the skybridge will be up soon, then I can go visit the home we grew up in, see if it survived.

Regards,
You

P.S. Your bro is here with me, he said he just sent you a weird joke about something that is pink and hangs at Grandads waist. He is still such a weirdo.

So uhhh, how are things? I should probably know that to be honest, after all I am you. 

Lawrence got into an argument with a Subterranean Planeswalker and unfortunately got his subconscious trapped in a partial time paradox. He now spends his time haunting his ancestors and fighting the ethereal Honey Boo Boo Godzilla. The Planeswalker refuses to free his subconscious, something about him being a "excuse making f**kboy" (his words, not mine).

Jamie got captured by Somalian Pirates. I haven't heard from him in seven years.

Earth was too polluted to stay on (turns out Wall-E was true). As I type this the mechanics are putting the finishing touches onto the new skybridge that should allow us to clear the debris from the earths atmosphere and eventually re-populate and start fresh.

By the way, in two years the Skeleton War will rage. I know in 2014 it was just a funny tumblr joke, but heed my word, those boney bastards will kill every last one of you.

Regards,

You

P.S. We still don't know who this "4chan" is.

Dear Internet,  It's been a long time since we first met. The first time I laid eyes on you, you weren't very advanced. Your UI was messy and for some reason you were obsessed with the colour grey. I never really had proper internet at home. Tesco dial up was the most modern it got. I think it was something like 1p for every minute you were on there, and we were never on there for long to be honest (it was shocking, sorry internet).

HOWEVER, you were also kind to me, providing me with hours of entertainment with my mate. Me and him used to go to the local library, get an hour on the computers and booted up  http://www.miniclip.com/  and spent an hour every saturday hacking and slashing our way through basic flash games. Seriously. The amount of time I spent on your games was insane and you know what? I don't regret it for a second.

Ah yes, social media. I didn't really understand you when I was younger. I never really got into bebo or MSN and the fact that I only joined Facebook in 2009 shows that I don't have much of a record with you. HOWEVER, we have had our fair share of experiences. Here is a collection of my first Facebook statuses.

I don't even know what they mean. I am embarrassed.


I now understand why not many people liked me.

BUT I'VE CHANGED I PROMISE I GOT 15 LIKES ON A PHOTO ONCE.

*ahem*

As much as I like autumn, I like summer more. Looking back at the photos I took over the month of summer I realised how much I ended up doing and finally understand the reason why I am so tired. Like, seriously, I can't remember what it feels like to be fully rested. I have no regrets. It was the best summer I've ever had.

Let's get real here folks. I am lazy, I suck at organisation, my room is a mess and worst of all I lack motivation. This means my work is often disjointed and sometimes the complete opposite of what I set out to create. It stresses me out, it's stifling, but most importantly it's also the reason I want to create an environment for myself that is steeped in simplicity, beauty and inspiration.

I know my messy workspace is completely my fault. And I know moaning about it on here is probably not the best way to deal with it and will almost definitely not solve the problem.

But I will be stifled no more. I will invest in things that make me happy, be it comic books, posters, photography, music or just simple things like lights. Little things that just maybe produce a moment of inspiration.

Basically I am committing this weekend to setting up a workspace that makes me happy to be in.

Also Jamie, I am not procrastinating, I am writing.

Autumn is awesome. The leaves turn from vibrant greens into beautiful shades of yellows, golds, oranges and reds. In autumn I don't mind the rain so much, it gives us a respite following the harsh heat of the summer that has beat down on our heads for the last two ish months.

Usually I don't particularly enjoy autumn, mainly because of the rain and the annoying leaves that get everywhere. But it's different this year. It's hard to put a finger on what makes this autumn so different to my previous 19, maybe it's a new appreciation of the colour, maybe it's the whole "starting uni" thing. I don't know, but I feel like autumn is the most honest season. I guess it's a period of natural change, and I find this sits particularly well with how I've felt recently.


