Reflection

Throughout this Blog I have tried to include the ways in which I work to make what I do much easier for me. I have shown this by included great preparation tips such as creating tick/check lists and showing you the equipment I use at home to make time for what I do since timing is everything. I have included a few of my favourite photographers such as Chase Jarvis and Penny De Los Santos to show where I get my inspiration for what I do and to show how their workflow and imagery has changed me as a person into creating work which is unique and stands out. I have added previous photography work from the past as well as new work to show the differences within my work since my portfolio/website work has a much more clean modern look to food where as the work I do for university projects has a much more deeper meaning behind it to create a unique idea behind it and to show people something they may have not seen before. When creating work I often like to think of what I have created not to be the best I can do because this will give me a push to create something even better the next time round. I often post my work onto my Personal Blog so that people can take a look and evaluate what looks good and what looks bad this for me is very helpful when it comes to creating my final outcome within my work.

As you will see from my website and business cards making yourself known and putting yourself out there is very important to me since this is what will get you the attention from other people who may potentially hire you or be interested in buying your work. I have shown research through a variety of posts some being video research and some written both of which I believe to be important.

As I have developed my photographic knowledge I have gained an insight into the photography world which I never thought I would from technology to ideas and the history of photography. Recently I have been looking at food preservation since this is what I would like to focus my final project on and I believe that I have shown this in my previous work also but I would like to take it that one step further to create something different. As the population grows so does the need for food and I believe the way in which weather, wastage and food prices have changed will have a big impact on us traditional preservation methods and new methods are often overlooked by many people some may not have the time and some the resources but I believe that could change and I would like to create an idea for my final project relating to this.

Most Recent Work - Natural Habitat

My most Recent work includes a project which I had to come up with myself and since at the begging of this project we were focused on John bergers why we look at animals I decided to continue looking at this from a photographers perspective and by using food. For this paricular project I came up with the idea of looking at meat on a plate in a different way by looking at where the animal comes from and its own natural habitat.

These are some of the final Images in which I came up with each picture has a short summary of what is included within the image and its relation to the animals habitat.

Fish Habitat - Sand, Kelp (Fish, Brown sugar, Dill Herb)

Pig Habitat - Mud, Straw (Pork Sausages, Melted Chocolate, Wheat Cereal)

Lamb Habitat - Field, Hay Bale (Lamb Chops, Melted Chocolate, Herbs, Wheat Cereal)

Cow Habitat - Field, Trees, Nature (Minced Beef, Melted Chocolate, Herbs, Brocolli)

Jasmin Schuller

Very recently I found a photographer who created a series of pictures entitled Sweet Meat the idea is so simple but very effective and stands out from the other food related images because of what is involved in creating it. You have probably guessed what it involves from the title itself but I am going to tell you anyway. The final images consist of raw meats that are styled to appear as desserts and they do exactly that. Jasmine has been exhibiting the collection everywhere and has been featured in Russian Esquire and De:bug.

Here are some of the images from her series Sweet Meat.

Ref: www.jasmineschuller.com

Photography Tips I Use

Below are some of the types of tips I follow to make my life easier when taking pictures in the studio. I find these very helpful since sometimes they can be very simple things but can often be forgotten.

Choosing a setting that enhances, but doesn't distract from your food. Pick a simple, plain background or tablecloth.

Holding still. In low-light situations like restaurants and kitchens, long exposures will register any camera movement as blur. Use a tripod whenever possible

Take lots of pictures. Move around the food and see what angle looks best: down low to see the food head-on? Up high to take in the geometry of the presentation?

Get in as close as you can. Use the macro setting on your camera if it has one. Fill the frame with the food, so the viewer can almost taste it.

Don’t forget to take pictures of the process. Sometimes making the food (chopping, cooking) can be as interesting as the final product.

Work quickly. The faster you take pictures of the food, the fresher it will look. Cold, congealed meat and wilted salads just don’t look good.

Check the edges of your plates and glasses for stray food, and wipe away any smudges. Use sauces and garnishes to add colour to drab shots.

There are many more ways to make your life easier when in the studio but these are just a few as examples to show my ways of working in the studio.

Personal Blog/Social Media

My personal blog and social media accounts are very useful to me in many ways not only to show people my work and update them on what I am doing but also to gain critical analysis from others to make my work better than it may be. I am a strong believer that nothing in life is perfect and for me every piece of work I create can always be better, this is why my Personal Blog and social media allows me to do this by sharing with friends, family and fellow photographers so that they can tell me what may be missing from a particular image or idea. Below I have included my Personal Blog for you to visit if you would like to see it.

www.hhamitphotography.blogspot.com

Business Cards

Business Cards are very important to me as a photographer since many people can forget you this is a way to ensure that if somebody would like their photo taken then all your information can be found on one card for them to contact you. Since I am mainly interested in food photography for me business cards are more useful to hand to companies but I have included that I am also a freelance photographer which states that I am open to taking any type of image if needed such as a portrait as I have done in the past for friends and family.

