ALP – Assignment 3 – Travel Photography

Cityscape

This picture was taken from the south shore of Quebec, where one can get the best view of Old Quebec. It shows the Château Frontenac, one of the province’s architectural landmarks.

Food

Montreal is a great place for foodies, and the city has a lot more to offer than bagels and smoked meat. This picture was taken at Rustique, a lovely pie shop in St-Henri that has the most amazing pie and cookie selection.

Lifestyle

This image was shot at one of the few river surfing spot in the province. Located behind Habitat 67 in Montreal, this spot is visited by surfers until ice covers the river.

The images taken for this assignment could be seen on TripAdvisor or in a Lonely Planet book for the province of Quebec.

APD2 – Assignment 3 – Decisive Moment

For this assignment, I decided to select images I had taken backstage at a fashion show. This was my very first fashion show and I really enjoyed it. As soon as I arrived on site, I could feel the quiet excitment in the room. I thought everyone would be screaming, running around, but in fact everyone knew what they had to do, so the people seemed pretty relaxed. Well, except for the designer, who was really excited to unveil his new collection to the public.

The only problem I encounted that day was that there were about 3 different light sources, so it was at times hard to figure if I would be able to correct this issue properly in post-production.

ALP – Assignment 2 – Architecture

Kim Hurley-01 (parallel lines)

ISO 1600, f/8, 1/60

The Grande Bibliothèque is a public library in Downtown Montreal that opened on April 23 2005 and was designed by architects from Vancouver and Québec City. The horizontal and vertical lines are one of the first elements that attract the eye, which I tried to represent in this image. When entering the library, we are almost overwhelmed by all the lines that go in different directions. It truly is a stunning building. I wish I had time to capture more, but the friendly staff was quick to tell me that I couldn’t take pictures inside the building.

Kim Hurley-02

ISO 640, f/13, 1/50

The Windsor Station is a former railway station. Its construction started in 1887 and cost $300,000 at the time. It is now designated a National Historic Site of Canada. It now serves as an office builing as well as a metro station. I wanted to show the openess of the station and its beautiful white ceiling.

Kim Hurley-03 (equal artificial and natural light)

ISO 250, f/11, 2,50 s

This is a picture of Caserne 23, located in St-Henri. A first fire hall was built in 1883, but it was demolished and a new one, the one that is still here, was built in 1930-1931. I shot at this angle because there were a lot of cars parked at the front and I not wish to incorporate them. I really wanted to focus on the style of this building and show the contrast between natural light and artifical light.

Kim Hurley-04 (composite/panoramic)

ISO 250, f/10, 1/30

Habitat 76 is model community and housing complex designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. It was originally conceived as his master’s thesis in architecture at McGill University and then built as a pavilion for Expo 67. Habitat 67 is widely considered an architectural landmark and one of the most recognizable and significant buildings in both Montreal and Canada.

APD2 – Assignment 2 – Conceptual Image

Kim Hurley-01

I chose to shoot this image in my apartment. The setting represents a nice dinner table set for two, with a few various food items on the menu. However, as one can see, it’s not a usual meal. The food is actually cat food. As expected, my very own furball couldn’t resist the smell of ‘tuna’ and ‘chicken’. Often times, people are caught giving diner scraps to their beloved pets, which is not necessarily good for them. My intention was to show what it would be like if it was the other way around, meaning humans actually eating cat food for diner.

Kim Hurley-02

Who has never dreamed of swimming in a fountain? I know I have, many times. This man takes the fulfilment of his longtime dream very seriously. Though he has the gear, he might not be a professional swimmer. Or maybe he is and he’s just doing this for fun. We can see him at different stages of his preparation : fixing his goggles, stretching and positionning himself to take the plunge. Since the picture was taken at night, this aquatic daredevil didn’t want to bring any attention to himself and wanted to have a quiet swim, which means the time and the place were carefully thought out beforehand. After this moment, he probably got out of the freezing cold fountain water as quickly as possible and ran back to his place before anyone saw him, or worse, got caught by the police.

Because I had been thinking about this shot for a little while and knew that very few people would be willing to go in a park half naked on a cold fall evening, I thought I would have to do a self-portrait. Luckily, I had a volunteer. He just naturally gave me a few poses ideas, which worked really well. Choosing the props was a fairly easy process, as a swimmer only had a few accessories (cap, goggles and bathing suit). Also, I’m lucky enough to have a beautiful park full of trees right next to my house, and the fountain hadn’t been empited yet, so the location was an easy choice.

ALP – Assignment 1 – Environmental Portrait

KimHurley-01

Ambient  f/5.3, 1/160, ISO 250

KimHurley-02

Reflector  f/3.5, 1/400, ISO 200

KimHurley-03

Flash (split)  f/5, 1/200, ISO 400

Ambient lightmeter reading :  f/2.8, 1/250, ISO 400

 

The artist I chose is Eric Nadeau, a sculptor-integrator. He has been collecting industrial pieces and making contemporary sculptures of them since 1999. His work has been exhibited in various locations and featured in several magazines, such as Magazine Intérieurs http://www.magazineinterieurs.com/fr/index.php and La Presse (Arts et Cultures) http://www.lapresse.ca/arts/ and could very well be published again, as he’s always working on new concepts and pieces.

I decided to shoot Eric at his house, where his workshop is. He does some work in his basement, outside as well as inside his garage, which he converted into a workshop.

One of the main problems encountered during the shoot is that the subject was not comfortable having is picture taken. Since I discovered his work through my boyfriend, who came along for the shoot to assist me, I had Eric talk to my boyfriend while I was taking pictures. I did have to take a lot more pictures of the subject, but once in a while I asked him to look directly at me. He would then pause for a second and look at me. This made for very natural pictures, because he was more caught up in his conversation and his art than we was paying attention to the camera.

APD2 – Assignment 1 – Figure/Ground

Kim Hurley – 01

F/2.8, 1/125, ISO 800

I framed only the subject to focus on the designer’s actions. The model is not that important in this picture, it’s what the designer doing to the clothes that’s important, hence the close up and the fact that we only see half of the model’s legs.

Since she was moving relatively slowing, I was able to have a 1/125 speed, but I needed to increase my ISO, otherwise the picture would have been too dark.

 

Kim Hurley – 02

F/2.8, 1/80, ISO 400

I wanted to emphasize what the people were looking at, so I used them to frame the subject. Here, they are looking at the picture of the model taken by the photographer. The viewer’s eye goes directly into this frame because it’s the brightest point in the picture. I used a very shallow depth of field so the focus would be the computer screen, as the model standing a few feet further is not the center the attention. Here I could use a slower speed (1/80) because the subjects were not moving that much, and the light was sufficient for me to be able to decrease the ISO and reduce the noise.

 

Kim Hurley – 03

F/2.8, 1/160, ISO 640

In this picture, the subjects fill the frame almost entirely, but there is enough space to show that the background is white. Since the main subject, the model, is black and the girl is wearing white against a white background, it creates separation and the viewer’s eye can really focus on him and what’s being done to him. Again, I choose a very shallow depth of field, and because I wanted to freeze the action (ie. the person combing the model’s hair), I chose a speed of 1/160, so I had to have a higher ISO for the subjects to be correctly exposed.