Either way, I made a video about this feeling.

I guess I liked the detail on the bedsheet and the way it curled up towards the head of the subject, appearing to suspend him from the head in mid air. 


With my photo at the top of the page I also like the texture of the bed sheet. I also like the way the bed sheet coils up out of frame.

I want to reshoot this to try emulate this tornado-like effect without having it inside the triangle as it distracts from the photo, adding an extra unnecessary layer. I should be reshooting tonight with my friend Jamie so I'll update you as and when.

portraits for days

Recently we have been set the project of exploring the diverse world of portrait photography. When we were first set this project, I was a little bit more than perplexed. I have had very little experience with full on proper photography, and some of the concepts and photographers presented to us were completely new and baffling and sometimes just weird. HOWEVER, spurred on by an approaching deadline, I got to work.

I started off by searching for props (i.e. anything in my room), and trying to put it/them somewhere where it would be out of place to give the shot some surreal tones. To be honest, these efforts were kind of terrible. For example, for some strange reason I have a big bag of ball pit balls in my room. So naturally I tried to utilise these. Unfortunately it was quite late and by this point ideas were very very basic, as you can probably tell:

What I was attempting to do was put my head in the bag to give the impression that my head has been somehow magically been replaced by a plethora of colourful ball pit balls. A nice idea that was poorly executed. (don't worry, we revisit this one later).

Frankly embarrassed with myself and determined never to make anything this shockingly terrible again I removed the balls from in and around my head and attempted to utilise them in a new way (not an innuendo, seriously dude).
I started off by cutting an assortment of coloured balls in half. I then turned the lights off and set my camera to full manual. I cranked the aperture as low as it could go (f/4.5 on my 18-55 lens), lowered the ISO to it's lowest setting to reduce digital noise, the shutter speed to about 8 seconds  and the flash firing to 2nd curtain. 2nd curtain flash firing on a Canon DSLR basically means the flash fires as the shutter goes up, and flashes once more as the shutter closes, allowing for cool light trails whilst keeping motion blur down to a minimum. The dissected coloured balls were placed over the flash, making a red filter. I got these results which were interesting, but a little too simplistic for my tastes:





The second photo of this set is probably my favourite. The improvised red filter combined with the flash creates a vignette around the subject. It is also a pretty intense shade of red, which could have connotations of anger, intimacy or pain. But as aforementioned, I found the content of these shots pretty bare (I pretty much danced in front of the camera for 10 minutes) and so I continued my adventure into the deepest facets of my brain box in search of a photo I was satisfied with.

In this set I used my desk lamp as my only light source. I found this to be quite an effective spotlight and when used efficiently created some quite dramatic shots. I  found using this one lamp was the turning point in my creative process. It was from here I started to develop a vision of what and how I wanted to take a photo of. I drew a ghost on an A3 piece of card which seemed to be pretty effective.



The above photo is the one that sparked my brainbox. The simple act of holding a cartoony, ghostly mask in front of the face seemed to be making a statement on creating a front that concealed the true emotions of the individual from everyone around them, giving them the impression that everything is A-OK.

After shooting inside in my room until gone 2am I decided to go to bed and carry on in the next few days. I knew from this point I wanted to shoot outside in the dark using the path lights on the Student Village at my university. It would have been rather difficult to shoot this on my own and so I enlisted the help of two of my friends who took it in turns holding the ghost to their face. This meant I would have to do my fair share of directing. I wanted to shoot these photos so that A: you could actually see the subject, and B: the models didn't move or wobble around too much since I was using a longer shutter speed and second curtain flash firing wouldn't have fit into the mise en scene of the portrait.

These are my four favourite outdoor shots.





 I am intrigued to see how I will begin to edit these images. As I am typing this I have no idea what I want to do to these images but with a little bit of experimentation and dabbling I'm sure I will come up with something.

THANKS FOR READING AND SORRY FOR THE 'NORMOUS POST <3

HP source