Below you will see how my business card currently looks please click image to see a larger view.

My Website

My website is what gets me out there to the world so that people can see the work I do and find out more about me. It is not advertises my work but also links to my personal pages such as twitter and facebook which is becoming much more popular as each day passes. This is a great way to share new information with people who follow you and your work whilst also getting yourself out there. The website also includes contact information for clients to call or email me on which is very important to a photographer since to gain work you will need to send and receive many calls/emails. My website can be found below @

www.huseyinhamit.com

Chase Jarvis

Chase Jarvis is a very well known photographer if a photographer does not know him and what he does than they are living in the past since Chase is as modern as a photographer can get he uses not only the latest equipment out right now but also photography equipment from the past such as film and polaroid as well as dslr's.

I have included Chase Jarvis within this blog since out of every photographer out there he has taught me the most from what photographers do in the real world as a professional to the business side of photography. He was one of the very first photographers to introduce the BTS (Behind the Scenes) videos of what goes on in a professional photographers career uploading videos on youtube and sharing them to the world which not many photographers did before but are starting to do it now all because of this guy.

His work has a particular style to it and he has a range of images he takes from portraits to commercials, his book The Best Camera Is The One Thats With You is now recognised by thousands around the world he has also worked with huge companies such as apple, starbucks, nike and many more.

Chase Jarvis also alongside others started an online live feed photography education website where famous and well known photographers will come into the studio to talk and let people know how they become what they are now and how they did it whilst also taking photoshoots and helping many people out there for free.

Below is one of Chase Jarvis' videos which shows his team and their workflow when it comes to photography/videography which I think is one of the best behind the scenes videos a photographer can create.

www.chasejarvis.com

Edit/Back Up

The Editing and Back Up process is very important to me since for photographers our images are everything if we lost them we could lose a whole lot especially if its for a particular client who is paying you lots. This is one of the main reasons I have gotten into the habit of backing up my work regularly on 3 different drives one being on my desktop computer and the other two being on external hard drives.

I have been through many different hard drives but for me the best I have seen so far has to be G-Technology they are quite pricey but definitely worth the buy. Another vital importance when backing up is the speed in which you can back up some photographers can wait hours for there pictures to load I can not imagine how long videographers and film makers must wait for their videos to back up this is what makes G Drives worth the buy since the speed these drives download at are much faster than your standard hard drives. Below I have included a product video for you to see. They have much larger and faster drives depending on what you would like from small drives to huge servers these can be found at http://www.g-technology.com/

Photoshop & Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Lightroom are the two main programs which I use to edit or view images these programs allow me to choose my favourite images such as flagging the best images within Lightroom which saves me an enourmous amount of time rather than going through images one by one then losing the image you chose and having to go through them again.

Photoshop allows me to change mistakes I may have made whilst taking pictures small things such as brightness and contrast can also be changed in Photoshop you could completely manipulate the image to look outstanding but I have never been the type to over use Photoshop since I see this as cheating. All in all I could not live without these two particular software programs and I am grateful that I have the ability to use them both.

Penny De Los Santos

Penny De Los Santos is an award winning photographer known for her sensitive photo essays and food, travel, and landscape photography over the years she has been recognized by many big name companies and magazines some of these include: saveur magazine, national geographic, sports illustrated, newsweek, texas monthly and many more.

Penny De Los Santos is my favourite food Photographer, what I find interesting about her work is the way she puts a great deal of thought behind and image before its taken and not only does she do this but while doing so she also takes snapshots of the culture surrounding the food to truly understand it before the final image is taken and to me this is a way of showing that you are trying to understand the story behind the food and where it came from and capturing it within the image itself.

Below are some examples of images both simple and prepped to show you the differences she can create within her work.

Ref: www.pennydelossantos.com

Portrait Object Shoot - Finals

Below you will find the final 5 Images which were taken using studio lights and a backdrop each image was taken in RAW format this is done so that the quality of the image is at its best and since when these particular images are transferred into Photoshop they can be slightly altered if needed. I did not have to change much within the images apart from slightly brightening the images to make them stand out more I was pleased with the outcome of these images since they are all simple but effective in portraying a portrait of someone holding an object.

Portrait - Object Shoot - Contact Sheet

One of my recent photography shoots included a portrait of an object shoot. Within this shoot the people being photographed were told if they had a few minutes to save a particular object what they would choose so each person brought in there object whilst holding it and being photographed with it. The objects included a diary, necklace, pebbles and many more. Below is an example of the contact sheet of some of the images from the shoot I will be including the final images in another post for you to see.

Photoshoot & Equipment

Since I commute to university I found it would be much easier and useful for me to gather my own equipment over the years. Most of the photography work I do is from home in a small studio area which can be put away when not needed this is very useful for me since I can work not only in the comfort of my home but everything I need can be found here. Some of the equipment used are expensive and some are not expensive at all since photography equipment can become very expensive I had to find another way of using what I need and for this non named branded equipment as well as named branded equipment are both used. I can use bother continuous and flash lighting but I tend to use flash much more as well as natural light.

Flashguns for me tend to be the best on the go lighting while studio flash is best for studio work since each flash has a power of 500 watts which is more than enough for the photography I tend to do.

                                      

                                      

                                      

Screen Printing

Screen Printing was part of one of my projects for this we had to choose an image or various images that related to our field of work in my case (Food Photography) once this was done we needed to have an induction on how to screen print since this was the first time for us in doing so.

Below you will see various images I have found over the internet the images I chose to work with this was put together in Photoshop since each part of the image is different but relate in some way. I chose to look at parts of animals including an animal skull to relate not only to John Bergers - Why we look at animals but also my own work which is Food photography.

   

Why we look at animals - Are we Predators or Prey?

There can be various understandings on why we may look at animals I have included a list below of many different ways and reasons of why we do.

Culture
Religion
Food
Survival
Knowledge
Understanding
Companionship
Friendship
Loyalty
Emotions
Strength
Status
Farming
Money
Trade

and the list goes on..

But the first thing that comes to my mind out of it all are two main things food and friendship. We have all herd of the term 'A man's best friend' which mainly relates to a dog and his loyalty to a man but how can we see a dog as a friend an animal which shows emotion, friendship, loyalty and protects you while others may see an animal such as this as food?

Yes it may seem wrong and it may seem strange and I myself would never consider a dog being used as food and would never even think about eating an animal such as dog but the one thing that people would consider before they even think about a dogs emotion or feeling is there will to survive. Many people believe that eating certain animals are wrong but if you were to put yourself into a jungle an area full of predators any animal which is wild would not think twice before they would try to attack you since they need to feed themselves and there young.

Yes we do not live in the wild but what is it that makes us think eating certain animals are wrong? I believe its the simple fact of human contact if an animal is exposed to human contact that animal could become part of your life it creates an understanding between both human and animal and this relationship becomes so strong that our emotions and feelings for an animal grows the more time we spend with a particular animal but if you were to communicate with a tribe that may live in the Amazon Jungle they would not understand it the same way we do because for them any food is vital for them to survive.

Think about it if all we had in this world were animals and humans and you had the choice of killing any animal to be used as food to survive or not killing an animal which will result in your children not being fed which will result to death ...which would you choose?

The outcome ...we are made as both predators and prey we are generalists we adapt to survive no matter what the situation but sometimes adapting to something to much can be our biggest downfall.

Food Video Research - Bizarre foods & Gordon Ramsay

The video above is from a TV series named Bizarre Foods where Andrew Zimmern a documentary travel and cuisine show host and samples some of the worlds weirdest foods. In most of his videos the foods are useually in countrys which are much less developed and have great traditions in their culture.

I have also uploaded this video to show that certain parts of an animal are still used or being brought back in today's cooking by very well known chef such as Gordon Ramsay. 

It seems as if people are scared of what they now eat because of the way a certain food may look or the type of texture it may be making many people out there very picky with what they are eating. In many house holds within england I very much doubt that many would cook using the brain of an animal where as in some country's usually the less developed and poorer country's will have these types of food everywhere since they are more dependant on food where as well developed country's are not.

The Essential Africa - Michael Poliza

For one of my projects I was told to look at a book relating to animals and chose to look at Michael Poliza's Essential Africa.

Within the book Essential Africa Michael Poliza a photographer who introduced Germany to the digital world goes onto a journey of discovering a wonderful country and its amazing wildlife some of his great photographic work can be seen in this book using his unique approach to the wildlife. An example of this is of a close up image of a Lion even though he broke the rules by not showing the lions eye the image itself shows the detail of each strand of hair on the Lions face.
What Michael Poliza did is stand out by taking something which has been seen before but completely changing the way it is viewed by using different angles and focusing the camera on different areas of the subject itself.

I believe that every photographer should have there own unique style to there work and Michael Poliza shows this throughout the book and not only does he do this with the animals but also the landscape in which he is in.

"Africa is unlikely to change the way you think about Africa. But it might change the way you think about photography" This is written on the back of the book which really stood out to me because photography isnt always about what you see its about what you can create and I am a strong believer that this is one of the most important aspects of photography itself to create something unique. Sometimes breaking the rules is not a bad thing it is something which will show someone a different viewpoint to a particular subject which shows us that not everyone is the same and every picture is different because they are all unique in its own way.

John Berger - Why Look At Animals?

I have been looking at John Bergers Why Look At Animals for a screen printing project which I have been working on this project will allow us to use and learn about Screen Printing. My main focus on photography is food and I have been going through many different ideas of how I could use Animals and food together to create a Screen Print. Below Is a summary of John Bergers work and my thoughts on it.

John Berger tells us that the domestication of cattle did not begin as a simple prospect of milk and meat. Cattle had magical functions sometimes oracular, sometimes sacrificial. 

I believe that in modern day civilisation people have changed there views tremendously on animals in terms of keeping pets or what animals we eat why we may eat them and how everything is prepared. An example of this can be seen in the times of Ancient Egyptians and how they may have worshipped the cat to an extent of creating statues and for religious beliefs where as now we see cats as pets and nothing more. 

Another example of this is the amount of people who choose to be vegetarians because they believe that eating an animal is wrong where as a long time ago people may have not had a choice like that since food was of great importance to survive since there was a much bigger lack of food back then compared to how it is now.

Many animal sacrifices may have been made in the old days but now it is very rare to see these types of so called gatherings or ceremonies. Many animals all over the world are considered as food and some to an extent that certain parts of a particular animal are seen as delicacies and are still seen as delicacies in some country's to this day. I will be looking further into the food world of why people may see these types of foods as delicacies and how food from animals is not seen the same way as it may use to be.

My Food Photography

I am a very keen food photographer since this is what interests me most and since I find that I am most comfortable working within this area of photography. Below you will see some of the images which I have taken some of these are included within my portfolio since I believe them to be such strong food Images and very recent modern styled food.

Past Images - BA Final Degree Project

Below you will see 3 Images of my final degree BA project which again relates to food but with a difference as you can see the images show an army themed image which I gave myself the task of using only army rations to create something visually appealing, a modern food image and a future preservation food image using a vacuum food sealer. The reason I have included this within my Blog is because I would like to take the 3rd stage of that particular project and expand it for my final idea looking at Food Preservation & Sustainability.

Tick/Check Lists

There are many ways in which I develop my ideas when it comes to the way I work and one of these ideas is to look at what is going on with the world today in relation to food and how I could develop a certain project relating to photography.
I have always worked with art, design & photography since I am a firm believer that if you would like to create something unique and something individual than using various skills and ideas you have gained over the years is very important.

When working with Ideas I usually think about something solid in my mind and stick with it but I do often create brainstorms and tick lists to help me develop my ideas so that I gather information from the research I have done and merge them with the ideas I first thought of.

Here is an example of how I would create a simple tick/check list.

Week 1

1. Read through brief thoroughly 

2. Gather Ideas

3. Begin Brainstorm/Checklist

Week 2

4.      Begin main idea 

5.      Input of main idea

6.      Research main idea

Week 3

5. Prep of main idea

6. More Research

7. Create written document of whats needed

Week 4

8. Update logbook

9. Find out pricing/ordering materials/objects needed

10. Begin looking for/ordering materials/objects needed

Week 5

5. Put together main idea

6. Photoshoot

7. Photoshop

Week 6

8. Finishing touches

9. Update logbook/list

10. Final outcome

Introduction to my work & Blog List

From an art & design background to digital photography I have always worked digitally and for me photography is the digital version of creating art. I have always been keen on food coming from a turkish cypriot background my cultures food has always been around me I grew up eating foods which are very well known in today's society to foods you may not have ever seen or tried before.
As a photographer I have researched and worked with different area's of photography from portraiture, landscape, still life, food and fashion but the one style of photography that always stood out to me has always been food. I have always had an interest in food photography not only because I enjoy eating various types of foods and eating at many different restaurants but also because of the unique styling that goes into food photography which I call ...Art on a plate.

I have created a list of what I will include within this blog relating to my work since I find tick lists to be very helpful and straight to the point. The list includes:

My current work

How I work
Ideas
Timelines/Ticklists
Sources/Research
Preparation
Equipment
Photo Shoots
Programs/Tools used
Edit/Backup
Final Outcome

More will be added to this list as time goes by.

I will be taking you through how I come up with my idea's, why I work in the way that I do whilst also looking at problems and finding solutions to these problems along the way.